Patriot Page 10

  But when I pulled up to her apartment, and I hopped off my bike, waiting for her, I just had a strong feeling that our mutual presence would put each other in a good mood. She’d responded favorably on the phone when I had last called her, and I had to think that seeing me in person would only help.

  Seconds after I arrived, she opened the front door and came down to me. A smile gradually crept across her face, the kind of smile that looked like it was trying to hide how excited she was but deliberately failing at keeping face.

  “Hello,” she said before pulling me in for a close hug.

  The fact that the hug lasted several beats longer than our typical hug told me all I needed to know. Even if she—and I, let’s be fair—was going to throw up barriers at various points in the night, ultimately, the desire was there.

  “Hi there,” I said. “I’ve got an offer for you for tonight.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You’ve avoided it so far,” I said. “But I think you won’t regret taking a ride. What do you say?”

  Kaitlyn

  “Alright, why not?”

  The way Michael’s smile broadened, you would have thought that I just agreed to marry him. He looked like he was about to strain a muscle from smiling so hard. It even made me smile a little bit wider. Keep your wits about you, Kaitlyn.

  I hadn’t planned on saying yes to the bike ride, but this was a date, and we had dropped all pretenses of it being anything but. In that sense, I knew I needed to stop dancing around the subject, stop trying to act like I wasn’t interested in him, and just push myself a little bit. It was more than a little scary, given my past and my family’s history, but it wasn’t like getting on the bike meant I had to commit to him. It just meant that it was something we could look forward to.

  “Great!” he said. “Well, here, first...”

  He lifted the seat of his bike, grabbed a spare helmet, and gave it to me.

  But as soon as it touched my hands, I froze.

  “You OK?”

  “Just…”

  You put that on, and there is no turning back. You’d better make sure this is what you want to do.

  I looked at Michael, holding his gaze, trying to pierce past his eyes and look to his intentions. As best as I could tell, he truly was different than Jason. The risk was enormous and without limit, but the reward…

  Fuck.

  I put it on—it was a little snug, clearly designed for a woman, but it was clean and without strand hairs from anyone else who might have worn it.

  “Safety first, right?” Michael said lightly.

  “Really,” I said dryly. “From you guys?”

  “Even from us guys,” he finally said. “Have you ridden on a bike before?”

  I scoffed but caught myself from letting it become too bad. Instead, I just calmly shook my head and said no.

  “Just hold on tight and follow the weight of my body,” he said. “If I lean left, you lean left. Same for right. Don’t overdo it. If anything, try and do it a little less than I do. I’ve got good control of it. You’re probably going to feel like we’re going way too fast for safety’s sake, but I promise I’ll go the speed limit and I promise nothing will happen to you. Do you have any questions?”

  Oh, I had hundreds about how I would know if we were safe, what would happen if we crashed, how safe was motorcycle driving really, and so on. But all of them weren’t questions of genuine interest, but just fear. Michael had given me no reason to distrust him so far, so I decided to just nod my head.

  Still…

  “Alright,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Too late now.

  He hopped on the bike and revved the engine to life. The sound of that, even though I’d heard it far too many times in my life to count, still felt like something of a kick to the gut. I was confronting the very symbol of what had killed my sister.

  But it was time to form new associations and new memories. It was time for me to connect a bike not with Jason and Kristina, but with something happy and cheerful in my life. At worst, I just wanted to hear a bike and not feel anything. If I could reach that point, then this alone would have been worth it.

  Slowly, I moved around and hopped on the bike. I put my arms around Michael, but he kept motioning me forward. I got close enough that I was practically smothering him, and he was still telling me to get close. If not for the presence of the bike, I would have wondered if this was a move on his part to make me feel physically aroused.

  “It’s like your body needs to mold with mine,” he said. “If you lean back or keep distance, that throws everything off. Hug me like...”

  He didn’t finish that sentence. It was probably for the best.

  But he didn’t need to say anything, really. The gentle vibration of the bike, in conjunction with my arms already around him, was making me feel certain things about Michael that I had only felt in brief flashes up to that point.

  “You ready?” he asked once he was satisfied with how close I’d gotten to him.

  “As I’ll ever be,” I said in a half-mumble.

  He backed the bike up out of the parking spot.

  “Last chance to get off.”

  You do this, everything you’ve ever thought about bikers, about Kristina… does it all go to waste?

  Or does it represent growth?

  You can answer that by answering the same question you’ve asked yourself about Michael for ages now. Hot?

  Or attractive?

  “Let’s go already.”

  Michael took my cue. The motorcycle jerked forward, my arms squeezed harder around him than they had any man, and I let out a scream as the bike rolled down the road.

  Michael was absolutely right. It felt like we were going dangerously fast. Everything around me went by in a blur, and I wanted to beg him to slow down. The only reason I didn’t was that my screaming was preventing me from doing so. Stupid, stupid, fucking stupid!

