Page 5 of Clint & Ivy

I wrapped my hand under her jaw and lifted her chin. “I want to know who might show up and grab you.”

Ivy’s armor dropped immediately. Her eyes widened as she searched the road for trouble.

“Uncle Linus owes men money. They came to our house in Reno and tried to take me. Uncle Dwight and I ran. We had a plan. A bad one,” she explained, struggling with her words. “I don’t know what happens next. I only know the world from my TV, but the real one is chaotic and sad. How am I supposed to survive?”

Brushing my thumb across her soft cheek, I placed her words in context and filled in the blanks.

“Do you have a phone?” I asked. “Can Linus or those men track you with it?”

Ivy tugged her phone from her beige purse and examined it like the damn thing was a bomb ready to go off. I took it from her and had her open the screen. I checked to see if the phone was set to be tracked.

“It should be fine for now, but I think we should ditch it.”

Ivy’s face went pale. She seemed ready to faint.

“Who do you want to call?”

“No one,” she said, sounding like her throat had gone dry.

“Why do you need the phone? I’ll get you another one.”

Ivy tried to hide in her head. My fingers brushed across her lips, filling her with the power to answer me.

“My family photos,” Ivy explained, seeming shaky.

“We’ll have them moved over to a new phone. Then, you need to ditch this one. I don’t want to risk someone tracking you down.”

Ivy stared at my hand holding her phone. I imagined her fear of losing something important to her.

“Give me your bag,” I said without offering any leeway for her to disagree. “I’ll stick it in my bike’s storage, so it’ll be safe.”

Ivy obeyed me, but I could almost feel her rethinking her decision to take a ride with a strange man. She watched her phone disappear inside her purse before I stuck it inside my saddlebag.

“Why are you helping me?” Ivy asked.

“For the same reason you asked me for help instead of the clerk or the elderly couple a few aisles over from me.”

Ivy’s gaze hid nothing. She was trapped between dangerous men hunting her and a stranger offering her a risky escape route.

“Do you have anywhere you can go?” When Ivy shook her head, I asked, “And you have nothing to go back to, right?”

“Uncle Dwight was the only one who cared about me, and he’ll be dead soon.”

“Well, my hometown is minutes away,” I said and paused to watch two motorcycles ride past. “Those women are in my club. I run with a big group. If you don’t want to stay with me, I know plenty of people who will help you start over.”

Ivy’s lips turned downward, signaling she might cry. Her eyes remained dry, though.

“If I saw a woman like me running off with a strange man, I’d call her an idiot,” Ivy muttered before losing her fire. “But I still want to trust you. What’s the right answer?”

Her words added a piece to the Ivy puzzle. I felt a little closer to this woman already burrowing her way into my heart.

My gut didn’t warn me to stop. I grew up too safe, maybe. I hadn’t suffered any consequences for my big plays. In fact, good fortune often fell into my lap.

I got patched into the Little Memphis Motorcycle Club when I was eighteen. I rode with my dad and uncle for years, learning the way the city breathed and bled. When our president—a funny bastard named Joker—got busted up in a nasty wreck, I didn’t hesitate to make my move.

The Little Memphis club was always going to belong to his boy Tricky, who’d been groomed to run things. If I wanted to become president, I’d need to build a new club.

Jaded, harder men would have worried about the consequences, but I never hesitated. Ever since I was a boy, I had two goals. One was to wear a president’s patch. The other was to have my sister Elle ride next to me.

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