One Night With The Biker

Chapter 19

Biker’s POV

I woke up alone.

For several seconds, I didn’t move.

Sleep still clung to the edges of my mind, making the room feel unfamiliar.

Then I remembered.

The office.

The desk.

Her.

My eyes opened fully.

The space beside me was empty.

I stared at it.

The sheet was slightly rumpled where she had slept, but there was no warmth left in the mattress.

She was gone.

I sat up slowly.

I had no idea when she’d left.

I had no idea how long I’d been asleep.

The last thing I remembered was holding her against my chest while she drifted off beside me.

I remembered the weight of her head against my shoulder.

The softness of her breathing.

The faint scent of her shampoo.

I remembered thinking that I should probably wake her before I fell asleep myself.

I hadn’t.

Apparently, exhaustion had won.

I glanced around the room.

Her clothes were gone.

The oversized shirt she had borrowed was gone too.

For some reason, I found myself looking toward the door.

As though she might suddenly walk back through it.

She didn’t.

I reached for my phone.

There were several missed calls and messages waiting for me.

Mason.

Business associates.

People who had apparently decided that the world would stop spinning if I didn’t answer them immediately.

I ignored all of them.

Instead, I stared at the empty space beside me.

I didn’t know why it bothered me.

She had never promised to stay.

We had never exchanged numbers.

She had never told me she would be there when I woke up.

She was a stranger.

A woman I had met only hours earlier.

A woman whose face I still hadn’t really seen clearly.

And yet…

I had expected her to be there.

That realization irritated me more than it should have.

I got out to get dressed.

The clubhouse was quieter when I stepped outside the room.

Most of the members had either gone home or found somewhere to sleep.

A few were still scattered around the building.

Mason was sitting at the bar with a cup of coffee in front of him.

He looked up the moment he saw me.

His eyes moved over my face.

Then toward the hallway behind me.

Then back to me.

I ignored him.

He didn’t.

He waited until I reached the bar before speaking.

“Where is she?”

I poured myself a cup of coffee.

“Who?”

Mason stared at me.

I took a sip.

He continued staring.

I looked at him.

“What?”

“The woman.”

I said nothing.

“The one you disappeared with.”

I looked down at the coffee in my hand.

“She left.”

Mason blinked.

“You let her leave?”

My eyes lifted slowly.

He immediately raised both hands.

“Never mind.”

I walked away before he could say anything else.

I told myself I wasn’t looking for her.

I wasn’t.

I simply noticed the empty barstool.

The spot where she had sat the night before.

The faint mark on the wooden desk where some of the papers had been pushed aside.

The glass she had left behind.

The ridiculous whiskey she had hated but continued drinking anyway.

I remembered the way she had laughed.

The way she had asked questions.

The way she had looked at me when I told her she deserved better than someone who made her feel replaceable.

I remembered her voice when she said her name.

Summer.

I had heard it only a few times.

It stayed with me anyway.

By the time I left the clubhouse, I had convinced myself I would forget her.

That was what happened.

People came and went.

Some stayed for a night.

Some stayed longer.

Most eventually became memories.

I had no reason to think she would be different.

I was wrong.

I thought about her on the ride home.

I thought about her when I showered.

I thought about her while sitting in a meeting later that morning.

I thought about her when Mason asked me the same question three times and I realized I hadn’t heard a single word he’d said.

I thought about the way she had looked at me without seeing my face.

That was the part I couldn’t explain.

She hadn’t known who I was.

She hadn’t known what I owned.

She hadn’t known what I was worth.

She hadn’t known anything about me.

And somehow…

She had still looked at me as though I was worth seeing.

I had spent years surrounded by people who knew exactly who I was before I ever opened my mouth.

They knew my name.

My company.

My reputation.

My money.

My power.

Summer had known none of it.

She had only known the man sitting beside her.

The man who had listened to her talk.

The man who had made her laugh.

The man she had chosen to kiss.

I didn’t know why that mattered.

But it did.

A week passed.

Then another.

I stopped expecting to see her.

That was the sensible thing.

The city was too large.

The world was too crowded.

The chances of running into one particular woman again were almost nonexistent.

I accepted that.

Or at least, I told myself I had.

The opportunity to test that theory came sooner than I expected.

Days after I had decided that she was nothing more than a memory, I received a call from Mason.

I was in my office at the clubhouse, halfway through reviewing a stack of documents I had already read twice, when my phone vibrated against the desk.

I glanced at the screen.

Mason.

I answered.

He didn’t waste time with a greeting.

There was a problem.

Not a small one.

Not something that could be handled by a phone call or delegated to someone else.

A situation had developed overseas, and if it wasn’t dealt with quickly, it would become significantly more expensive and significantly more complicated.

The details were explained.

The people involved were named.

The consequences were outlined.

I listened without interrupting.

By the time the call ended, the decision had already been made.

I was going.

The trip would take approximately a month.

Maybe less.

Maybe more.

It depended on how quickly the problem could be resolved.

I stared at the phone in my hand for a moment after the call ended.

Then I leaned back in my chair.

A month.

Four weeks away from Los Angeles.

Four weeks away from the clubhouse.

Four weeks away from the city.

Four weeks without the possibility of accidentally seeing the woman I had spent the last two weeks pretending I wasn’t thinking about.

It was perfect.

That was what I told myself.

Distance would help.

Work would help more.

I had always been good at focusing on what needed to be done.

Give me a problem and I would solve it.

Give me a crisis and I would dismantle it piece by piece.

Give me a month in another country with meetings, negotiations, long hours, and enough complications to keep me occupied from morning until night…

I would forget about her.

