Free RIDE (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance) by Daphne Loveling Page B

off the TV and went to rinse out my now-empty wine glass. I was exhausted from thinking about all of these painful memories. I never would have thought Caleb Jackson could still have the ability to make me feel so vulnerable. But apparently, deep down inside, I was still the awkward girl I once had been where he was concerned.
    Ah, well. At least now, Vanessa would be taking over as his PT.
    And maybe, just maybe, it was time to think about moving back to Seattle after all. I had been letting inaction make my decisions for me, and lately had been leaning in the direction of staying here in town, but I certainly wasn’t obligated to. I still had plenty of professional contacts in Washington, so getting another job there probably wouldn’t be too much of an issue. I even had a friend who was opening up a PT clinic there, and I was pretty sure she’d be thrilled to have me on board.
    Zoe would be crushed to leave Mrs. Hayes and her playmates at pre-K, but I knew kids were resilient. And maybe right now would be a good time to make the move, before she was set to start kindergarten in the fall.
    Yawning, I shut off the downstairs lights and trudged up the stairs to bed. I’d think more about it in the morning.

9
    Trig
    I knew I’d struck a nerve with Eva when I’d called her princess. I wasn’t lying to her when I said it just slipped out. Until that moment, I’d totally forgotten that I’d ever called her that.
    But as soon as the word was out of my mouth, the memory of how it had all gone wrong between us came flooding back.
    And one look in her stricken eyes told me it had come flooding back to her, too.
    I never did figure out why she decided over the course of a single weekend that she hated me. And frankly, she went so ballistic on me that Tuesday in school that I never even got the chance to ask.
    After I dropped Eva off at her house that Friday, I rode away feeling a jumble of emotions I barely knew how to sort out. Mostly, I was bursting with elation that she had let me kiss her. The few hours I had just spent with her at the springs and on the back of my bike were some of the happiest I could remember in my life, and I couldn’t wait to see her again. I was dying to know whether the few days apart would make any difference in how she felt about me, and I was already running through different ideas of other places I could take her on my bike.
    But mixed in with all that were the troubling feelings I’d taken away after witnessing that scene with her mom. It made me fucking sad as hell for Eva to get that glimpse into what must have been a pretty rough home life.
    She hadn’t told me much about her family — only that she had an older sister in college, and that her dad had divorced her mom a long time ago and wasn’t really around much. I could relate to that. My dad bounced when I was two, and I hadn’t seen him since.
    But unlike Eva, my home life was mostly pretty okay. I had two older brothers who were grown and out of the house, but my mom was a rock of stability. She had worked in a vet clinic downtown as their receptionist since I was a little kid, and had always managed to get home from work in time to make us kids a decent home-cooked meal. All in all, I had no complaints.
    Riding home from Eva’s house that day, I didn’t know what I was gonna say about her mom the next time I saw her. I didn’t want to bring it up and make her feel embarrassed, but I didn’t want to ignore what I had seen, either, in case she needed someone to talk to. I just couldn’t work out what to do or say to make it better.
    I guess I must have been pretty preoccupied about it that whole weekend, because the next day when I showed up at a party I’d been invited to at some chick’s house, a couple people mentioned in passing that I looked kind of serious. My buddy Joe, who avoided ‘talking feelings’ like the plague, even asked me whether anything was wrong.
    I brushed them all off, saying it was nothing, and