Chapter 17
1695 Words
Biker’s POV
Then I stopped.
The image of the woman at the intersection returned to me.
I frowned.
I had no idea why.
I had seen her for less than a minute.
Maybe less than thirty seconds.
There had been nothing remarkable about the encounter.
She had been standing on a street corner.
She had almost been hit by a car.
I had continued driving.
That should have been the end of it.
Instead, my mind kept returning to her face.
The slight crease between her brows.
The impatient way she’d shifted her weight.
The strands of hair that had escaped whatever had once been holding them in place.
The tiny silver bead attached to the black hair tie around her wrist.
I had noticed too much.
That was the problem.
I had always noticed too much.
It was one of the reasons I was still alive.
People lied with their mouths.
Their bodies usually told the truth.
A man could tell me he had no intention of betraying me while his hand trembled against the table.
A woman could smile while calculating how much she could take.
A business partner could shake my hand while already planning how to put a knife in my back.
I noticed things.
It was what I did.
But there had been no reason to notice her.
She had been a stranger.
I forced my attention away from the thought and picked up the folder waiting on my desk.
The meeting.
That was what mattered.
I had been away for two days because of it.
I wasn’t going to waste another minute thinking about a woman whose name I didn’t know.
I opened the folder.
Three minutes later, I was still staring at the same page.
I closed it.
“Fuck.”
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed a hand over my face.
I needed sleep.
That was all.
Twenty-four hours without proper rest was enough to make anyone’s mind wander.
I stood and walked toward the private bathroom attached to the office.
A cold shower would help.
It didn’t.
Neither did the coffee Mason brought me ten minutes later.
“You look terrible.”
I glanced at him.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He placed the coffee on my desk.
I stared at it.
“Is that supposed to be coffee?”
“You’re welcome again.”
I picked up the cup.
Mason leaned against the desk.
“The meeting starts in ten minutes.”
“I know.”
“You’ve said that three times.”
“Then stop reminding me.”
He grinned.
“You’re in a wonderful mood.”
I took a sip of the coffee.
It was terrible.
I drank it anyway.
Mason’s eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re looking at me.”
“I look at everyone.”
“Not like that.”
I placed the cup down.
“Do you have something to say?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then leave.”
He smiled.
“Sure.”
He didn’t move.
I stared at him.
He stared back.
“You’re annoying.”
“I’ve been told.”
“Frequently, I assume.”
“By you, mostly.”
I picked up the folder again.
Mason finally laughed and left.
I tried to focus.
I really did.
But the woman at the intersection returned to my mind again.
This time, I remembered the moment the car had turned too sharply.
The way she’d stopped.
The brief flash of surprise across her face.
The way she’d recovered almost immediately.
She hadn’t screamed.
Hadn’t panicked.
She’d simply stepped back, looked at the car, and continued walking.
I remembered thinking that she seemed too composed for someone who had nearly been hit.
Then I remembered the phone.
The tension in her face.
The way she’d looked toward the road.
She had been going somewhere.
Or perhaps…
Trying to get away from somewhere.
I had no idea why that thought occurred to me.
I pushed it away.
The meeting began at seven.
By the time it ended, it was almost nine.
The men who had arrived with questions left with answers.
The problem was dealt with.
The paperwork was signed.
The decisions were made.
I should have felt relieved.
Instead, I felt tired.
The kind of tired that settled deep in the bones.
I returned to my office and reached for the jacket I’d left over the chair.
I had almost put it on when I heard the clubhouse shift.
Not quiet.
The clubhouse was never quiet.
But different.
The sound reached me through the closed office door.
Music.
Laughter.
Glasses.
Voices.
Nothing unusual.
Then something else.
A familiar pause in the rhythm of the room.
I glanced toward the door.
I didn’t know why.
I opened it.
The music continued.
The conversations continued.
Nobody announced my arrival.
They didn’t need to.
Several members noticed me immediately.
A few straightened.
Some nodded.
I returned the gesture.
Then I walked.
I had no reason to look toward the bar.
