by Ward, Kira
She wasn’t sure.
She missed him. It was like a physical absence that the most benign things could bring to the surface of her thoughts. Like a cute guy calling her a firecracker…
“You a student at Tech?”
She glanced back at him. “A transfer.”
“From where?”
“BU.”
She could feel his surprise without looking at him. But she looked anyway, finding it hard not to spend long minutes staring into his handsome face. His eyebrows were cocked, his body twisted slightly away from her as though he couldn’t make himself believe her. Or as if the thought there was something wrong with being near her.
“That’s a pretty fancy school.”
“It’s not Harvard or Princeton.”
“No, but it’s right up there with them.”
Nola shrugged. “Yeah, well, it’s in the past now.”
“Why?”
That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? She picked up a pebble and tossed it out over the water, watching it skip two or three times before it sank below the surface.
“I don’t suppose you brought me out here to hear my sob story, did you?”
“I’m not sure why I brought you here.”
That seemed about right. He didn’t know why he brought her here, and she had no idea why she’d come with him.
“Do you have a girlfriend back in that club of yours?”
“No.”
She glanced at him. “I bet you’re a favorite with the girls. You probably never have to sleep alone unless you want to.”
“You’re probably right.”
She chuckled. “You’re so humble too.”
He shrugged. “Why deny the truth.”
“What were you doing at Tech?”
“Maybe I’m a student there too.”
Nola nodded slowly, though that idea had never occurred to her.
He pushed his hands into his pocket and rolled back on his heels. “I was there to pick something up for a friend.”
“Your name,” she asked, gesturing at his jacket, “is it because you like to read? Or does it have something to do with actual scribing?”
Again he rolled back on his heels. Then he came toward her, grabbing her jaw with a vise-like grip. “You ask an awful lot of questions.”
“I’m curious.”
“Yeah, well, curiosity can get a girl in trouble.”
Nola began to say something, but she quickly forgot what it was when he kissed her. There was no gentleness to his kiss. There was urgency, need like nothing she had ever experienced before. She dated good boys, boys who were marriage material. Scribe was none of that.
And it was the most exciting thing she had ever known.
She stepped into him, responding to his kiss like a girl who’d been there a million times before. She was someone else in his arms. She wasn’t the good girl who came home to help her mother survive after her dad’s death. She wasn’t the girl who had a 4.0 GPA at BU. She was a girl who threw caution to the wind and kissed a man who would sooner rip her heart to shreds than marry her and give her the white picket fence that had turned out to be nothing more than a lie for her mother.
Scribe pushed his fingers into her hair and tilted her head upward, clearly a man who knew what he wanted and was determined to get it. She couldn’t imagine how she could open up more to him, but his manipulations allowed him to explore pieces of her she’d never realized existed. She pressed her hand to his chest, loving the pounding of his heart, the form and movement of his impressive pecs. Her other hand slipped around his waist, her fingers aching to touch places she never would have imagined touching in another life.
But that was it, wasn’t it? She knew living the “other” life wouldn’t be the same anymore.
Chapter 3
Nola was slow to get out of bed the next morning. She’d gone to bed with thoughts of Scribe on her mind, the feel of him on her skin. For a brief moment, she had thought her whole world would change there by the lake, but then he silently led her back to the bike and drove her home. Who would have thought that some motorcycle gang member would be the only gentleman—other than her father—she’d ever met?
And now…now it was back to life as normal.
She went down the hall to check on her mother and found her already dressed.
“I have to be at work in twenty minutes.”
Nola nodded. “Did you do well yesterday?”
Her mother smiled softly. “It was nice to be busy.”
“This is going to be good for us.” Maybe if she kept repeating it, she would eventually begin to believe it.
She watched her mother leave before she climbed into the shower and prepared for her own day. Her car was still sitting in the parking lot at Tech, so she’d have to leave a little early to give herself time to take the bus. Not that she was exciting to get to class.
Classes began last week, so Nola was already behind. She wasn’t looking forward to having to approach each of her professors to get the syllabuses they handed out on the first day of class and arrange to make up any assignments already completed by her fellow students. She hated starting anything new on a bad foot—that never would have happened at BU.
She pulled on a fitted tank top and a long peasant’s skirt, with a beaded pair of sandals. Her hair twisted into a braid and she was ready for the day. On the outside, anyway.
Grabbing her bag and checking to make sure her keys were there somewhere, she stepped out of the house as she ticked off a growing to-do list in her mind: she needed to call a mechanic to look at the car, needed to find a grocery store within walking distance of the house, needed to call the landlord to deal with the leak in the kitchen faucet, needed to…and then she realized Scribe was sitting at the curb astride his bike.
“Hey,” he said, that deep growl to his voice causing shivers to run up and down the length of her spine. “I thought you might need a ride this morning.”
“I do.”
