This was a lot to process.
The low rumble of a distant engine growing louder pulled me out of deep thought. Wreck pulled up a minute later.
“That’s enough family bonding. You know what I want, and you know what I’m prepared to offer you.” Patrick said, his demeanor sliding back into typical dismissiveness. After picking up the bits of the memory stick he threw the scarf onto a countertop near me. “Calm your emotions, put on a nice face and don’t disappoint me. He then made his way upstairs to his office, not wanting to be around when Wreck walked through the front doors.
I nodded slowly in response despite Patrick not being around to see it, then carefully put my scarf back on as if nothing ever happened. I wiped my eyes and took several deep breaths so as not to show Wreck just how crazy it had been in here. I was confident I could hide my emotions from Wreck, after all I had years and years of practice. The last thing I wanted was for him to worry.
Patrick was right. I knew what I had to do and as awful as it was, to be free, truly free, I was prepared to do it. I liked Wreck a lot more than I ever imagined I would, but compared to almost a decade of solitude and abuse, what did I really owe a man I’d just met?
Patrick would give me my life back and all it would cost me is my soul.
The bell behind the cashier counter rang a few minutes later as the door was pushed open. Wreck walked in with his hair down, riffled by the breeze and his rings glinting in the warm sunshine. He wore jeans, boots and his leather MC cut over a black t-shirt.
“Goddamn, this place is depressing as shit.” He pulled off his sunglasses, and looked around the room before letting his dark eyes fall on me. “What say we get the hell out of here?”
I tucked the phone Patrick gave me into my pocket and walked over to Wreck.
“Patrick told me he was letting you off your leash.” Wreck’s voice was deep, and smooth like caramel or whiskey. “So now that you’re free what do you want to do today?”
I took out the small pad I kept in my pocket and scribbled out a short note. A pang of guilt rang through me but I smiled through it and showed him what I wrote. “Whatever you want.”
13
Wreck
“Well, hell. That was better than it had any right to be,” I grunted, chewing and swallowing the last of my meat-soaked Kaiser roll. The spicy horseradish sauce made my nasal cavities crackle in a way I hadn’t felt since the last time we were all in Texas. “Pit beef sandwich, huh? I’ll have to let the guys know. What else is good around here?”
To say that this place was a hole in the wall was giving it more credit than it deserved. The building, if you could call it that, looked like it was once a large tool shed someone converted into a food stand. There were no signs aside from the words Hot Food painted on a piece of plywood on the ground leaning against the front wall. I had no idea what the name of the place was, but it didn’t matter. The Hot Food they served was fucking delicious!
Sarah held up a finger as she took a few big gulps of milk. Her eyes watered from the spicy meal, but she was able to blink most of the tears away before they ran down her face. After steadying herself with a few deep breaths she started scribbling down a bunch of local favorites.
I watched her write admiring the way her brown hair framed her light skin. She was a beautiful girl on the worst of days, but she had this glow about her whenever she let her guard down and focused on a task she enjoyed. Watching her draw was my favorite, but seeing her engrossed in writing out all the local hotspots was nice too. She’d scribble furiously then pause and scrunch up her face as the name or location of a place eluded her only to eventually remember and light up again and start writing.
Her hand slowed to a crawl as she eventually realized I was staring at her and looked up shyly. “What,” she flipped to the back of the pad and pointed to one of her already written and most used words.
“Nothing,” I lied staring at her, a cracked smile creasing half my face. Standing up from the barstool I stood over her letting my gaze linger, taking her in. How small she was, delicate, but so incredibly strong. I brushed my thumb across her lips and rubbed off some spicy sauce off the corner of her mouth that she missed. Sucking my thumb I caught that familiar heat that would now always remind me of her. She immediately wiped her mouth with a napkin. Sarah wilted, embarrassed, letting her chin drop shyly.
“C’mon. That got me in the mood for something sweet.” I caught her chin with my forefinger and cocked my head back to the bike with an easy smile that told her she had nothing to worry about while around me. Sarah bit away her smile, despite whatever dark cloud that always seemed to hover in her mind I could tell her spirits had been lifted even if only for a little while.
We stopped briefly at a famous bakery to pick up some German shortbread cookies then rode to the Baltimore inner harbor area to eat them. We watched the water taxis shuttle tourists around, the all-sail Civil War ship bob and sway and the colorful dragon-shaped paddle boats wander
