in his cheeks, and less terror in his eyes, but he still looked exhausted. “You look like mine.”
The words spilled off my tongue. I bit my lip, but didn’t retract them. Because it was true. I loved him in my clothes, in my bed, where I could protect him and pamper him and make him feel safe.
Heath flushed deeply but didn’t deny it. He took my hand in his and drew it to his lips, kissing the knuckles. “Thank you.”
“Nothing to thank me for,” I muttered.
“You take good care of me,” he said quietly. “Starting to wonder how I lived without it before.”
I tugged him close. “Me, too,” I said. “It feels… right. Taking care of you.”
“Yeah?” Heath hid his face in my chest.
“Yeah,” I said. “Get some sleep. When you wake up, I’ll order some delivery for a late dinner.”
It was easy then, to hold Heath as he drifted off. As I did so, I couldn’t help but think that I wanted to do this for a long, long time.
26
Heath
I stretched my arms overhead and leaned back in the desk chair. It was still early—barely seven in the morning the day after I’d gotten run off the road—and I had plenty of time to fix up the rest of Dante’s books, even though he’d tried to insist I should give it a rest today. But I wanted to do something normal, something grounding, and I wanted to be close to Dante.
He was out in the kitchen, baking away, and I was in his office with a steaming cup of coffee. A latte, actually. He’d made one on the café’s espresso machine, and then brought it wordlessly into the office and left it at my elbow with a kiss on the crown of my head.
The past thirty-six hours had been a fucking whirlwind. But despite the chaos, I felt shockingly… stable. Secure. Confident. Like I knew everything would be okay.
Just like yesterday, when he’d found me.
I wouldn’t quite say he saved me—I saved myself, laying the bike down to avoid the potentially fatal crash that Ryder and his lackeys wanted to inflict on me. But Dante had found me, and taken me back to his apartment, and soothed me when the reality of how close the call was had hit me just as badly as the road had.
And he hadn’t made me feel weak, or small, or any of that. He’d just taken care of me. Simple as that. His care had driven the fear and the anxiety from my mind. In his arms, in his bed, I knew I was safe.
He’d said it felt right. I’d wanted to say: I love you.
Or at least I thought I did. I’d never been in love, but this fluttering in my chest felt like what I thought it’d be like. And how secure I felt in his arms—what else could it be?
There was still a small worry niggling at the back of my mind that he’d get tired of teaching me, of being so patient and gentle and careful. That maybe one day he’d decide he wanted someone more experienced and exciting. But until then, I’d try to take every day as it came—try to take the risk of believing it could last. Because for as long as I had it, it would be worth it.
I took a long sip of my latte. It warmed me all the way down, not because of how perfectly it was made, but because Dante was the one who made it.
“Hey!” Dante yelled suddenly from the kitchen. “Get the fuck out of here before I call in the rest of the Crew!”
My stomach dropped, and I stood up so fast the desk chair nearly rattled to the floor. I rushed out into the kitchen and saw Dante in the front room, gesturing at the door. Outside Stella’s big glass front window, Ryder, Baxter, and Trip were tugging at the locked front door.
Trip saw me in the doorway of the open kitchen and shouldered Ryder.
Ryder looked up from where he was fighting with the door and sneered at me. “There’s that little bitch,” he yelled, his voice muffled but audible through the window. “Too bad he’s not roadkill.”
“That’s it,” Dante said, and stalked toward the door with dangerous precision. “I’m killing these guys.”
I hurried out of the kitchen and grabbed Dante by the arm before he could get to the door. “Don’t,” I said. “There are three of them!”
“So fucking what?” Dante hissed. “They’ve been harassing you