Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(61)

Other than a few unsuccessful attempts at dating, she hadn’t thought often about it ever being anything else.

Now, Rad was with her whenever they both had free time, and Willa’s time on her own felt different—both more lonely and more precious. She missed him, but she also stretched her wings a little, remembering what it was like not to have to think about anyone but herself. No negotiations, no compromises.

However, she felt less safe when he wasn’t with her—less safe than she had before she’d known him. As if having someone to lean on had weakened her.

She didn’t like that.

Whenever he left town, he put one of the prospects in charge of checking on her a few times a day—Wally or Slick would call the hospital during her shifts and knock on her door once or twice when she was home. Willa wasn’t sure if that made her feel safer or weaker or both.

She’d told Rad she didn’t want people following her around all day, but he’d assured her that it was standard procedure to check on old ladies while their men were away.

That was what she was now: Rad’s old lady. He wanted her to ‘keep his flame’—get a tattoo that marked her as his. He’d brought that up the night they’d first shared ‘I love yous,’ while they were sitting naked on the floor eating pizza.

His ‘flame,’ he’d explained, was a tattoo of a heart on fire, with his name over it. All the old ladies had one like it, apparently, though they didn’t all look exactly the same.

Willa had always thought it was straight stupid to ink someone else’s name on your skin, unless that name was ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad’—or your kid’s. Or your pet’s. But she could see plainly how important it was to him.

She’d told him she needed to live with loving each other for a while first, before she’d be ready for a tattoo. He’d pushed the point for a bit and then relented. Giving in had seemed almost literally painful for him, but he’d done it.

For the past few days, though, a little pressure was leaking out around the edges of his restraint, and he’d kiss her shoulder, or her chest, or her arm, and say something about how good his flame would look right there.

She wanted to get the tattoo, and not just to make him happy. She wanted the commitment that it meant. But it was too soon—just a few days shy of two months. Her brain needed to make the call, not her heart or any other part of her.

Rad was on a big run now, planning to be out of town for at least three days. The last two coincided with her days off, and as she finished an unremarkable shift on the first afternoon, Willa looked forward to a quiet evening, and then two more days of being able to read and garden and do whatever she wanted—and not feel any pressure about things that Rad wanted.

In the parking lot, on her way to her bike, however, the hairs on the back of her neck stiffened, and she turned around, sure that someone had been staring at her. Her first thought was that it would be a prospect, but no one was behind her, and neither Wally nor Slick skulked.

It was shift change, and it was a warm afternoon at the end of May, so there were lots of people around, walking to or from their own vehicles. A couple of doctors in green scrubs and white coats stood on the sidewalk, chatting. A man carrying several pink floral arrangements wended his way between parked cars. She recognized him from her ward. He must have parked in the staff lot to pick up his wife and new daughter.

No one unusual, no one paying her any mind. But she still felt that sense of being watched.

Her impulse was to chalk it up to paranoia, to that growing sense that having Rad in her life was weakening her ability to keep herself safe. She made it all the way to her bike thinking she needed to get a grip on herself.

But the prickling skin on the back of her neck wouldn’t calm down.

There was a long row of tall hedges between the staff lot and the street that led to the hospital campus exit. An image flashed in her mind, a few frames from a movie: Halloween. The early scene when Laurie was walking home from school with Annie, and Michael Myers stepped out from behind a hedge. Cue that scary chord in the soundtrack, the one everybody in the world knew.

Great. Now she was putting herself in a slasher movie. Paranoid indeed.

But Willa had been attacked. Someone had raped her and tried to kill her. Twice. It wasn’t paranoia. It was a lesson learned.

And she was a good student.

She walked to the end of the hedge and looked around it.

A line of cars waiting at the light to exit the campus. A minivan turning in from the street.

Across the street, directly opposite her, a man walking away, into the public lot. Longish, bushy dark hair. Wearing a denim jacket and black jeans. The only thing unusual about him was his position—it was hard to say where he’d come from, since he was walking parallel with the hospital, from a side edge of the parking lot.

Unless he’d come from where Willa now stood, at the end of this row of hedges.

The man walked without turning or looking around at all. He wasn’t hurrying. She squinted, trying to decide if that was Jesse, finding her at last. His hair was the right color, but Jesse always kept his much shorter. He was the right height, maybe, though his shoulders slumped, and Jesse always stood ramrod straight. This man was thicker than Jesse, and had a soft look about him, from what she could see from his diminishing back. Jesse was lean and fit.

He had been all those things when Willa had last seen him. Years ago.