Page 17 of Edge
“I’m quiet all the time.” I tipped my head. “You just make noise I like, so I forget to be.”
She blinked. The line hit—they always did when I stopped pretending to be charming and started telling the truth.
“Tell me what’s actually spinning in that pretty head,” I pressed, softer at the edges now. Not because I was changing my mind but because I didn’t need to scare her to get what I wanted. “You worried I’ll get bored? That the club’s going to decide you’re a distraction and pack you off to the other side of town? Scared I’m going to wake up and remember I don’t do relationships?”
Her gaze cut, because I’d plucked a few strings that hummed. She chewed her lower lip, that pink bow I’d ruined last night, then released it. “I…don’t know your rules yet.”
Fair. I’d never been good at sharing the manual.
“Rule one.” I smoothed my palm down the length of her shin, over the curve of her ankle, settling at the warm dip behind her knee. “Don’t guess for me. If I want you gone, I’ll carry you to your door myself and lock it from the outside.”
“That’s”—she swallowed—“graphic.”
“True.” My thumb traced circles that made the muscles in her thigh go soft. “Rule two—if something hits my mood, it’s club or business. It’s not you. If it ever is you, you’ll know because I’ll tell you. And you won’t hear it from anyone else first.”
Her shoulders eased a millimeter, the hitch in her breath smoothing out. I watched it like I watched a tach needle—precise increments, the curve into the redline.
“And rule three,” I went on, my voice lowering, heat threading back in because it never really left. “You don’t talk about overstaying when the only thing I want is more of you in my space.”
“You…do?”
I cut her a look that said I’d just caught her asking if water was wet. “Callie.”
She tucked her chin. “I don’t want to assume. I’ve never—” She stopped herself, but the rest of the sentence left fingerprints.I’ve never been kept.
I slid two fingers under her chin and angled her face back up. Blue eyes, wide open. Brave. My undoing.
“I don’t sell pieces of myself,” I explained, the same way I’d told the voice on the phone I didn’t sell tools. “I don’t rent them out. I don’t test-drive. If I build it, I keep it. If I take it, I protect it. If I say it’s mine, the whole world can burn around it, and it’ll still be standing when the fire’s out.”
Her throat moved. “You mean that.”
I didn’t bother to answer. I just held her there with my hand and let her see all the parts I usually kept for the mirrors. The nights my head wouldn’t shut up, obsession, control, a mean streak I used like a scalpel instead of a bat, and a softness I only deployed for my sister-in-law, Savannah, the club’s old ladies, and Kane—on the right day. Although Callie had created a softness in me that was all her own.
The movie threw a white flash across her skin. She blinked into it, then into me. “What did the caller want?”
“To buy something I don’t sell.” I eased back, gave her legs the space to shift across my lap again, this time guiding one under my arm, the other hooked over my thigh so I could get my hand on her hip. “Every few months, some outfit thinks money equals access. They try to get in the door sideways. They wave numbers like they’re magic. I shut them down.”
“Because you don’t…sell weapons.”
I hadn’t held any shit back from Callie as we’d gotten to know each other. Unless it was club business.
For the first time in my life, I’d worried about the reaction of someone other than my brother to my life choices. But Calliehad taken it all in stride. Especially when I’d explained my policy regarding my specialty.
“Because I build tools,” I confirmed, brushing her hair back, and loving the way it slid through my fingers. “And I only build them for blood. The club’s blood. My brother’s blood. And yours.”
Her eyes softened. The weight of that landed exactly where I wanted it to. “Is it dangerous to refuse?”
“Everything’s dangerous if you do it wrong.” I shrugged. “This one felt like a boy in his dad’s suit. If he puts on boots and learns to walk, I’ll let my brother know. Until then, it’s just noise.”
“Kane.” She tested the name the way you test a knife’s balance. She’d heard enough about him from me, and from the town, to understand the gravity without needing the details.
“Yeah.”
“Does he worry about you?”
“He worries about everything he can’t nail down, then grins like he’s not worried at all. I handle the things that require fewer witnesses.” I let my mouth tilt. “Division of labor.”
She smiled back, like she couldn’t help it. “You’re close.”
