Page 13 of Gatsby's Starlet
“What about you?” I asked. “You don’t strike me as someone who just wandered into a biker club by accident.”
His jaw flexed once, not defensive — just thinking.
“I didn’t wander,” he said. “I was nineteen and angry at everything, and Coon gave me somewhere to put it.”
“That’s a very efficient summary.”
He huffed faintly at that. “You want the longer version?”
“I want the honest one.”
Silence stretched, not awkward but deliberate, and I realized he was measuring whether I was asking out of curiosity or inventory.
“He didn’t fix me,” Gatsby said at last. “He just gave me structure. Rules. Something solid to lean against so I didn’t break everything I touched.”
There was no self-pity in it.
No performance.
Just fact.
“And the rest of it?” I asked gently. “The reputation. The dangerous image.”
He leaned back slightly, eyes never leaving mine. “That’s noise,” he said. “Most of it.”
“And you don’t care about it?”
“I care about what’s underneath it.”
That answered more than he probably intended.
The waitress arrived with pancakes and plates, syrup sloshing slightly in its glass container, and the interruption gave us both something to focus on that wasn’t each other’s interior architecture.
I cut into mine, steam rising, and said lightly, “If these are dense, I’m reconsidering everything.”
“They’re not dense,” he said, watching me instead of his own plate.
I took a bite, closing my eyes briefly as I considered it. “They pass inspection.”
“High praise,” he said, a hint of something in his voice.
“You should feel honored.”
“I do.”
The humor settled the air just enough to make breathing easier again, but the undercurrent hadn’t vanished, it had only shifted, deeper and slower, like something taking root instead of flaring up.
A little more heat under the surface.
“Earlier on my bike,” he said, those sexy eyes of his watching me closely. “You didn’t hold on like you were scared”
I tilted my head. “What does that look like?”
“Different.”
“That’s vague.”
He didn’t look away. “You leaned in.”
