The Biker and the Loner (Oil and Water #3)- S. Ann Cole Page 0,1

him or even interested in being with him. All I needed was for him to take it from me.

Deflating my hopes and nullifying all my efforts, he told me that he couldn’t and why; he was still in love with his ex, and as far as he was concerned, it wasn’t over between them.

But then he did something kind. He offered to be a friend if I needed one. He would claim me as his Steady—exclusive girlfriend—so the other bikers would back off. And so, we became friends. The first friend I had since Papà died and I was pulled out of school. I became so dependent on his friendship that, behind my back, people whispered that I was “obsessed with him.” I wasn’t. Grunt was just...my safe haven.

Until, one day, he dropped me.

He and his ex-girlfriend got back together, and I wasn’t allowed to be around him anymore. Playtime was up for me.

Just like that, I was a loner again. Grunt had been my friend, but I was never his friend. Only after he abandoned me did I truly understand that.

That was over three months ago.

For some strange reason, even though Grunt's dropped me, none of the other bikers have even attempted to close in. Not that I want them to, but it doesn’t make sense. I still get invited to parties at the compound, and I still get along well with most of them, but no one so much as touches me. Somehow, that feels even worse than when I used to be lasciviously leered at.

So, yeah, that’s how I’m at a bonfire send-off party at the Den of Heathen’s compound, gazing into the blazing fire and being dramatic as all get out with my thoughts.

I suck back a swig of beer and turn my gaze away from the roaring flames of the blaze, leaving my soul there to die. People are all around me, but I’m so alone.

I hate their parties and their lifestyle. The guns, the drugs, the debauchery. Still, I come when I’m invited. I go to their wild, depraved parties to escape. To escape my head, myself, and her.

The men here are big, rough, bearded, tattooed, and scary as hell. Now and again they’ll blast rounds of gunshots toward the stars, or a fistfight breaks out, broken noses and busted lips. Curse words and insults are showered like confetti.

Clinking beer bottles and bearded grins, barely clothed women with gyrating hips, the mingling scents of both cigarettes and marijuana, couples screwing against tall trees, a grab of a breast here, a hand under the skirt there…

And yet, as judgmental as I am toward it all, I still prefer to be here, among the Heathens, than at home.

I get out my phone and check the time. 1:16 AM. I should get up and go home. If Grunt were still around, he’d let me crash in his studio so I wouldn’t have to drive home inebriated, or ask his best bud, Scratch, to take me back. Alas, after he reconciled with his girlfriend, he moved in with her. Sometimes I resent him. And then my conscience scolds me for being selfish.

Instead of getting up to leave, I lean back in the old plastic chair and resume fire-gazing. Maybe the fire is my god, like the red witch from Game of Thrones. Maybe if I stare into it long enough, deep enough, it will reveal to me my destiny.

“Why do I need to look out for you?”

The deep, gruff, unmistakable voice jolts me from my reveries, and I press my lids together for a quick second and take in a deep, bolstering breath before I turn in his direction.

At some point, the man of the night had dropped his big, muscle-bound, Samoan body into the wicker chair next to me and I hadn’t noticed.

A bottle of beer dangles from his long fingers, half his face cast in darkness, half in the glow of the fire. He eyes me like he always does—with deep curiosity.

Scratch is, for lack of a better description, a panty-wetter. In a big, bad, tatted biker way. He’s hard and impenetrable, but radiant, like scratches on steel. Thick, black hair and eyebrows, a full soft beard, firm lips, and dark eyes. His sex appeal is undeniable, and his irresistibility makes him popular with the women.

When I first met him, all I wanted to do was kiss him, and he’d smirked at me like he knew it. Somewhere along the line, with each short, awkward interaction,