Faster (Stark Ink, #3) (13 page)

He was grinning, but his tone was a bit sharp, chastising. For a moment, she forgot why she was even here. She was pleased that he’d been waiting for her to call. It didn’t last long, though. 

“Did I see you earlier today?” he prodded. “Riding past the garage?”

She was tempted to lie. She seemed to be doing so much of it these days. “Um,” she replied, fishing for an easy answer, “yeah. I mean, I think so. Probably,” she concluded.

He clearly wasn’t happy with her answer. She felt stupid and guilty for sounding so fucking cagey.

“Who were you with?”

She pressed her lips together, not wanting to give too much away, not wanting to have this conversation at all. “No one. Just a friend.”

“Friend, huh? With a twenty-thousand-dollar bike?”

She balked and looked up at him. “It wasn’t
that
much. Used. He got it used.”

Emilio frowned at her. “
He
got it used.”

She blushed and looked away. He hadn’t meant it like that, but she couldn’t stop herself from hearing it like that. “It’s nothing,” she told him. “It’s not really your business.”

A heavy silence hung between them until she finally looked back.

“Yeah, okay,” he conceded. “I guess it’s not my business.”

Her stomach and her heart were clashing again. She wanted it to be his business.

“I’m done,” he suddenly announced. And though she shouldn’t have, she took it like a devastating body blow.

“I—” she tried to say, but it came out like a puff of air— formless, pointless.

“So, let me clock out. You eat yet? We can go to Maria’s. They serve minors for meals till around seven. Long as you don’t sit at the bar.”

She flapped her lips at him, feeling like a fish caught on a line.

He seemed oblivious. The grin never wavered. He reached up and chucked her under the chin, closing her mouth for her. “We can talk about us,” he told her as he leaned in. His lips hovered near her own. “And what
is
my business.”

He released her and walked away, toward the garage.

Ava felt a little like she’d just survived a tornado. Emilio was a force, confident and cocky, and somehow set on her. She swallowed hard as she watched him. If she left now, it would do no good. Somehow she understood this completely. He’d call her. He’d track her down. He’d demand an explanation.

She sighed and glanced at her bike, looking too much like it belonged next to his. She’d go with him, she decided. And end it before it even started. It would suck and she’d hate it, but it was the right thing to do. The
adult
thing to do.

––––––––

T
he bar was busy but not slammed. When Daisy saw them together, the wattage of her smile could have lit the whole place. Ava’s eyes darted back and forth, searching the place for any Buzzards who might be hanging around. Slowly, her heartbeat started to slow as she realized they were safe.

Daisy came out from behind the counter and headed toward them. “Hey!” the blonde squealed as she crossed to them. She beamed at Emilio and then smacked Ava on the arm. “He said you snuck in the other night!”

Ava’s eyes darted toward the bar, where the older blonde, the no-nonsense one, was wiping down the counter. If she heard, she didn’t look up.

“I didn’t have anything to drink!” Ava whispered back fiercely. “And don’t tell Adam! He’ll kick my ass.”

Daisy snorted. “Yeah, no problem. I was young and dumb once, too.” She gave Ava a wink and sent them to a table in the corner, as out of the way as possible.

“So, your brothers,” Emilio said, after they’d ordered. “I mean, the other two, are they anything like Jonah?”

Ava shook her head. “Jonah’s... really intense.”

He laughed. “That’s a good word for it. Damn. He is
intense
, all right.”

“Adam and Dalton are a little more laid back.” She paused to consider it more. “But not by much. Older brothers are like that, though, I guess.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Trust me. They are. I can relate, now that I have five of them. It’s not really any easier just ‘cause I’m a guy. There’re a lot of rules.”

“Rules?”

“A way to live,” he clarified, “live your life. Like a code. They all live by it. If you want to be close to them, be part of the family, you live it, too.”

Ava could relate to this. The Starks had a code. It wasn’t always black and white, not always articulated, but it was always there, guiding them. It was a lot to live up to, she supposed. But she’d never really minded. It was nice to know that Emilio understood it, though.

