Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 80902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Fucking hit and run. Someone left him like this.
Sledge scans the road. “Hard to tell what happened. Looks like Phoenix tried to brake over there, but I don’t see anything from what hit him, which could mean they didn’t even try to avoid him.”
I find some bits and pieces down the road. “Broken plastic over here. Could be from a headlight, but who the fuck knows if it’s fresh or not? Let’s go see what he remembers.”
And see Shelby.
4
SHELBY
“Do you think that’s them?” I ask when I hear the rumble of an engine stop in front of the house. My voice is shaky. My hands too. When I crack an egg into the pan for Mia, a little bit of shell gets in there. I pick it out with a grimace.
“Should be. Stay there. I’ll make sure,” Phoenix says in a low growl.
I freeze, but Mia isn’t used to danger. She jumps from the kitchen chair and runs for the door.
“Hold up, small fry.” Phoenix grabs her by the back of her pajama shirt, cutting her off and waiting for me to come pull her out of the way. I take her back to the kitchen and make sure she’s behind me. Her fingers dig into my pant leg.
Staying out of sight, Phoenix pushes the curtains back to get a look at whoever is standing at the door. His shoulders relax and I let out the breath I’d been holding. “It’s them.” He opens the door.
Memories, good and bad, come flooding back when I see Havoc.
He looks just like I remember him. A few years older, sure. There’s a new scar across his jaw, and his shoulders fill out the cut in a way they wouldn’t have last time I saw him. Not that he was small even then, but we were both a lot younger.
Now he looks brutal. Dangerous. Like a guy I'd cross the street to avoid if I were out walking with Mia.
And cross the street to get closer to if I were alone, because those blue eyes are just as easy to drown in now as they were back then, and his lips just as easy to want to kiss as they were when I was a sixteen-year-old runaway who lied about her age so she could work at the kind of bar that paid in cash and didn’t ask too many questions.
How different would my life have been if I’d met him before Dodger? I wouldn’t have Mia for one, so there’s no point in even thinking about it, but I bet I wouldn’t have lived the next few years in fear. Of course, he probably would have tied me up and dropped me off on my family’s doorstep when he found out how old I was.
Unlike Dodger, who’d gotten a gleam in his eye that I’m now old enough to understand had nothing to do with how mature I was for my age. Gross.
“Havoc.” I'm not sure exactly how this is going to go. He checked up on me over the years, and he hooked me up with this place, but I haven’t seen him face to face since the day he drove me home from the bar. He stayed until he saw my mother answer the door in tears and put her arms around me.
I was such an idiot back then.
His expression is unreadable, but his gaze slides down my body and back up, taking me in in a way that makes me wish I wasn’t just wearing my weekend sweats. “Looking fucking good, Nova.”
“That's a bad word!” Mia says with glee, loving when she catches adults slipping up around her. “What’s Nova?”
Havoc's eyes widen as he sees her and he laughs. “Your mama. Man, your girl’s a lot bigger than I thought.”
Mia squints at him. “That’s not Mommy’s name.”
“Yeah, it’s Shelby. Right, Mia?” Phoenix puts his arm over my shoulder like it belongs there. Mia nods.
Havoc’s face breaks into a sexy grin and he laughs. The sound burrows into my body, taking root deep down where it warms me from the inside out. I’m not quite sure what to do with the feeling. Five years ago our four year age difference made him seem so much older than me. It was easy to slot him into the big brother category, but four years feels like nothing now.
I shrug off Phoenix’s arm. “Time will do that.”
“Hey, gonna need a hand getting the bike outta the ditch,” comes a new voice, raspy and deep, as a third biker with gorgeous hazel eyes appears behind Havoc.
It must be Max Kaufman, my landlord, the guy Phoenix called Sledge. A short beard covers his square jaw and a short, wild thatch of sandy brown hair covers his head, like he's tried to tame it but it refuses to listen. The way he's built, I'm not sure I believe he actually needs help. I'm pretty sure he could probably bench press it without breaking a sweat, never mind needing help to move it. I’m not sure what I expected my landlord to look like, but it wasn’t like the tattooed lumberjack next door.