Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 78329 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78329 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Some nights are harder than others. Tonight is one of them.
When I return to the living room, he’s asleep at last, breathing even. I sit there for a while, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest, grounding myself in the rhythm.
This is my life, I remind myself. Not dramatic rescues or motorcycles cutting through the dark.
This.
Responsibility. Care. Staying.
Later, in my bedroom, I kick off my shoes and collapse onto the bed, too tired to change. My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
For half a second, my heart jumps.
It’s just Marcy, checking in.
You okay?
I type back, Long day. I’m fine.
I stare at the screen longer than necessary after hitting send.
Miles never gave me his name that night, his real name. I only have his road name. This motorcycle man life is different than anything I’ve ever experienced, but my cousin Josie, she’s got herself a biker in North Carolina. Raff is good to her and her son.
Miles.
It fits him. I roll onto my side and stare at the window, at the faint glow of the porch light seeping through the curtains.
Lucas’s words echo in my head. Guys like him don’t stick around.
Maybe he’s right.
But some part of me—the stubborn, hopeful part I keep buried under routines and obligations—wonders if sticking around is the only thing that ever really costs anything. Maybe the life of uncertainty suits someone like me better. If I can’t get attached, I can’t get hurt.
I fall asleep thinking about the road. And the man who chose it. And how sometimes, even when someone leaves, they leave something behind that doesn’t know how to follow.
Sleep takes me the way it always does, sudden and heavy, like my body’s been waiting for permission to shut down.
I dream of roads. Long ones. Empty ones. Wind and darkness and the steady thrum of something powerful moving beneath me. I’m not alone in the dream, but I don’t turn to look at who’s there. I don’t have to.
Half in a dream, half coming to, the mattress shifts.
Not the way it does when you roll over or when the house settles. This is deliberate. Careful. Weight added slowly, testing, like whoever it is knows exactly how light to be.
My eyes flutter open.
For a second, panic spikes—sharp and instinctive—but it dies just as quickly when I register the familiar smell beside me. The heat. The scent of leather and night air. The quiet certainty of his presence.
“Miles,” I breathe.
He’s already halfway in the bed, boots gone, shirt gone, pants gone, down to boxers with movements economical, controlled. He freezes the second I say his name, muscles going still like he’s been caught doing something he hadn’t decided he’d own yet.
“You awake,” he says softly.
“I don’t know.” If I’m asleep and this is a dream, I don’t want to be awake. And if I’m awake and he’s going to leave then I want to be asleep.
A beat passes. Another. “If you want me gone—” he starts.
I reach for him. It’s instinct. Not thought. My hand closes around his wrist, skin warm under my fingers, pulse steady and real.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
The tension in him snaps, not violently, but decisively. Like a line pulled too tight finally giving way.
He exhales and shifts closer, careful even now, like he’s afraid of breaking something. Or being broken himself. The bed dips under his weight and suddenly the space feels smaller, warmer, charged in a way that makes my breath hitch.
“You okay?” he asks, low and intent.
I nod, then realize he’s watching my face too closely to miss uncertainty. “Yes,” I say again. “I want you here.”
That’s all it takes. He cups my face with one hand, rough palm warm against my cheek, thumb brushing just under my eye like he’s checking that I’m real. When he kisses me, it’s slow. Like he’s testing, and cherishing, nothing like the urgency I expect from a man who lives on roads and impulse.
I melt into it anyway. The kiss deepens, his mouth warm and sure, like he’s memorizing me by feel. I slide closer, fitting against him without thinking, my leg hooking over his thigh. He groans softly at that—barely a sound, but it goes straight through me.
“You’re tired,” he murmurs against my mouth. “Didn’t want to wake you.”
“I’m not tired anymore,” I whisper back.
He smiles then, just a little. Not cocky. Not sharp. Something softer that makes my chest ache.
We move together without hurry, without words, the night folding around us like it’s keeping secrets. His hands are everywhere and nowhere all at once—steady, confident, and still soft. He kisses me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he doesn’t keep contact.
It’s not frantic. It’s inevitable.
The world narrows to heat and breath and the sound of my name in his mouth. To the way he holds me like I matter, not as a conquest or a distraction, but as something chosen.