Page 16 of Rumi: The Hawthornes

Normally, I’d be thankful that the woman I was fucking went home to her own bed to sleep. It was the ideal. But Nova always stayed over. She’d usually slept on whichever surface Iwasn’tsleeping on. If I was in bed, she slept on the couch, but still. When I’d fallen asleep, I’d just assumed she would stay and when she hadn’t, I’d been irritated. I wasn’t willing to dive into why it irritated me, but I was more than happy to simmer in the shit.

Fucking Nova was a thousand times better than any sex I’d had with anyone else. I had a feeling that part of that was because I knew her so well. Usually when I was with someone I had to watch them closely to make sure I was hitting all the buttons they needed to be pushed, but with Nova those buttons were like neon fucking signs lighting the way. It was easy with her. Hotter. I didn’t have to think as much.

I smashed my thumb and cursed a blue streak as I rolled out from under the Tacoma. Fuck me, I had to stop thinking about Nova and pay goddam attention to what I was doing. Grabbing a rag off the floor next to me, I wiped my hands as I walked outside.

The garage doors were open, but it still got warm as hell when I was working. I tipped my head back and let the cool spring air hit my face. I needed to get my head out of my ass.

I was overthinking everything even though things with Nova were fuckingfine. For the past two days she’d texted me on her way to work just like always and there was nothing in the texts that were anything out of the ordinary. I hadn’t been able to stop by the pancake house like I usually did on Sundays, but she hadn’t seemed to care one way or the other if I’d shown up. Our friendship didn’t seem to have changed at all, and I was fucking thrilled.

Mostly thrilled.

No,entirelythrilled.

Fuck.

“Hey, Prospect,” Nova’s pop Samson said, lifting his chin in my direction.

I startled like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“Jumpy today, huh?” he joked as he passed me. “You been doin’ somethin’ you’re not supposed to?”

“Always,” I replied easily.

Shit, if he only knew.

Back when we were teenagers, Samson had given methe talk. I’d been kind of anticipating it, but it hadn’t gone how I’d expected. Instead of telling me to keep my grubby hands off his granddaughter, he’d said something different—that if I wasn’t in love with her, if I didn’t see a life with her, to keep things simple. He’d warned me that if I broke her heart he’d bury me and at the time I’d been so confused about the whole thing that I’d just agreed with everything he’d said. I guess that had been his version of keep your hands to yourself because he must’ve known that it would be easy for me and Nova to go down a different road, and he’d asked me to be sure before we did.

If he knew the thoughts that had been going through my head since I’d woken up Saturday morning, I had a feeling he’d be picking out a spot to dig.

The rest of the day pretty much followed the same course. I changed oil and air filters while amusing everyone with my foul mood.

I could admit that I didn’t have bad days very often, so the fact that I was obviously being pissy must’ve been pretty hilarious for the boys to witness. They didn’t expect that the bad mood would lead to any actual problems, so they were comfortable teasing the shit out of me about it—which only made it worse.

“You goin’ home to scream into your pillow?” my uncle Will asked, his lips twitching. “You show it who’s boss.”

“Fuck off,” I muttered, ducking when he swung halfheartedly at the side of my head.

“Seriously,” he said, stopping a few feet away. “You good?”

“I’m fine.”

“Alright.”

“Call your mother,” my dad yelled from one of the garage bays. “I told her you were havin’ a hard day.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yep.”

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. “Why the hell would you do that?”

“Because I wanted to see just how pissed off you could get,” he joked, disappearing back into the garage.

I clenched my hands into fists as I walked toward my truck. I really wished I could’ve taken my bike to work, but it was broken down again and I hadn’t had a chance to figure out what the fuck was going on. Between fixing shit on the house that needed to be done and working full time I hadn’t had any spare time to work on it. It was my own fault for thinking that rebuilding a vintage Harley was a better idea than buying a new one. I was pretty sure the boys at the club were laughing at me. A prospect that couldn’t keep his bike running was a fucking joke.

I climbed in my truck and called my mom right away so I could get it over with. She was one of my favorite people on the entire earth, but if anyone was going to figure out what was going on in my head, it would be her and I didn’t want her to know shit.

“Hey, Ma,” I said when she answered. “Whatcha doin’?”

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