Burn for you (English)

Chapter 17

A few days ago, Reaper would have disappeared. He had saved me again, or rather saved me from having my life in New Mexico come to an end, and out of habit I expected him to keep his distance afterwards. But he stayed, there was still distance between us, albeit for different reasons. After his long absence, there was a mountain of work for him to tackle. The meeting with the members was just the beginning, now Pres and Vice spent hours in the office or on the road.

And I was happy about that.

That last moment on the cliff had messed with my head, thrown me off track, so I had no idea how to face Reaper. How to behave when he was around me all the time.

Now I had some peace.

"I thought I'd never meet you alone again." Humming, Beau dropped onto one of the bar stools. "He's buzzing around you like a vulture."

He made as little secret of his dislike for Reaper as he did the other way around.

"You're exaggerating," I reprimanded him.

We had only spent one day together. And then not a complete one either. But the problem wasn't that, it was the relationship between Reaper and Beau. Getting them to mend seemed like a utopian endeavor with both men, so I put the subject to the back of my mind and made Beau his coffee, which he usually picked up during his break.

"Here," a twenty-dollar bill flashed from under his fingers, "For your little piggy bank."

Beau and Ash were the only club members who actively helped fill my glass on the bar shelf from time to time. Bringing me incrementally closer to my own life.

"Thank you."

Beau returned my extremely happy smile before heading back to the workshop. They were currently overhauling some of the club's motorcycles, if they weren't keet in shape by their owners themselves. I had seen Reaper sitting in front of his bike, highly concentrated and extremely busy. Everyone who rode a motorcycle also had a certain basic knowledge of the machine. The concentrated know-how of an MC, on the other hand, was second to none, which attracted other riders from out of town, who brought their vehicles here for repairs or to have them spruced up - as Carlos liked to call it.

The last few days had been relaxed in the bar, which gave us the opportunity to do a deep cleanse. This made Beau's small donation the first to go into my glass for a while. My future.

My dark blond eyebrows drew together skeptically and I read the label again.

Future.

My label with the words Freedom had been pasted over. Not by me, because I didn't recognize the handwriting.

"Hey, Tiara?" Confused, I turned the container in my hand, but then looked at my colleague at the second tap. "Did you relabel my glass?"

Without looking at me, she continued to swap the keg, the frizzy curls on her head shaking. "The president changed the label yesterday."

Please, stay.

His soft, velvety voice whispered in my ears. I hadn't given him an answer that night, was it imperative? Reaper wasn't the first person to ask me to stay, but no one agitated me like he did.

Every second longer I stared at that label, I became more aware that his words held a kernel of truth. Over the last few weeks, I had learned to feel at home here, had made friends and I would even say that the feeling was mutual. So did I already belong here?

A slender arm wrapped around my shoulder. "Staring at it doesn't make it multiply any faster," Ashley explained to me in an amused tone. Her eyes also fell on the changed label: "What's so wrong with freedom?"