Page 76 of Single Mom's Biker Brigade
I caught him before he ate dirt and righted him with a pat on the shoulder.
Callie sat on the bench seat behind Diesel and crossed her ankles. “You have to learn to ride something without a motor first.” She gave Cody a motherly look. “I’m not putting you on something that can go faster than I can run until you have the balance and the knowledge to handle it.”
“Okay.” Cody rose onto his toes and leaped toward Callie. “When can you teach me?”
Her lashes fluttered, a look passing so quickly across her face that I almost missed it. “Soon. You need a bicycle your size.”
I waited for Cody to bounce away to pepper Hawk with questions before I sat next to Callie. “I can have a bike here in an hour. If you’re okay with it.”
“You don’t have to do that, Colt.” She fidgeted, twisting her hands together in her lap.
“I’m at a disadvantage here. I want to spend time with Cody, and I want to give him everything I never had. But I won’t do anything that goes against your wishes. Are you trying to keep him from getting a bike or is there another reason you don’t want me to do this?”
Callie made figuring her out impossible. Better to ask straight out than try to work my way through her subtlety.
She rubbed a finger along the edge of her nose, her head dropping in a gesture so defeated it sent my protective instincts onto full alert.
“What?” I rubbed her back in slow, smooth strokes. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t afford to buy him a bike. I wanted to get him one for Christmas.” She raised her head and stared straight at Diesel’s back.
I’d never heard that kind of vulnerability in her voice. “You’ve been doing this alone, Callie. And I get why. You had every right to leave. But we’re here now.I’mhere now, and I’d like to help.”
“Found something.” Diesel’s quiet announcement cut between us.
Callie stood so fast she wobbled and stretched out a hand. I caught it and stood beside her, bracing her with our hips together. My arm went across her shoulders. She shuddered once, then her shoulders rolled back and her chin came up. There was the badass who didn’t take any shit.
“What is it?” Callie moved to stand beside Diesel.
Hawk joined us while Cody rode his tricycle up and down the sidewalk in front of the house.
Diesel held up a tiny memory card barely the size of my thumbnail.
“Fuck.” The tightness I’d been fighting all morning broke over me in a wave as fury heated my skin.
Hawk took the card, pinching it carefully between his thumb and forefinger. “Someone’s collecting footage. Any chance they downloaded remotely?”
“Probably not.” Diesel probably meant for that to sound reassuring but it did nothing to stop me from cursing and wishing I had a target to pound into the dirt.
27
CALLIE
I didn’t sleep. At all. I needed to, but ever since Diesel held up that memory card a couple days ago, sleep went right out the fucking window.
When Cody asked, I told him it was the house. I told him I hadn’t gotten used to the way sound traveled different here from our place. It was kind of true. The floorboards creaked here, and the constant pad of footsteps throughout the house kept snapping my eyes open every time they dared to close.
But the real reason was sitting on Hawk’s laptop.
I didn’t bother asking how he’d pulled the additional footage, only that he had to let me see it, and if he tried to say no, I’d burn all his shit, take his computer, and to hell with all of them. It might not have been realistic or calm, but it held his attention.
Diesel dragged a second chair around to Hawk’s side of the desk. I stood behind them with my arms crossed and my coffee going cold on the table beside me.
Hawk’s office was as I remembered. Dark walls. No pictures. A wide desk that held his laptop and a few files. If it got any more impersonal it might remind me of my own office at the shop before Cody was born.
The first image flickered, the frame going still with a shot of me standing on the porch in a similar position as now. Arms crossed. Scowl firmly in place. In the image, I stared across the yard. Then Hawk pressed a key and the video started. I moved from the top step to the sidewalk, my steps angling me toward the shop bay where I was no longer welcome.
I remembered that day. I’d planned on trying to convince Hawk to let me work on something. I needed to get my hands dirty, but I’d been waylaid by Cody.
