Page 121 of Sinful
She walks inside slowly, running her hand over a tool bench like it's something precious. "I could work here."
Honestly, I’d rather have her working at our shop opposed to someone else's. "You want to work here?"
"Maybe. If I'm staying. If we're doing this." She looks at me. "Are we doing this?"
"Yeah. We're doing this."
We walk out back where the property opens up into rangeland.
Open space stretching to the horizon.
"It's beautiful," Helle says quietly.
"Yeah. Been in Phantom’s family for many, many generations. They built this place from nothing." I lean against the fence, watching her take it all in. "Started with just the main house and the barn. Now it's—well, you can see what it is."
"And you? Do you live here?"
"When I'm not on the road. Got a room in the bunkhouse."
"Can I see it?"
I nod and take her.
My room is exactly what you'd expect from a Nomad who's never in one place long enough to accumulate shit.
Small. Sparse. Functional.
Bed with a plain gray comforter. Dresser with fourdrawers. Closet barely big enough for my clothes. A single photo on the dresser—the only personal item I own.
Helle picks it up carefully.
Two little girls, maybe seven and nine, grinning at the camera.
Emma and Claire. My sisters. Taken six months before the fire.
"They're beautiful," she says softly.
"Yeah. They were."
She sets the photo down gently, looks around the room again. "This is home?"
"This is where I sleep between rides. Home is—" I stop. Don't know how to finish that sentence. "I don't know what home is anymore."
She looks at me with those eyes that see too much. "Maybe we figure that out together."
We sit on the edge of my bed because there's nowhere else to sit.
"So," I say, trying for casual and failing completely. "You want to be my ol' lady, huh?"
"Is that okay?"
"It's more than okay. But Helle—you know what that means, right? In this world?"
"I know it means I'm yours, and you're mine."
"It means you're under my protection. Under the club's protection." I need her to understand this completely. "It means when I introduce you, you're my ol' lady first, everything else second. It means you're part of this club whether you're patched or not."
"I can live with that."