She shifted in her seat a little. She’d come here to say goodbye, to tell him things just weren’t going to work out. But cutting him off while he was talking about his family seemed rude. Plus, she wanted to know. Or she would have, if things were different.

She looked around again, saw no one she recognized other than Daisy. What could it hurt to sit with him just a little while longer?

“I’m lucky to have them,” he told her. “It’s always been just me and my mom. My old man took off before I was born,” he confessed as he toyed with the napkin Daisy had brought. “The guys at the garage took me in when I was just a scrawny kid, digging for dirt-bike parts at the dump. I owe them everything. Sometimes I feel like I owe them my life.”

Ava suddenly reached out and put her hand on his, surprising both of them. “I know what that’s like,” she whispered so no one else could hear. This felt like a thing that was just
theirs,
a thing only
they
shared. The lunch patrons blurred around her, fading to just background noise.

“I was adopted,” she told him. “My parents, my birth parents, just ditched me when I was a baby.”

Emilio squeezed her hand reassuringly.

Ava blinked, but she didn’t cry, even though, shockingly, she felt like it. She was used to this story, knew it by heart, had lived it every day of her life. Sometimes it felt just like that, just a story she’d heard. Other days it felt like a punch in the gut.

But no one had ever held her hand like this, looked at her like this, when she told her story before. She could never talk to Jonah, who’d been adopted as well. However shitty it was to have been abandoned by your folks just for simply existing, what Jonah had gone through was worse, much worse.

Ava had always felt like trying to talk to Jonah would somehow make it seem like she was putting her pain on par with his. And that wasn’t right or fair to do to him.

Adam and Dalton couldn’t relate. They were Starks and always had been. Someone had always loved them.

So she held it all in, all day, every day. Some days she felt nothing at all. Other days she cried. These days she rode her bike— hard— pushing the needle up higher and higher, trying to outrun it. 

But she never talked about it. With anyone. Ever.

“The Starks took me in,” she told Emilio. “They’re all I’ve ever known.”

“And they told you?”

She nodded. “They were honest about it. Right from the beginning. Mom said they chose me, and as far as she was concerned, that was the only thing that mattered.”

Ava
did
swipe at a tear. But only one. That was more about Mom than any phantom birth mother she couldn’t remember.

“She died,” Ava muttered. “Last year.”

“Ava, I’m sorry.”

He meant it, too. So many people had given their condolences. Wrinkled women with long lines of gray hair had come to the house with casseroles and cheap cards they’d bought at the grocery store.
Thinking of You.
Ava tried, but didn’t remember Mom as having sagging skin and streaked hair.

She must have looked that way, Ava figured. Mom had been older than any mother of any kid in Ava’s class growing up. But Ava only saw her in her mind’s eye as barely middle-aged. Wiry, with strong hands from working in her garden so often. She’d worn mom jeans, and Ava had railed against them, saying they made her look too old.

It was such a stupid thing to have cared about.

Mom was old. Mom had
gotten
old, right under Ava’s nose while she was too busy sneaking Sienna’s mom’s beers and eyeliner. Trying them both, and infinitely preferring one over the other.

Mom had gotten sick and died— in the space of an instant, it seemed—before Ava had even had time to catch up.

She felt the sting of more tears and let go of his hand. Pressing her hands into the padded vinyl, she pushed herself out of the booth.

Emilio reached for her but missed.

“Ava.”

“Just going to the bathroom,” she muttered, stumbling away from him. “Be right back.”

She breathed a sigh of relief at finding the tiny room empty. The sink felt solid and cool under her palms as she steadied herself. The mirror was small, but clean. Ava was pleased that she only looked a bit flushed. She could have been flirting, or dancing, or both. Anything but crying.

No one had to know.

Except Emilio.

Oddly, she found that she didn’t mind. Being a Stark could be exhausting sometimes. Stoicism was a mask that was heavier than her helmet. She was surprisingly grateful to be able to take it off.

She washed her hands and patted her face with a paper towel. Her eyeliner was still perfect. No one saw her as a street racer, an adopted kid,
a drug runner
. Ava made herself look, though.