She walked toward him, purposely slowing her pace so he wouldn’t guess just how thrilled she was to see him. She wasn’t sure what to do once she reached him. Would he be expecting a kiss? Or would that be presumptuous on her part? But he answered the question for her by sliding his hand over the curve of her jaw and offering her a heart-stopping kiss the moment she was close enough for him to reach her.
She liked a decisive man.
He sat back and reached for the spare helmet that she already thought of it as hers. Nola heard whispers behind her and turned to find a couple of women, middle-aged busybodies, walking not far from them, staring and gesturing in a way that left no question as to the subject of their conversation. Nola caught a couple of other people watching them too, from across the street.
“Ignore them,” Scribe said as he pulled her close to fasten the helmet under her chin.
Looking into those blue eyes—how could she think of anything but the sensual fantasies those eyes and lips had created in her overstressed mind?
The moment he was finished, Nola bunched her skirt up around her thighs and climbed onto the bike behind him. He ran one hand slowly over her bare thigh before he started the motor and they rushed off in a roar that silenced even the loudest voices.
Nola molded her body to Scribe’s, wrapping her arms tight around his waist and pressing her cheek to his shoulder. She closed her eyes, less interested in where they were going as she was in the feel of flying that came with rushing through traffic on the back of his bike. It briefly crossed her mind to wonder what her mother would think if she could see her now. Her old mom—the mom before everything fell apart—would be outraged. She wasn’t sure her new mom could muster that much emotion.
They arrived at the school much too soon. The parking lot was overflowing, people wandering everywhere on a campus that served more than thirty-five thousand students. Nola hesitated in releasing her hold on Scribe. She liked school, she liked the challenge of learning something difficult. But that was before�
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It seemed like everything was now divided into before and after—Before Daddy died and After Daddy died.
Scribe twisted around and helped her off with the helmet.
“A friend of mine came and got your car. It should be ready tomorrow.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
He ran his thumb over her chin. “You’re new to town. You don’t know who you can trust yet, and I didn’t want you to get screwed.”
“Thanks.”
“What time will you be done? I’ll pick you up.”
Nola glanced at the buildings spread out around them. She couldn’t remember what day it was, let alone what her schedule was. She really just didn’t want to do this.
“I have this thing,” Scribe said, sliding close to her. “I should be done by two. Is that too early?”
“No. That’s perfect.”
He inclined his head slightly. “I’ll see you then.”
He kissed her again, his touch as new as it had been the first time. Their kiss lingered, neither of them in a hurry to part. But it couldn’t last forever.
Nola slid off the bike. “See you.”
***
Nola found her schedule buried in her backpack. Her first class of the day was Calculus 3. The class was packed. She slid into a seat at the back of the room seconds before the professor came in and began his lecture on the same breath in which he chastised a student in the front row for putting his feet up on a neighboring seat.
“He’s a real ass,” the girl behind Nola whispered.
Nola glanced at her. “Yeah?”
She nodded. “This is my second time taking this class because he failed me over a stupid problem on the final exam. It was ridiculous. Just because he didn’t like the way I worked it out. I had the right answer, but he said my method was flawed.”
“Crazy.”
“Yeah. That’s what I said.”
Nola turned back to the front, attempting to hear a little of what the professor was discussing. But then the girl touched her shoulder.
“So, did I see you get off the back of a Bandido’s bike this morning?”
Nola glanced at her. “You know the Bandidos?”
“Everyone around here knows the Bandidos. They run the streets.”
Nola nodded, not quite sure what she meant.
“I’d be careful if I were you. I heard about this girl who fell for a Bandido. They ended up getting her hooked on heroin and then prostituted her out until she committed suicide because she couldn’t take it anymore.”
“I’m sure that’s just a lot of rumor.”
“I don’t know. I have a cousin who ran with the Bandidos years ago. He’s serving a life sentence in federal prison for drugs. I never even met him.”
Nola glanced at her again, but had the feeling that she simply watched a little too much television.
Her next class was biology, then biochemistry. Both seemed less complicated than the professors tried to imply in their lectures and syllabuses. Their expectations were less than Nola faced at BU. It was almost a disappointment, really, the knowledge that she wouldn’t be as challenged here as she had been before.
Not that she really concentrated on her classes. Her thoughts were more focused on Scribe, on the expectation of seeing him again this afternoon. She was almost afraid he wouldn’t be there when she came out of her last class.
But, of course, he was. He even climbed off his bike as she approached.
“How’d it go?”
Nola shrugged. “It was school.”
“I bet you enjoy it. All those lectures and all the writing and stuff you have to do. I’m sure you love it.”
“Is that what you think?” She moved close to him, laying a hand on his chest just over the patch that spelled out his name. “You think I’m some sort of nerd? Does it turn you on, the idea of corrupting my ideals?”
“Maybe.”
He kissed her hard enough to make her bottom lip smart as he pressed it a little too roughly against her teeth. But then his touch softened as he slid an arm around her waist and drew her closer to the length of his body. She kind of melted there, molding her body into the angles of his.
