Page 22 of Gonzo's Grudge
My rage shifted, focused sharp as a blade.
Not today.
I slid off my bike, leaned against it like I had all the time in the world, and waited. My eyes tracked every move Collin made. The second he reached for her a second time, I pushed off and headed casually toward her.
She almost ran to me, her breath catching, and before she could ask, before she could explain, I grabbed her waist and pulled her flush against me.
“Follow my lead,” I whispered. And then I kissed her.
Not soft. Not careful. A kiss that burned, that took the air from both of us.
Not a claim. A shield. But the moment our mouths touched, something I hadn’t planned roared awake anyway.
Her lips parted under my touch, shock giving way to something deeper, something that left her trembling against me. My hand cradled the back of her head, my body shielding hers like I’d been doing it forever.
She tasted like mint and the last of a too-sweet coffee she’d probably nursed through class. Her breath hitched and then found mine, soft at first, then deeper, answering. She was shaking—adrenaline, fear, maybe both—and I steadied her by the small of the back, pulling her into the shelter of my chest so the whole damn quad could see there wouldn’t be a scene here. Not the kind that ends with tears on concrete.
Heat traveled through her like a fuse. I felt the exact second she stopped bracing and started choosing. Her free hand slid up the leather over my ribs and curled there, anchoring. The world around us thinned—the static of voices, the click of a camera phone somewhere—all of it faded behind the drum of her heartbeat, the hum of mine, the far-off idle of car or truck with a knocking that told me it needed some extra oil.
I deepened the kiss by degrees, giving her room to breathe, to decide. She chose. Met me. Opened. There was nothing complicated about it; no pretty speeches, no bullshit. Just two people finding the exact middle of a storm and standing upright for once.
I let it break clean.
Pulled back an inch. Another. Kept my hand against her cheekbone, thumb tracing the damp line where tears would have been earlier if she’d let them fall. Her lips were swollen. She blinked up at me like she’d just stepped out of the dark into a room with the light on.
Over her shoulder, Collin had stalled mid-step. Man had a whole future of bad choices mapped across his face and this one just got interrupted. Jaw clamped. Phone half-raised, like he’d thought about recording the approach for leverage until reality slapped it out of his hand. I stared straight through him until he flinched, until the part of him that still understood sheer male dominance and remembered his place. He dropped his gaze first. Good. Then he drifted to the edge of the moving crowd and kept going, pretending he’d meant to walk that direction all along.
IvaLeigh’s focus came back to me piece by piece. Breath shivered against my throat, then steadied. She realized where my hands were—one at her waist, one cradling her jaw—and didn’t move away. Not yet.
“You were reading him,” she said. Voice hushed. Sure.
“Yeah.” My thumb stroked once more along her cheek before I forced my hand to fall. “He was going to play nice until you were within arm’s reach. Then he was going to get brave. Which would have been stupid, but he didn’t know I was here.”
Her mouth parted. A tremor lifted, then set in her chest like a sigh she hadn’t given herself permission to let out until now. She glanced over my shoulder and caught the last of Collin ghosting by. She saw it. Understood. The knowledge tightened something new in her eyes—gratitude, but not the kind that makes people small. The kind that makes them stand taller because someone else stood up first.
“Gonzo,” she whispered, like my name was the first steady step on solid ground.
I leaned close enough that only she could hear me. “If I overstepped, tell me now. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. Not that kind of man.”
Her fingers were still hooked in my cut. They tightened. “You didn’t.”
“Good.” I let the word sit there, plain while leaving the future unwritten between us.
The people kept moving around us. Two girls side-eyed us with smiles they pretended were genuine. A professor pushed his glasses higher on his nose and pretended not to see anything at all. Wind lifted a corner of a flyer taped to a lamppost and snapped it back.
“You eat yet?” I asked, because a man who means to protect ought to start with simple things. Food. Shelter. Sleep.
She shook her head once, quick. The movement tugged a strand of hair from her clip and it stuck to her lip. Without thinking, I smoothed it away with my knuckles. She went still, not spooked, just aware.
I gave her an out, the best one I had. “Ride with me. Dinner. If you want.” I hooked my chin toward my bike. “No strings. Just air and food that’ll give you fuel for the evening and I’ll take you to get your car.”
Something softened in her shoulders. The fight-or-flight bled out slow. She looked at the bike like it was a door she could open and then looked back at me, weighing the danger of a man like me against the certainty of a boy like him.
“Okay,” she said. No hesitation this time.
I took her backpack without asking to be helpful and slung it across my own shoulder. It looked ridiculous on me and that made her smile, quick and unguarded, like I’d flashed a trick card at a rigged table.
I’d take a hundred miles of bad road for that smile.
