“It’s a nail drill, silly.” I took his hand to show him how gently I could press the tool to his nail to clean up his cuticles. “We do dry manicures here, which means no soaking in water or chemicals. It’s more precise.”
I laughed again at the face he made but continued to work on his ragged nail beds. There was motor grease under his nails and dirt ground into his skin.
“I don’t even know where you work,” I admitted softly because it was so strange to know he was almost a perfect stranger to me while everything in me yearned for him on an atomic level.
I felt I had known him all my life or, if not known, that I had been waiting for this man to arrive.
Not to save me, exactly, but to give me the hope I needed to endure my circumstances and find my way out of them.
“I’m a mechanic at Hephaestus Auto,” he offered easily. “The club owns the garage, and we put most’a the prospects to work there ’til we figure out what other skills they might have. Ransom’s provin’ to be real good with bodywork, and Carson’s got a mind for engineerin’, so we’re puttin’ him on the newer models that need diagnostic scannin’ and shit. Pigeon hates it,so Nova and Axe-Man are thinkin’a takin’ him on at Street Ink Tattoo to see if he’s any good at that.”
“What if he’s not?” I asked, curious about how the inner workings of The Fallen played out.
The Calgary chapter and now the White Raiders were different beasts entirely. What Rooster said went, so even if the brothers didn’t like their work or their chores for the club, they did them without fail.
Aaron shrugged. “Then he can do whatever the fuck he likes. We got some other companies and shit, too. King works at Hephaestus to fill in sometimes, but he and Curtains and Axe-Man mostly run the club financials and businesses. Buck’s got Edge Truckin’. There’s a shit ton Pige can do and if he doesn’t like any’a it, then he can get a job outside’a the club. Plenty’a brothers do.”
He peered at me for a second, probably taking in my look of disbelief. “It’s not slave labour, Blue. We only get the prospects doin’ work for the club ’cause they usually come to us with no money and no fuckin’ idea what they wanna be doin’ with their life other than ridin’.”
“What do you want to do?” I asked, hiding behind a sheaf of blue hair as I worked on his thumb. “With your life.”
He was quiet, but the silence held weight as if he was giving my question serious consideration. When he finally spoke, it was more muted than usual, somber in a way that etched the words into my bones.
“Used to want for nothin’ really. Felt like a miracle I had a family after losin’ my parents and then Elsa. A family that saw me and wanted me for exactly who I was. I got more brothers than most folks and so many women to love and be loved by, their kids to spoil rotten, it just seemed…I donno, selfish maybe? To dream’a more.”
He paused because I had, the nail drill discarded on the table, my fingers hovering over the nail polishes as I stared transfixed at the man before me.
“Then I met you, and it wasn’t like anythin’ I had before became less. It was that I realized how much more it could be with the right woman to share it all with.”
“Aaron,” I breathed. “I hate to sound like a broken record, but you don’t know me very well, and honestly, there are dozens of other women out there who would fall at your feet with ten times less baggage than me.”
He shrugged. “Don’t want any’a them. I wake up every mornin’ with the colour blue behind my closed libs and a punch to the gut when I open them to find you’re not sleepin’ beside me.”
My heart felt pulverized by his words and the hope they invoked. Who knew hope could be so brutal? Who knew it had fists and claws and teeth?
“I talk in my sleep and hog the covers,” I retorted because I couldn’t give him any of the mess in my chest. I didn’t know how to articulate it.
He grinned. “I run warm and sleep heavy, so that suits me just fine.”
Just for that, I picked a pretty pale blue from the options and brandished the wet brush like a weapon, a maniacal grin on my face as I bent to start with his pinky.
“Just a shade lighter than your hair. Love it.”
“Aren’t your brothers going to make fun of you?” I asked because in the Raiders, if a man showed up with painted nails, even done by his daughter, he’d probably be beaten as well as ridiculed. They subscribed to entirely outdated views on masculinity and machismo.
“Nah, they’ve done stupider shit to get noticed by their women.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “You know, King wasCressida’s student when they met. Left her poems pinned to apples every day on the side’a her desk ’fore she agreed to go out with him for real.”
“Oh my gosh, that’s so cute!”
“So what’s Blue’s version of an apple poem?” he asked, curling his hand around mine to still me, bringing me closer so his mouth was an inch from mine and his devastatingly handsome face was all I could see. “’Cause baby, I’m gonna find what you want and need and give it to ya until you agree to be mine.”
“You’d be taking on an entire club to get me,” I pointed out, a little breathless because his breath wassweetlike cinnamon candy, and I wanted so badly to see if it tasted the same.
“Hate to break it to you, Blue, but we were takin’ them on already. They’re comin’ for what’s ours, and even if you don’t acknowledge it, that includes you.”
“One night together doesn’t make me your possession.”
“’S not about me possessin’ you,” he argued. “Don’t you get that yet? It’s you who's got your name carved into my bones now, Blue. It’s you who's got possession over me. I’m just askin’ ya to give me some relief, and let me try to convince you I’m worth inkin’ onto yours.”