“Or maybe you’re just turned on by the idea of being with a bad boy,” he whispered in her ear.
“Maybe.”
Chapter 4
Scribe took her back to the lake. They didn’t talk at first, just walked along the shore, hand in hand, like a couple from one of those cheesy made-for-TV movies her mother used to watch obsessively. And it was the first time in a long while that Nola’s mind was free of everything but the moment.
“Why Lubbock?”
Nola glanced at Scribe. “My dad was a pediatrician in Dallas. I grew up there; Our lives were there. But when my dad died—my mom couldn’t start over under the microscope of all the people she’d mingled with at cocktail parties, you know?”
“I get that. It would be like leaving the club and trying to go legit on their streets.”
“Yeah, exactly like that.”
“What about you? Why couldn’t you go back to BU?”
“No money.”
“Your dad must have left you pretty bad off.”
Nola blushed even as she nodded. She knew she shouldn’t be embarrassed. It was her father’s failings that created this mess, not her own. But, somehow, not being able to overcome them well enough still felt like her fault.
Her mother relied on her to keep her perfect world perfect. That was her failure.
“My dad took off when I was ten,” Scribe said. “My mother wasn’t much of a mother. When she wasn’t high, she was off with one guy or another. Left me and my brother to pretty much fend for ourselves.”
“That’s rough.”
He shrugged. “It’s a common enough story in the neighborhood where I grew up. Some parents, they cared enough to keep their kids off the streets as much as they could. But others didn’t because that was how they grew up and if it was okay for them, it was great for their kids, you know?”
“Yeah. Kind of like my dad pushing me to be a doctor because his dad was a doctor.”
“I guess, yeah. Just a little more pretentious.”
“You think I’m pretentious?”
He laughed after he caught the look of surprise on her face. “Surely you understand what a girl like you is to a guy like me. I’m not the kind who’s going to be accepted in the circles you live in.”
“Used to live in.”
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from life is that those who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths never travel far from that life, even when bad things happen. Just like guys like me are destined to live and die by the club rules.”
“You don’t ever see yourself doing anything more than riding with that club?”
“No, I don’t.”
Scribe lifted her hand and twirled her around until her back was pressed into his chest. Then he wrapped his arms around her and stared out at the lake with his chin resting lightly on the top of her head.
“I don’t know why you’re here with me. The moment I saw you standing in front of your car, cursing like a ten year old, I knew you were as far out of my league as a person could get. But I couldn’t resist temptation.”
“How do you know you’re out of my league? Maybe I’m not the person you think I am.”
“And maybe you’re exactly who I think you are. You’ve just decided life in your world is too hard and you want to test the waters in mine.”
She nearly laughed. It was like he could see into her mind, could read all the thoughts she had believed she was successfully hiding from everyone around her. It was like he knew what was written on her heart.
“Scribe is a good name for you.”
He pulled her closer to him, but he didn’t say anything.
***
Scribe picked her up every morning for the next few weeks, even after he returned her car to her—both the alternator and star
ted replaced at no charge—and was waiting for her every afternoon after class. They didn’t always go to the lake, but he never took her anywhere personal, either. They went to a diner one night on the outskirts of town and had the most amazing tacos she had ever tasted. Another time he took her to a small flea market where he bought her a funny little hat that he said made her look like Annie Oakley. But mostly they just hung out in quiet places where there weren’t a lot of other people around and talked.
Scribe was like no one else Nola had ever known. Not only was he the most handsome man she’d ever met—what was it about those blue eyes that she couldn’t stop thinking about, even in the middle of the night when sleep was a distant memory?—but he had the quickest wit of anyone she’d ever met. He was street smart, but wasn’t highly school-educated; she baffled him when she tried to explain basic biology to him one afternoon, but he could figure a tip in seconds and he whispered the lines to a sonnet in her ear late one evening when he thought she couldn’t hear him.
He was an enigma. She couldn’t figure him out, but she loved trying.
She stood in front of the full length mirror in her bedroom, trying to decide if she should wear jeans or a skirt. He texted her less than twenty minutes ago and told her he wanted to see her. That could mean almost anything. The last time she got a text like that, he took her to a bookstore and bought her a book she’d mentioned she might need for her physics class.
“Where are you off to?”
Nola glanced at her mother. “A friend’s coming by to take me out.”
“Should you really be going out this late? Don’t you have classes in the morning?”
“I’m an adult, Mom, I think I can handle my own life.”
She could feel the indignation coming off of her mother before she turned and saw it written all over her face.
“What’s happened to you?” her mother asked quietly. “You never used to talk to me that way.”
“Yeah, well, that was before Daddy died and turned our lives upside down.” Nola picked up a hair brush and ran it through her long, auburn curls. “Things have changed.”
“Maybe our situation, but I’m still your mother and I still deserve respect.”
