Riding My Best Friend's Biker Dad

The Package

I woke up with the memory of the kiss still sitting under my skin. The way Cassian had looked at me afterward. The way he had said he was trying to keep his distance and failing. I did not regret it. That was the problem. I knew exactly how complicated this was, and I still could not make myself wish it had not happened.

When I came downstairs Cassian was already in the kitchen. He had a mug in his hand and the same careful distance he had put between us the night before. Our eyes met for a second. Something passed between us, quiet and heavy, then he looked away first.

“Morning,” he said.

“Morning.”

He poured a second cup and set it on the counter near me without asking how I took it. The same small gesture from before. Neither of us mentioned the garage. Neither of us needed to. The knowledge of it was already in the room.

We moved around each other carefully. He stayed on his side of the kitchen. I stayed on mine. Every time our paths crossed too closely I felt the same pull from the night before, and every time he stepped back I knew he felt it too.

Anastasia called while I was wiping down the table.

Her voice came through bright and easy. “Hey. How’s the house treating you?”

“Fine,” I said. I kept my tone light. “Everything’s running the way you left it.”

“And Dad? Is he being impossible about the garage?”

I glanced toward the hallway where Cassian had just disappeared. “He’s the same as always.”

She laughed. “That means he’s working too much. Tell him I said to sleep once in a while.”

“I will.”

There was a short pause on her end. “Listen, the internship finished early. A couple of the projects wrapped ahead of schedule. I’m thinking of coming home sooner than I planned. Maybe the end of next week.”

My stomach dropped. I forced the next words out evenly. “That’s great. It’ll be good to have you back.”

“I miss it,” she said. “The house. You. Even Dad’s terrible coffee. Don’t tell him I said that.”

“I won’t.”

We talked a few more minutes about nothing important. She sounded happy and completely trusting. When we hung up I stood in the quiet kitchen with the phone still in my hand and the weight of what I was hiding pressing harder than before.

A knock at the front door pulled me out of it.

A delivery driver stood on the porch with a plain brown package under one arm. No company logo on his shirt. No clear return address on the box that I could see from where I stood.

“Cassian Cole?” he asked.

“He’s not inside right now. I can take it.”

The man handed it over without much conversation and left. The package was heavier than it looked. The brown paper was thick and sealed with heavy tape. A single strip of black marking ran along one side, nothing I recognized. No sender name. Just Cassian’s name and the house address written in block letters.

I set it on the kitchen table and stepped back. Something about it felt off. Not dangerous exactly, just wrong for a regular delivery.

Cassian came in through the back door a few minutes later. He saw the package immediately. The easy quiet he had been holding all morning disappeared.

“When did that get here?”

“Just now. A driver dropped it off. I signed for it.”

He walked over and picked it up. His face stayed calm, but the way he held the box told me he did not like the weight of it or the look of it.

“Did you open it?”

“No.”

He nodded once. “Good.”

“What is it?”

“Something I need to deal with.”

I watched him turn the package over in his hands. “Does it have anything to do with those men from the other day? Black Ridge?”

He did not answer right away. His eyes stayed on the box. When he finally looked at me the expression there was closed off in a way I had not seen since the morning after the motorcycle.

“Stay inside today,” he said. “Keep the doors locked. I’ll be back when I can.”

He took the package under his arm and headed for the door. I followed him into the hallway.

“Cassian.”

He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. For a second the careful distance slipped. His gaze moved over my face the same way it had in the garage the night before, like he was remembering the exact shape of the kiss and deciding not to reach for it again.

“I’ll call if I’m going to be late,” he said.

Then he was gone. The motorcycle started a minute later and faded down the street.

I locked the door behind him and stood in the empty hallway. The house felt larger without him in it. The package was gone, but the questions it left behind stayed.

I went back to the kitchen and sat at the table where the box had been. My mind kept turning over the same pieces. The rider who had watched the house that first night. The two Black Ridge men who had shown up at the garage asking questions they should not have known to ask. Now a package with no clear sender that made Cassian’s whole body go still the second he saw it.

Maybe it was club business that had nothing to do with me. Maybe it was a warning. Maybe it was something worse. I did not know enough to decide which possibility made the most sense. I only knew that Cassian had taken one look at that box and decided it could not stay in the house.

I thought about Anastasia coming home earlier than planned. About the way she had laughed on the phone, completely unaware that her best friend and her father had crossed a line that could not be walked back. About the fact that Cassian was out there right now dealing with something he would not explain.

I stayed at the table long after the coffee went cold. Outside the windows the street stayed empty. No motorcycle. No delivery truck. Nothing moved except the leaves in the wind.

Whatever had been inside that package was important enough for Cassian to take it straight to the club. Important enough that he would not even tell me whether it was connected to the men who had already come to this house once.

I did not know what he would find when he opened it.

I only knew that something was moving closer to this house, and Cassian was standing in the middle of it alone.