She wasn’t a Stark anymore. She was something else entirely.

Taking one long, last deep breath, she turned away from her reflection.

The smell of cheese fries and beer hit her as she stepped back into the hallway. She only made it one step before Emilio appeared in front of her, looking concerned.

“I’m fine,” she said, waving him— and the entire conversation— away.

“You sure?”

For a second she was tempted, once again, to tell him more than she should. To tell him about Clint and the Buzzards and the drug run. But she clamped down on her inner lip to keep from giving in to the desire.

If Adam and Dalton would go to the police, Emilio might, too. Or, hell, he worked with a group of Army Rangers. They might
not
go to the police. They might start a war, right here in Rapid City. No one needed that.

She swallowed hard, tamping down the worst possibility. That she would tell him, and he’d be so disgusted with her that he’d just walk away. She didn’t think she could handle that. It was better to just go on pretending to be this person.

But, fuck, she
was
this person.
This
was who she
was,
who she wanted to be anyway. She wanted Emilio, wanted to be with him. This was real. Or it could have been, if Clint hadn’t come back into her life.

Ava felt like two people now: the Stark, and That Other Girl, the one so bad, even at birth, that they threw her away— Ashley’s replacement who’d never quite measured up.

She took his hand in hers, felt the familiar
zap
, or maybe she just imagined it. Whatever. Even if it wasn’t real. It was good enough. She pulled him close, tight against her. Pressed against the wall, with his weight on her, she didn’t feel trapped, she felt secure— safe.

“Kiss me again,” she demanded.

He grinned at her. “Yes, ma’am.”

Ava lost herself in him, forgot everything but his lips, his hands, his thighs pressed against hers. Her nose stung pleasantly from the mix of soap, aftershave, engine oil, and sweat.

Emilio smelled like a
man
,
a real man
, the only man she’d ever had. Except she hadn’t had him. Not quite yet. Her stomach twisted as she imagined it now. Somehow her fingers found their way to his belt loops. She yanked him closer, cock against her belly. She breathed hard into his mouth.

“Rule number ninety-nine,” he murmured softly. “Never do your woman in the bathroom.”

She felt another zap of excitement, but managed to keep her outward cool. She smirked at him. “I don’t know if I’m more irritated that you think I
would
do it in a bathroom, or that you think I’m your woman.”

He grinned and shrugged. His arms slid around her waist and he drew her to him.

Ava fought off a groan at being so close to him.

“You will be,” he told her cockily.

She smiled despite herself. If things hadn’t gone to shit, she could see herself as Emilio’s, his dirty hands on her every day after work, his dark eyes looking at her and somehow seeing every part of her.

It would have been nice.

She felt herself deflating at her own dark turn of mind, but she fought it off. Right here, this second, she didn’t have to be anything other than a girl who loved motorcycles, wrapped in the arms of a boy who loved them, too.

She couldn’t be his woman. But he could be her man, for a little while longer.

He leaned in for a kiss and she opened herself to him, melted into him. His tongue, now warm and familiar, teased hers gently. A little too gently, Ava thought, as the warmth spread from her lips to her chest and down through her belly. Heat pooled between her thighs and she closed her eyes, wishing they were alone.

In her pocket, her phone went off. She didn’t need to look at the screen to recognize the ringtone. She pulled back from Emilio, who seemed as reluctant to break their kiss as she was.

His eyes narrowed at her. “Don’t answer it,” he demanded.

Ava could tell by the look on his face that he thought it was another guy. She shook her head. “I don’t have to.”

He opened his mouth. Ava was half-tempted to dive back in there and never, ever leave. “I’m—”

But his own phone started vibrating. Here in the hallway, away from the jukebox, even Ava could hear it. He frowned for a second, as though he was irritated at the interruption.

Ava grinned up at him. She could guess what his screen would say.

He reached for his pocket but she grabbed his hand. She pulled it to her, away from his phone, and slid it over her own belly, back around her waist. He seemed more than willing to forget everything but her.

She was pressed to the wall again with his hard, lean body against hers. Instead of going for his mouth, she nipped at his neck.