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What kind of kid needs permission to talk? I’m no dad, never have been, but it seems like kids do and say what they want. Normally getting them to stop talking is the problem. The formal handshake and the self-restraint mean only one thing to me. She’s been trained this way.
To keep her eyes down and her mouth closed. That seals it. Whoever this man is that Alice is running from, I fucking hate him.
“Let me make one thing clear,” I say, slinging a heavy arm over the kid’s shoulders. “Mine. Simple as that. You and me gotta sort out between us what’s yours and what’s mine, but this—” I nod toward Alice, who’s struggling to pull the booster chair from the back seat “—is mine. Unless you want your nutsac hanging from the tailpipe of my bike.”
I am braced for things to turn on a dime. For Morris to turn from the passenger seat of the pickup, glare at me, and unleash a fury of blame. This is my fault. I did this.
I deserve to fail. I deserve to be alone, broke, and abandoned. I’m braced for the shift in him, and I can already hear his voice—some voice—echoing in my head with all that and worse.
Our eyes meet, and a warmth floods through my body. I like this man. I trust this man. I haven’t felt safe like this, in a car with two virtual strangers, in all the years I’ve been with Jerry. In as long as I can remember, if I’m being honest. Maybe never.
I don’t think I need a bearded biker in my life to prove the point. I get it. My daughter and I are on our own. We’re gonna need to make our own way.
My heart nearly shatters as I watch this enormous, tattooed biker try to reset his password on his phone with my daughter’s help. He hands her his phone, and I shake
my head, wondering if Morris even knows that Tiana is a Disney princess. I’m starting to suspect that even if he does know, he doesn’t much care.
“He’s not going to hurt you ever again,” I say quietly under my breath. “Morris,” she says, shaking her head. “You don’t know what he’s capable of.” “If you think that, darlin’, then you don’t know what I’m capable of.”
“Alice Sparrow,” he grits out, his voice husky with desire. “My beautiful little bird.”
Kissing Alice is nothing like I expect. Kissing Alice is everything. She feels like hope and light, tastes like sex and sin, and sounds like laughter and home. All wrapped in one tiny, terrified package.
Her words cut me to my core. The fact that Alice wouldn’t put a dog through what she was going through at home made me want to take an electronic training collar and shock dear old Jerry’s balls until he learned once and for all how to treat his old lady.
“Mom was an artist at heart. She made beauty with her hands. Loved to work fabric like it was her canvas. That’s why I hang a lot of the quilts she made. Got one back at the apartment. In my bedroom over the bed.”
Home. I want to take a minute to savor something I have not felt since my mom passed. What it feels like to be home.
“But you don’t just earn the patch by falling off the bike,” he continues. “You earn the patch by getting back on. Riding again. Overcoming your fear and flying—even if you have broken wings.”
“Baby,” he says, his voice low and silky. “It’s exactly the same thing. You think we only fall once in life? We ride, we crash. We ride again, we crash again. Sometimes we’re lucky, and we don’t fall far enough or hard enough to do any permanent damage. But most of the time, a fall means bad news. Real bad. You’re fucked up so bad, you’re not sure you’re gonna make it. But if you wanna earn that patch and ride again, you get back up. You ride again, Alice Sparrow.”
Promises more than just getting back up after a crash. Morris’s kiss promises me that I am getting back up after the fall. I’m earning the patch. And as I fall asleep in Morris’s arms, I have a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, I’ve earned my broken wings.
“I thought I was choosing something that was just for me, you know? The freedom to wake up under the sunrise and sleep under the stars if I chose to. I listened to what I wanted on the radio. I sang at the top of my lungs. I ate at hole-in-the-wall places and let my dogs run free in random fields. It was a great time, but when I closed my eyes at night, I always felt like I was hiding from something. I was lying to myself, even while I was telling myself I was choosing the path less traveled. Running away from what I didn’t want for my life didn’t create the life I wanted. For me, there was
a big difference between taking a chance and making a choice.”
But the real test was taking a chance on making the kind of life I wanted.”
“It all just comes, Alice. We can’t prepare for
it. We can’t stop most of it. Sometimes we can run from it, but we can’t outrun it. You always have a choice. How you want to live. Who you want to be. Who you want to let in. I think I decided I’d rather face it my way than spend my time looking at life in a rearview mirror.”
“Everything comes,” she says. “But our truth won’t find us until we’re ready to face it.” “You’re very wise for your age, Lia.” “Thank you.”
“Sorry, babe,” Alice says, her
voice caustic with sarcasm. “But I learned it’s a lot better to never leave a mark.” She shrugs. “Then there’s no proof.”
This is the woman I want to make my old lady. The one I want to make memories with, make love to—hell, make something I never thought I’d ever want, but which now I know I need. A family.
“Say you’ll go for a ride with me, sweetheart. Say you’ll get back up with me, no matter how many times life knocks us down and tries to break us. Say you’ll fly with me as long as we both have wings.”