I did anyway.
And stopped.
The woman from the intersection was sitting there.
For one second…
I didn’t recognize her.
Not because she looked different.
Because my mind refused to connect the two images.
The woman standing at the corner with a phone pressed to her ear.
The woman sitting alone at the bar with a glass of amber liquor in her hand.
They were the same person.
I knew it immediately.
The hair.
The face.
The eyes.
The same mouth that had pressed into a thin line while listening to whoever had been on the phone.
Only now…
She looked different.
The tension was still there.
But it had changed.
She looked tired.
Not physically.
Something deeper.
The kind of exhaustion sleep didn’t fix.
I slowed without meaning to.
She didn’t notice me.
Her attention was on the drink in front of her.
I watched her lift the glass.
Take a sip.
Put it down.
Then lift it again.
Too quickly.
She wasn’t drinking because she wanted to enjoy the whiskey.
She was drinking because she wanted the whiskey to do something for her.
I recognized that look.
I had seen it before.
Usually in men who had lost something and didn’t know what to do with the empty space afterward.
I kept walking.
At least…
I tried to.
My attention remained on her.
She had dressed well.
Nothing extravagant.
The kind of clothing a woman wore when she’d once cared about looking perfect and had eventually decided she no longer had the energy to maintain the effort.
There was something about that.
Something that pulled at my attention.
I didn’t like it.
I didn’t like that I was noticing.
I didn’t like that I wanted to know what had happened to her.
I especially didn’t like that I had already seen her twice in one day.
The city was large.
The odds of that were low.
The odds of me caring were lower.
I continued toward the back of the clubhouse.
Then I felt it.
Her eyes on me.
I stopped.
Not completely.
Just enough.
My instincts reacted before I consciously decided to.
I turned my head.
And found her looking at me.
There she was.
The woman from the street.
The stranger who had occupied too much of my mind for a person whose name I didn’t know.
The distance between us wasn’t particularly large.
But the clubhouse seemed to stretch around it.
She looked away almost immediately.
Then looked back.
I almost smiled.
Almost.
She was staring.
Not subtly.
Not successfully pretending she wasn’t.
I had been stared at before.
Usually by people who knew exactly who I was.
That was different.
She didn’t know me.
Not really.
And yet…
She looked at me as though something about me was familiar.
I wondered if she recognized me.
Then I remembered the mask.
No.
She couldn’t.
The mask covered enough of my face that even people who knew me well sometimes hesitated.
So why was she looking at me like that?
I held her gaze.
One second.
Two.
Her eyes widened slightly.
Then she looked away.
I continued walking.
I should have kept going.
Instead, I found myself wondering what she was thinking.
Whether she was still trying to place me.
Whether she had seen me somewhere before.
Whether she was simply curious.
I reached the hallway.
The clubhouse disappeared behind me as I walked toward the private section.
I could still feel her gaze on my back.
I didn’t turn around.
I didn’t need to.
I already knew.
For the rest of the evening…
I would think about her.
I knew that before I even reached the door.
And I hated that I knew it.
Because I had no idea who she was.
No idea why she was there.
No idea what had happened to her.
And yet…
Something about her had already lodged itself in my mind.
A stranger.
A woman with tired eyes and a glass of whiskey.
A woman who had nearly been hit by a car hours earlier.
A woman who had looked at me across a crowded room as though she had been searching for something she couldn’t name.
I opened the door to the private hallway.
Then paused.
I glanced back once.
She was still at the bar.
The bartender was saying something to her.
She smiled.
Barely.
But it was enough to change her entire face.
I looked away.
And walked on.
I had no idea that by the end of the night…
I would know her name.
I had no idea that by the end of the night…
I would be standing close enough to feel the tension in her body.
I had no idea that the woman I’d noticed for less than a minute at an intersection…
Would become the first woman in years I couldn’t simply forget.
At the time…
I only knew one thing.
I wanted to know why she looked like someone who had lost everything.
And why…
For the first time in a very long time…
I wanted to be the person who found out.
- Writer
