The Biker Who Married Me Without Asking novel · Chapter 3 of 48

Chapter 3: The Curb

Cade drives her through the rain to the apartment where her boxes are on the pavement; she rides behind him with her arms around his waist and hears his terms: one year, her own room, nothing unless she says so; at his house the spare room is already painted.

I got on the back of Cade Donohue's motorcycle because there was no other way to reach my armchair.

"Hold on," he said.

"To what?"

"Me."

I put my hands on the sides of his vest.

He pulled out into the rain, and the first corner threw me forward against his back.

My arms went around his waist without asking me.

He was solid and warm through the leather, and he held the bike steady down the hill to the harbor road.

I kept my cheek turned away from his shoulder the whole way.

The apartment building was four streets from the water.

My armchair sat on the pavement under a streetlight with the box on its seat gone soft in the rain.

My grandmother's quilt had been dragged to the gutter, and the lamp lay on its side.

I got off the bike and knelt in the gutter and picked up the quilt in both arms.

It was heavy and wet and it still smelled like her kitchen.

"He did this tonight," I said, to nobody. "That was his surprise."

Cade said nothing.

He walked past me up the steps to my door.

There was a steel padlock through a new hasp, drilled into my own front door frame.

He pulled a pair of bolt cutters out of the bag on the bike and cut through it in one squeeze.

The padlock hit the step.

"That's my apartment," I said. "My name's the only one on the lease."

"I know."

He opened the door and stood aside.

The living room had been emptied of me.

The shelf where my books lived was bare, and my coats were gone from the hooks.

On the kitchen counter sat a pink suitcase with a tag I didn't recognize.

In the bedroom, the bed had been made with sheets I had never bought.

A hairbrush with long blonde hairs in it lay on my nightstand, and a bottle of perfume stood where my clock used to be.

I opened my jewelry box and found it empty.

Edie's money had been in there, an envelope of seven thousand two hundred dollars she had left me in cash, because she did not trust banks.

I had never told Travis how much was in it.

He had still known where to look.

I stood holding the empty lid.

"I can't sleep here," I said.

"No."

"I can't sleep in that bed. I can't pay for a motel either, because he took everything I had in cash."

"You're not paying for a motel."

I turned around. "I'm not going to a clubhouse. I'm not staying in that room behind the bar with forty men."

"You're not. You're coming to my house."

"No."

"It's got a door that locks from the inside, and a bed, and a dog who snores. I sleep in the other room, or I sleep on the couch."

"I'm not your wife."

"You are," he said, quietly. "You signed it."

I wanted to hit him again.

Headlights turned in at the curb.

A pickup pulled up and Ginny climbed out of the driver's seat with a cigarette in her mouth and a tarp over one arm.

"Don't mind me," she said. "I'll load the quilt first and I'll be dry in the truck."

She walked straight past us and began carrying boxes.

I looked at the empty bedroom and the pink suitcase.

Then I looked at the man standing in my doorway with water running off his vest.

"Say it," I said. "All of it. What do you want?"

"A year," said Cade.

"A year of what?"

"You live in my house. You get your own room and your own key. Nothing happens between us unless you say so, and you don't have to say it for a year, or ever. Nobody here will lie to you again. When the year's up, you can have the paper burned if you still want to."

"And if I say no?"

"Then I drive you to the motel in town and I pay for it. The paper stays signed either way."

"That's the worst offer I've ever heard."

"I know."

"You're a bully," I said.

"Probably."

I took my grandmother's ring out of my dress pocket and put it on my finger, the right one, where it had always fit.

"One year," I said. "My own room. And I get the paper in the morning."

"Done."

"Don't say done like we've shaken on something."

"All right."

I rode behind him again, with Ginny's truck following us up the hill.

His house was a plain two-storey with the porch light on.

A dog with one eye came down the hall, looked at me once, and leaned his whole weight against my legs.

"He doesn't do that," Cade said.

He led me upstairs to a door at the end of the hall and opened it.

The room smelled of paint.

The walls were a pale yellow and still not quite dry at one corner.

There was a lamp on the nightstand, a quilt I had never seen, and a glass of water set out beside the bed.

I went down to the kitchen for something to do with my hands.

The cupboard over the sink held one box of tea.

It was the peppermint kind with the green label, the one I drank every morning at the front desk.

I had never told anyone about it except my grandmother.

I turned around.

Cade was in the doorway, and he looked at the floor.

"How do you know what tea I drink?" I said.

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