Page 26 of Walking Red Flag

Since I could no longer go past them to the trail entrance that was beyond the bathrooms, I turned and ran for the road.

I still had two hours of running to go, and I wouldn’t skip out on it now, no matter how awful Hazel had just made me feel.

I wouldn’t get the trail running in that I should have gotten, but running on the road would boost my morale and hopefully keep me away from Hazel and her new friend.

Another twenty minutes passed when the sound of a motorcycle penetrated the woman’s voice that I was listening to on my true crime podcast.

It was about a serial killer that murdered all his victims on a trail—ironic, I know, since I was running on said trails.

The podcast itself had me slightly jumpy because the killings had gone on all over the country, but the serial killer had finally been found only a few hours away in East Texas. So when a motorcycle pulled up beside me, my heart jumped into my throat.

My head whipped to the side, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the familiar brown eyes.

Jeez.

The man was in jeans, a black t-shirt, motorcycle boots, and his MC cut, but he had to be the sexiest man alive.

“Hey,” I called to him after I pulled out my headphone.

“I’ve been calling you for twenty minutes,” he said. “I was going to go to the store early today since I suddenly had some time free itself up but couldn’t get ahold of you. You have a key I can have?”

I winced. “I silenced my phone for my run.”

Okay, so I’d silenced my phone because I needed to get through this run, and if I hadn’t, I’d be thinking every random text I got might be Hazel.

I reached for my keys, ready to just hand it to him, only to realize that my keys were gone.

“Shit!” I groaned.

Then I remembered hearing a jingle in the bathroom twenty minutes ago when I’d been pulling my leggings up.

“What?” he asked.

“I think I dropped them in the bathroom back there.” I groaned again.

He frowned. “Where?”

I gestured to his bike. “Give me a ride back so we can look?”

He indicated for me to hop on, and I did, trying to stay away from him to keep my sweat off his body.

“Scoot in, darlin’,” he urged as he took his helmet off and handed it back to me.

The tears that met my eyes as I thought about how Asher had never offered me his helmet hit me hard.

But, likely, the tears were more because of everything that had happened lately—which included Hazel—and not just Asher’s treatment of me.

Once I had the helmet on, I scooted closer and wrapped my arms around his solid torso.

Man, the guy was ripped.

There wasn’t a soft spot on his body.

The drive to the bathrooms took a whole lot less time than I wanted it to, and when I got off, it was with my head down so I could hide the tears still in my eyes.

I took off the helmet and placed it on his seat, then rushed into the bathroom, thankful to find my keys laying exactly where I expected them to be.

“Oh, good.” I bent over and snatched them up. “They’re here.”

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