Simple.

Logical.

I almost believed it.

The following morning, I left.

There was no dramatic goodbye.

No one at the clubhouse knew enough about the situation to make one necessary.

Mason complained about the timing.

I ignored him.

My bags were packed within an hour.

My private jet was ready before the afternoon.

By the time I was in the air, Los Angeles had disappeared beneath the clouds.

I sat in the cabin with a laptop open in front of me, documents spread across the table, and a phone that refused to stop ringing.

The work began before we even landed.

That was exactly what I wanted.

For the first few days, it worked.

The problem required my full attention.

There were meetings that lasted for hours.

Negotiations that stretched deep into the night.

People who lied badly and people who lied well.

Contracts that needed to be rewritten.

Decisions that could not be postponed.

Every day was filled from the moment I woke up until the moment exhaustion finally forced me to sleep.

I barely had time to think.

That was the point.

Whenever she entered my mind, something else demanded my attention.

A phone call.

A meeting.

A document.

A problem.

I pushed the thought away.

Then I went back to work.

It should have been enough.

Except sometimes, exhaustion made it worse.

On the fourth night, I returned to my hotel room sometime after two in the morning.

I had spent nearly sixteen hours in meetings.

My shoulders ached.

My head hurt.

I wanted nothing more than to sleep.

I removed my jacket and dropped it over the back of a chair before walking toward the bathroom.

Then I stopped.

There was a glass sitting on the small table beside the window.

Whiskey.

I had ordered it without thinking.

I stared at it.

And immediately remembered her.

The way she had hated the drink.

The way she had continued drinking it anyway.

The expression she had made after every sip.

The way she had insisted she was fine even when it was obvious she wasn’t.

I looked away.

It was ridiculous.

I was thousands of miles away.

There were hundreds of people in the building.

Millions of people in the city.

And somehow, one woman I had spent a single night with had managed to occupy a space in my mind that was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

I picked up the glass.

Took one sip.

Then set it back down.

I didn’t drink the rest.

The next week was worse.

Not because the situation became more complicated.

Because it began to feel routine.

And routine left space for thoughts.

I would wake up and remember that she had already been gone when I opened my eyes.

I would wonder how long she had stayed after I fell asleep.

Whether she had looked back before leaving.

Whether she had regretted the night.

Whether she had thought about me at all.

Then I would remind myself that I didn’t even know her.

I knew she asked too many questions.

I knew she smiled when she was trying not to.

I knew she hated whiskey.

I knew the sound of her laugh.

I knew the way she had looked at me when she told me she wanted me to kiss her.

I knew far too much about a woman I barely knew.

And somehow, not enough.

I tried to convince myself that the distance was working.

After all, I wasn’t going back to the clubhouse every night hoping she might somehow appear.

I wasn’t asking anyone about her.

I wasn’t searching for her.

I wasn’t doing anything.

That had to count for something.

The trip stretched from one week into two.

Then three.

The situation that had been expected to take a month became more complicated than anyone had anticipated.

The work expanded.

More people became involved.

More decisions required my presence.

I remained.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, I realized something that irritated me.

I had not forgotten her.

Not even close.

I thought about her while sitting in boardrooms.

I thought about her while flying between cities.

I thought about her during long drives through unfamiliar streets.

I thought about her whenever I heard a woman laugh in a way that sounded even remotely similar to hers.

I thought about her whenever someone asked too many questions.

I thought about her whenever I saw whiskey.

I thought about her when I woke up alone.

Especially then.

Because the first thing I remembered every morning was that she had once been there.

And the first thing I remembered every night was that she was no longer there.

It was becoming absurd.

I had met women before.

I had slept with women before.

I had forgotten them.

Some of them before they even left the room.

She was different.

I still didn’t know why.

Maybe it was because I had met her at the exact moment she was falling apart.

Maybe it was because she had looked at me without knowing who I was.

We had simply been two strangers in a quiet room.

And then she had left.

Without a number.

Without a promise.

Without giving me any way to find her.

Perhaps that was why I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

There was no ending.

No proper goodbye.

No explanation.

Just an empty space beside me when I woke up.

I told myself that was all it was.

An unfinished moment.

Nothing more.

By the fourth week, the situation was finally nearing its end.

The final negotiations had been completed.

The necessary agreements had been signed.

The problem that had brought me halfway across the world was finally being resolved.

I should have felt relieved.

Instead, I found myself staring out of a hotel window at a city I had barely seen and thinking about Los Angeles.

About the clubhouse.

About the woman who had walked through its doors carrying a broken heart and left before I could even learn enough about her to find her again.

I would be going home soon.

The thought should have made me think about work.

The clubhouse.

The people waiting for me.

Instead, one question entered my mind.

What if I saw her again?

I dismissed it immediately.

The chances were almost impossible.

Los Angeles was enormous.

She had no reason to return to the clubhouse.

I had no idea where she lived.

I didn’t know where she worked.

I didn’t know anything about her life.

There was no reason our paths would cross again.

And yet…

For the first time since leaving Los Angeles, I found myself looking forward to going home.

Not because I expected to see her.

I knew better than that.

But because perhaps, once I returned to my normal life, the memory of her would finally fade.

The trip had failed to clear my head.

But maybe home would.

Maybe returning to the clubhouse would remind me that one night was only one night.

Maybe I would walk through those doors, sit at the same bar, look at the same empty stool, and finally stop wondering about the woman who had occupied it.

That was what I told myself as I boarded the jet home.

I believed it.

At least, I did until I landed in Los Angeles.

And found out that my return to the city was about to put me directly in the path of the woman I had spent an entire month trying to forget.