  Every time we took a turn, I overreacted. I tried to tell myself to calm down, but I truly thought we were going to die. Michael was going to hit someone or something because he was driving so fast, and we were going to somersault through the air, and we were going to crash…

  And then, slowly, very slowly, my nerves started to cool down. Maybe I had just burned so much energy screaming like a little girl, but there came a point where I didn’t have anything left to scream with—or about. And as a result, what had started as outright terror slowly morphed into a thrilling excitement.

  Soon, I was the one yipping in excitement. I was the one who relished the feeling of the wind brushing heavily against the one. I was the one that was loosening my grip ever so slightly with Michael, just enough so that I could punctuate certain moments with a hug. Slowly, I started to gather my bearings of where we were.

  We actually weren’t in Springsville anymore. We had ventured out to one of the roads leading out of town, and it looked like we were going to the highway.

  “Are you taking me there?” I shouted, slightly nervous that Michael’s promise to stay at the speed limit would test what I thought he meant.

  But with us going what I would guess was over forty miles per hour, there was no chance that he would hear my words. I just held on tight and held out hope that we’d come to a stoplight so that I could ask him if we were.

  Well, we did.

  A green one.

  Unsurprisingly, we blew right through it, merged on the highway, and Michael gunned it. Sixty-five miles per hour—if that was really what this was—had never felt so outright dangerous, so…

  Fun.

  “Oh, shiiiit!” I yelled, a huge smile forming on my face.

  The vibration of the engine pulsed through my legs and... yeah, it was hitting me there a little bit. I had never felt so exhilarated but also so close to the edge of danger. What we were doing was just fucking crazy!

  We were going over seventy miles per hour near other vehicles doing the same speed, with only a helmet and Michael’s instinct
s to protect us. If we peeled out, if someone cut us off, if we hit something that made the bike sputter out of control...

  But just as it had in town, the longer we spent on the road, the more of a thrill it began to feel. I worried less and less about what could go wrong and focused more and more on what was going well. I didn’t worry about crashing. I focused on the pulsing vibrations going through my body. I focused on how it felt to travel at speeds faster than anything I’d ever done.

  I focused on how this was all Michael’s doing and how he was literally giving me the ride of my life.

  Truly, nothing like it had ever happened. Truly, no one like him had ever come. Truly, no man had ever given me a date like this.

  And it was only the early stages of the date. That was by far the best part. This was… this was changing how I felt about motorcycles, that it most certainly was.

  Actually, toward the end, the motorcycle ride was almost becoming a little too much to handle, in part because the vibration of the motorcycle, and the effect it had on my body, even though I was wearing jeans...

  Well, let’s just say that vibration had that pleasurable effect on me. And while it certainly felt good, I was more than a little worried how it would look to Michael if that happened before he and I had even kissed, let alone gone all the way—something that wasn’t going to happen tonight, no matter how magical or thrilling this bike ride was.

  I managed to keep it under control, but just because I didn’t physically finish didn’t mean there was some serious work done on the mind.

  Eventually, Michael pulled off the highway, only for him to loop back around toward Springsville and back on the highway. The bastard had very much done this deliberately. He knew all too well what a bike ride like this had done.

  Well, I could see why he did it. It was the most arousing mode of transportation there was. As much as I tried to tell myself it didn’t mean anything, the reaction of my body very much suggested otherwise. I had gone from loathing bikes and associating them with death and murder to wondering if I could manage avoid finishing on his. I would have cursed myself out an hour ago if this was the dilemma I had to face, but now, it was unavoidable.

  I had to laugh at myself in a way. I’d become the very thing that I had hated for so long—someone who loved bikes. I swore that if the bike ride had lasted just five minutes longer, I would have lost control.

  “Wanted to go back to Springsville, huh?” I shouted, hoping my voice didn’t sound like a shaky, hot mess.

  But then Michael did something strange. He didn’t take the exit for Springsville. He slowed down as if to make me think that he was going to take that exit, but that wasn’t actually what he did. Instead, as soon as we passed the exit for Springsville, he gunned the engine even faster, and this time, I knew that he wasn’t staying by the speed limit.

  And yet, I did not care. In fact, I felt like I wasn’t myself—in a good way. I was on an adrenaline high that wanted to keep pushing things to the limit.

  And just like that, we got off at the next exit. It did take me a couple of seconds to figure out where we were going, though, because we had parked on a street with a few different bars and restaurants. I think we may have still been in Springsville district lines, but this was not the Springsville we all knew by any stretch of the imagination.

  “Hidden Cellar?” I said, reading the sign of the place we had stopped at.

  Michael nodded as he removed his helmet. I had never even heard of the place, let alone seen it before. It certainly had a far more sophisticated and upscale look than anything in Springsville.

  “I figured you wouldn’t be keen on going back to Brewskis,” he said with a smirk as his hands ran over my face, ostentatiously to remove my helmet. “So, I figured something classier was in order.”

  “Oh, you didn’t have to do that,” I said. “We could’ve gone someplace you would’ve been comfortable. I’m...”

