Page 9 of Filthy Love

“It was time to go to the mountain. And the mountain looked good in biker boots.” - Gia

I can do this. He might not even be in there.She coached climbing out of her car, she looked across at her father’s favorite hangout. The motorcycle club was a big, gray sprawling building on one level on the outer limits of Austin Texas. If she looked to the left, she’d see inside the auto repair shop that was four cars deep. Across the courtyard were offices and further still was extensive Texas fields. It was out of the way of everything. Not convenient to meet her dad for lunch, but when she’d made the offer, it was with ulterior motives.

He might not even be inside.

Here she was, highly skilled in her field of psychiatry and she felt as though she was ready to have a fix of her drug of choice.

Gia’s belly was rolling in the same way it did that time she skied in Austria and she faced the highest mountain. Daunting but ultimately one of the greatest experience of her life.

She could do this.

She could walk in there in hopes of seeing Hawk.

She just had to throw caution to the wind and push herself down the mountain.

Strange really. For a woman who’d attended college a whole two years early and spoken in keynote psychiatry seminars just this past summer for some of her peers, those nervous times were nothing in comparison to how she felt taking step after step towards the entryway.

Her heart thumped loudly.

She swallowed repeatedly.

Hell, she’d lived her whole adult life crushing on this man. He’d rejected her in varying ways, even when he didn’t know it and she’d survived. This was nothing, she coached herself. Lifting her purse onto her shoulder, she clutched it like she thought she was about to be strip searched at the airport.

“Hey, look who it is!” She heard in a smoke-rasp boom the moment she was inside. It was months, maybe even a year since she was last at her dad’s MC.

Did she like the self-contained world these men and women made for themselves?

Not really. It was like a world within the real world, she couldn’t fully understand their society mind-set and she’d always known they practiced more towards the illegal way of life.

Her uncle Rex was a great example of that.

If anything, it intimidated her.

The same life her brother embraced, thrived in, scared her.

And she was in love with one of them.

Fucking ironic.

She smiled and waved to Jace, he greeted her in a back-slapping hug that could have ruptured a lung. “Hey, Jace. How are you doing? How’s Josie and your boys?”

“You’re looking real pretty, darlin’ I was just telling your old man here you need to stop by more often. My brood are doing good. Cam got accepted into Stanford for environmental science. Can you believe that shit?” He said with pride brimming out of him.

Gia smiled and patted his arm. “That’s amazing, it’s a great college.”

“Yeah. The boy will turn out alright, I reckon.” His other son was in prison for armed robbery.

Gia pressed a kiss on her dad’s cheek. “Hey, dad. Sorry, I’m late. I hit traffic on the way here.” While the two friends ended their conversation, she was scanning her gaze.

Searching him out.

Her heart tripled in beats. Palms sweated.

“Ready?” Her dad asked, and she tried not to smile with disappointment at not initially seeing Hawk. “We can hit up that Mexican place you like.”

“Sure, dad.”

And then the crowd of guys in the direction of the bar area parted.

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