Riveted. Jay Crownover

look at myself in the mirror every day and not hate the woman I saw staring back at me. I wanted the fairy tale my mom talked about, the dream guy my sister managed to land, but I never wanted to be desperate or pathetic in order to get it. Love was supposed to make you better, not make you hate the person you became in order to obtain it.

      His gruff voice rumbled from somewhere over my head since I couldn’t force myself to look up at him as my mind whirled and my heart thudded heavy and painful in my chest. “I know it’s asking a lot, but I’m asking anyways because I don’t have a choice.” That was probably true. He was a man that very much handled things on his own terms and in his own way. He was a creative problem solver, proven by the fact he was standing in front of me regardless of the hell he had seen and the terror he had witnessed firsthand.

      “You should’ve been honest with your family from the get-go. Neither one of us would be in this spot if you had been.” I didn’t mean to snap at him but I felt a little cornered and he was still stroking my jaw, which was making my head fuzzy and my resolve weak.

      “That ship sailed a long time ago.” He sounded mad about the fact, but all the anger was directed inwards, into that void of darkness that lived in the center of him.

      “I don’t want you to be a liar, Church.” That wasn’t the kind of man that had made me fall so far and so fast.

      “I promise on my mother that I won’t ever lie to you, Dixie.” He sounded so sincere, so earnest that my heart finally overthrew my brain’s tyranny over my common sense. He needed me, and I think we both knew from the outset that there was no way I could deny him help when he asked for it. It wasn’t in my nature to deny someone I cared about my help and there was no way I could tell the person that I was stupidly sprung on “no.”

      I blew out a breath that made the floppy hair in front of my face dance. I lifted my hands so I could wrap them around his wrists. It made me shiver when I couldn’t even get my fingers to touch as I tried to close the circles around them. His pulse kicked hard under my fingertips.

      “I need to make sure it’s okay with Rome that I go, and I need to get someone to watch Dolly for a few days. If I can get all that squared away then I’ll come with you.” I was convinced any kind of happy-ever-after for me involved him but I was starting to wonder if his was a different kind of happy-ever-after that had nothing to do with realizing I was the one for him. It sounded like his happy-ever-after involved closing rifts and knitting breaches that stretched far and wide. He needed me in an entirely different way than I needed him. The knowledge stung but I still couldn’t deny that I wanted to be the one that he turned to for help. I also wanted to be the one to help him even if it hurt my heart.

      He stared at me without speaking for a long, drawn-out moment and then slowly nodded. He let go of my face and stepped back.

      “I already cleared your time off with Rome. We had a long talk this morning when I told him I had to leave. He called Avett in to cover for you the next week or so. I told him I wasn’t sure when I was putting you on a plane back home.”

      I scowled a little bit and started to follow him out of the bathroom. “You were so sure I was going to agree to this nonsense?” That was annoying.

      He looked at me over his shoulder and his lips quirked again like he was trying to smile and he simply forgot how. “I was. You always come through for your friends, and even though I never gave you reason to, you’ve considered me a friend from the get-go. I’m gonna go clean up that mess in your kitchen. Maybe you want to put some pants on before your guest gets back with the dog.”

      I looked down at my still-splotchy legs and then back up towards his retreating back with a huff. At the sound he turned around and looked at me over his shoulder with a lifted brow. “I think it’s pretty cute you’re all grumbly and scowly when you first wake up. You’re like a furious kitten looking for something or someone to put your claws in.”

      I sat there with my mouth hanging open and staring at the space he was no longer in. No one thought I was cute in the morning. No one except Church apparently. I groaned and dropped my head into my hands.

      I should have stayed in bed. Nothing good ever happened before noon.

      

       Church

      I should have been elated that she’d agreed to go with me, it saved me the hassle of trying to explain why I lied to my family, but all I could feel was all-encompassing relief that the good-looking redheaded man that had answered the door was family and not someone who had had the pleasure of spending the evening in her bed.

      I’d wanted to rip his heavily tattooed arms off and beat him within an inch of his life with them when he pulled open the door looking understandably irritated at my early morning visit. He’d seemed far too comfortable in Dixie’s home and there was no stopping the flood of jealously and the flickering flames of rage that raced through my blood when he looked at me like I was the interloper. I’d held myself back because I didn’t want to hurt her and I didn’t want to hurt myself, but seeing someone else in the place that I knew was rightfully mine made all my good intentions burn like acid deep inside my gut. Whenever I tried to do the right thing it somehow managed to go horribly wrong.

      Dixie had good timing. She’d put the fires of jealousy out and started a different kind of burn under my skin by doing nothing more than standing there looking rumpled and endlessly cute. Her hair was always kind of wild and unkempt, but straight from bed it looked like it had taken on a life of its own and was looking towards world domination. Her soft brown eyes were even darker than normal when filled with leftover sleepiness and her dusting of freckles stood out even more since she wasn’t wearing any makeup. If she looked that rumpled and messy after a night alone in bed I couldn’t keep my mind off of wondering what she would look like after hours of hungry hands and an eager mouth having their fill of her soft skin and sweet smile. It was a struggle to keep my eyes off the bare expanse of leg peeking out from the bottom of her ridiculous T-shirt because I could tell the other guy had his eyes on me and he didn’t like the way my eyes were on her at all. He was protective … and he should be. None of the thoughts I had while trying not to blatantly check her out would make him very happy.

      The relief that she wasn’t hooking up with a guy who wasn’t me was short-lived as I scrambled to get everything needed for the two of us to hit the road together. I wasn’t sure what the weather was going to be like, so that meant I needed to stock up on a little bit of everything to make the long ride down south. It was almost twenty hours, most of it through the plains of Kansas and tips of Missouri and Arkansas. That meant the conditions were going to be varied across the board weather-wise and it was up to me to make sure my passenger had everything she needed to make the ride as comfortable as possible. Now that she’d agreed to ride with me I wanted to make sure there was no reason for her to back out. I’d never been on the Harley for that long of a ride either, but I figured after years of riding around in tanks and other armored vehicles and flying in and out of hot spots in cargo planes that my ass was well beyond up for the job.

      Rome actually gave me a helmet he had sitting in his office that was small enough to fit Dixie. He told me it was his soon-to-be wife’s, but she hardly ever used it now that they had two kids under the age of five. The free hours they had to ride together were few and far between and with winter on the horizon he was looking at parking his bike for the next several months anyway. I took the helmet gladly but the conversation that had come before it about why I needed to borrow the headgear in the first place had come begrudgingly.

      Rome knew a little about my history. It was impossible to keep from him considering he was my CO for most of my military days. When news came from home, good or bad, it was always filtered through him first. As expected he listened to me lay out my laundry list of sins without saying a word and when I was done all he did was nod, tell me I would be missed around the bar, let me know I