  “You act like I’m a blue-collar guy who thinks dark beer is too refined,” he said. “You’ll quickly find out that there’s much more to me than you think. Just because I repair cars and bikes for a living and once served in the military doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the finer things in life.”

  Guess that’s one on me for assuming too much.

  Very well then, Michael. Show me what else there is to you. Continue to surprise me.

  Michael put my helmet in the seat of the motorcycle and walked about a half step ahead of me. I felt pretty sure that he was brushing his hand down, trying to take his own in mine, but I was trying to be good—for now, at least. He may have given me the ride of his life, but I wasn’t going to give everything to him that easily. The physical thrill produced by an admittedly fun ride didn’t mean I was emotionally connected to him yet.

  It certainly only helped, though, that the placement of his hand on the small of my back sent pleasant shivers throughout my body.

  Given that it was a relatively late Thursday evening, we didn’t have to compete for any space for a small table that was largely cut off from the rest of the bar. Michael told me to wait at my table, went up to the counter, and ordered two drinks. I watched as he and the bartender seemed to converse easily, and I was reminded of the first time he had come to me. He had such a natural charisma about him that was easy on the ears and eyes, and he wasn’t the hardass that the rest of the club seemed to be.

  Granted, I was sure he had that hard edge. He couldn’t have been in the military and then in a group like the Black Reapers without having some sort of edge. He just did a good job of keeping it enough under wraps that it didn’t raise up into any ugly forms in a public setting like this.

  So long as I’m not on the receiving end of that edge. So long as I don’t make the same fatal mistake as Kristina…

  Michael came back with what looked like two Manhattan drinks.

  “Whiskey guy, huh?” I said as I took mine.

  “Like I said, I’m more cultured than you’d think,” he said, holding up his glass for cheers. “My Dad, actually, he loved whiskey. He got me into it. We traveled a lot when I was a kid.”

  “So, your Dad gave you alcohol as a kid?” I teased. “No wonder you wound up in the Black Reapers.”

  “No, silly,” he said. “But my Dad did let me have my first drink when I was thirteen. I said it was the nastiest thing I’d ever tasted in my life. He said that was because I didn’t know any better, and he was right. Now?”

  He took a nice sip of his drink and let out a gentle “ahh.”

  “Now, I know it was me who was nasty and who needed to learn.”

  He took another sip, paused, let his smile drop for just a second, and then brought it right back up.

  “But enough about me. Let’s learn more about you. What’s the last nice vacation you’ve been on?”

  I had several questions, like why Michael mentioned his father and not his mother, why had his smile flickered away for a momentary beat, why was he switching subjects to me so abruptly... but the vibe was good, and the mood was pleasant. I didn’t have an urge to question him right now.

  “Well, if you’re talking nice location, I’d say Hawaii,” I said.

  “Ha-wa-ii!” Michael said, annunciating each syllable. “That sounds like lots of fun. Was it?”

  Well, it was the family gathering for us to remember Kristina and try and celebrate her life. So...

  “The circumstances that brought us together weren’t, but the trip itself was.”

  Michael opened his mouth as if about to ask me for further details, but perhaps rather wisely, he refrained from saying anything. The better so he didn’t have any temptation, I took the opportunity to show him a few photos of the trip. Most of them came from sunsets or hikes, and it was the exact kind of thing I needed to prevent tonight from getting to anything serious.

  It wasn’t that I was opposed to telling Michael about what had happened. It just felt like the timing wasn’t right. I, especially, was taking enormous leaps forward in
my comfort level, but I only had the strength for so many leaps before I had to recover.

  This was a date to be happy and better understand each other, not to reveal our darkest secrets. After all, who revealed that their sister had died because of their date’s profession on a first date? Maybe some of the blunter friends I had, but I wasn’t one of them.

  I showed photos of my trip, and he showed photos of his to Yosemite for the next half hour. I asked Michael if we were going to do a second round of drinks, but Michael shook his head.

  “No, tonight is a date for locale hopping.”

  He just wants me on his bike as much as possible. So be it. But it’s not going anywhere past that.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “What would be the fun if I told you now?” he said, placing his hand on my shoulder and giving me a gentle shake. “Trust me when I say it’ll be fun. It’s not a bar or a club, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Good, because if you took me to a club on our first date, I’d have to question your intentions.”

  “And what do you think those are?”

  I arched an eyebrow. He knew full well what I meant. I knew full well he wasn’t the type of guy to hit and run, I just liked teasing him a bit. And maybe it means that I want it a little more than I’m willing to admit.

  Just nothing tonight. Stay true to that.

  “I guess you’ll find out,” he finally said. “Come on, let’s go.”

  This time, he made a point of grabbing my hand as he led us out, rather than allowing me to take it if I wanted. The move was pretty bold, but it was kind of pleasing, I couldn’t lie. There were points for boldness, especially since it wasn’t like he jumped from A to Z so quickly.

  Plus, for a hand that I expected to be calloused, hard, and rough, it was actually kind of smooth. Not so smooth that it felt uncomfortably or awkwardly weird, but smooth enough that it was pleasant to hold.