Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
But then at some point, the panic and the fear and the confusion turned to anger.
Fuck Nova. Fuck her for not being there when I needed her. Fuck her for saying that just because we’d had sex a few times, she no longer wanted to be friends. She’d been just as active a participant in things and I wasn’t telling her that we couldn’t be friends if we were no longer fucking. Now, because I didn’t want to be in a relationship with anyone, she just fucking deserted me? I guess we weren’t as good of friends as I thought we were. Obviously not best friends like we’d always said if she could just ditch me.
It went on like that until I fell asleep. Guilt weighed me down as I thought of how scared Emilia must’ve been and how wrong everything could’ve turned out. Panic that Nova seemed to have ended our friendship completely. Rage that she had.
By the next morning, I had a little more control over my emotions.
If Nova didn’t want to be friends, that was her decision. I wasn’t going to beg her.
Chapter 16
Nova
Life seemed to fall back into a normal pattern the next day. I went to work, did laundry, thought about texting Rumi but didn’t, and hung out with Bird. Pop slept in late, so I didn’t have to see him in the morning, but by the time I came home that night, he was in a good mood and sitting at the kitchen table like nothing had happened the night before. Nana shook her head at me as I met her eyes, so I kept my mouth shut about it.
Unfortunately, life at home from that point on felt like we were living on top of a bomb that was just waiting for one wrong step to detonate.
On Monday, I took particular care getting ready for the day and headed for the Aces garage. My stomach was in knots as I watched the open bays, waiting for someone to come out and help me. When Rumi’s uncle Will came outside, wiping his hand on a rag, I wasn’t sure if I was feeling relief or disappointment that it wasn’t Rumi.
He still hadn’t called after he’d hung up on me Saturday night, and I refused to be the one who reached out first.
“Hey,” Will said, grinning at me as he got closer. “You finally getting that door fixed?”
“It hasn’t been broken that long,” I said with a laugh. “Geez. Does everyone know about it?”
“Well, when a member’s kid almost falls out of her car because she won’t get the door latch fixed, the story makes the rounds,” he replied dryly. “Considerin’, you know, that her grandpa works at a fuckin’ garage and it’s probably a quick fix.”
“I know, I know.” I laughed, raising my hands in surrender. “I just work a lot and I need my car, so I couldn’t leave it here.”
“Lucky for you, I can probably fix this real quick,” he said, opening my door and closing it a few times before crouching to look at the latch. “Take me less than an hour, I bet.”
“Seriously?”
Will chuckled. “Seriously. You wanna wait?”
“Hell yes,” I said happily.
“I think Rumi’s takin’ lunch here soon,” Will said as I gave him my keys. “You want me to send him out?”
“No,” I replied quickly, hiding a wince as he raised his eyebrows at me. “No, don’t worry about it. I’m good. I’ll just go inside and hang out on the couches or something.”
“Suit yourself,” he replied easily. He climbed inside my car and cursed. “Jesus, how do you fit in here?”
“Well, I’m not a giant.” Will was a really big dude.
“Go inside,” he ordered good-naturedly. “I’ll find you when I’m done.”
My pop had mentioned that he wouldn’t be at the garage when I got there because he had something else going on, but it was still weird to be at the club without him. There had been a few times when I’d shown up with Rumi to hang out, but I could count those instances on my fingers. I’d tried to follow my grandma’s advice and not let the club become my whole personality and I may have succeeded a little too well, because while everyone knew who I was, I didn’t think very many of them actually knew me.
In the back of my mind, I’d always figured that I’d end up an old lady. Beyond the fact that deep down, I believed eventually Rumi and I would end up together, I also knew that you gravitated toward what you knew when you searched for a partner—and I knew the Aces Motorcycle Club. They were the men I’d grown up watching, my pop more than anyone else.
“Hey, Nova,” the Aces president’s wife, Brenna, called out in surprise as I walked inside the clubhouse. She was sitting at a table with a bunch of papers in front of her that she started gathering into a pile.