Page 6 of Handful

“For?”

“Rating her waitresses.”

Colt winced. “Fuck, Handful.”

“I know, I know. It was stupid. The point is, she called my behavior out and then showed me the door.” I ran a hand through my hair. “And I can’t stop thinking about her.”

“Because she kicked you out?”

“Because she wasn’t impressed by the cut.” I looked at him. “Looked at me like I was just another asshole in a bar. Told me to apologize or leave. And when I apologized, she wasn’t impressed. She just expected it.”

Colt was quiet for a moment. Then he laughed, which surprised me. “What’s so funny?”

“You. This is hilarious.” He shook his head. “One woman says no and you fall apart.”

“I haven’t fallen apart. I’m… intrigued.”

“Same thing.”

“It’s really not.” Except Colt wasn’t wrong and I knew it. I’d been running the same conversation in my head for three days — her voice, the look on her face, the way she’d handed me the door like it was nothing. That wasn’t intrigue. That was something I didn’t have a clean word for.

The garage door opened before I could argue further, and Holden walked in. He took one look at us — Colt grinning, me scowling — and sighed. “What did you do now, Handful?”

“He met a girl,” Colt responded before I had even opened my mouth.

“A woman,” I corrected automatically. I’d done it without thinking. Her voice in my head, sharp and certain: “My name is Austen. Not ‘this one.’” If she’d heard Colt call her a girl. Hell, if I had. I could picture the exact look — the one that said she’d already filed you under idiot and was just waiting for you to prove her right.

No. Austen was all woman.

“He met a woman,” Colt amended, his grin widening. “She kicked him out of her bar.”

Holden’s eyebrows rose. “For?”

“Being himself.”

“Ah.” Holden nodded like this explained everything. “So what’s the problem?”

“He can’t stop thinking about her,” Colt said.

“That’s not a problem. That’s called attraction.”

I didn’t have an argument for that. Which was the problem with talking to Holden — he had a habit of stripping things down to exactly what they were. Same with Colt. “It’s a problem when she thinks I’m an asshole.”

“Are you?”

I shrugged. “I was just acting like I always do.”

Holden and Colt exchanged a look. It was the same look Luca and Knox did — that weird silent twin shorthand. Holden and Colt weren’t twins. Weren’t even blood. But they’d spent enough years riding together that they’d built their own version of it somewhere along the way.

All the brothers had some of it. You couldn’t ride formation for a decade without learning to read each other off a head tilt or the way a guy braked into a turn. But Holden and Colt were on a different level. Whole conversations in a glance.

“What?” I demanded.

“Nothing.” Holden leaned against the nearest workbench and crossed his arms. “Are you serious about her? Or is this just because she turned you down?”

I opened my mouth to give him the easy answer — just having a bit of fun — and stopped. “It’s not the usual thing,” I said finally.

Holden looked at Colt. Colt looked back. Something passed between them again.