He let himself make a soft humming sound, raising his voice until he felt it in the back of his throat, and after a beat, she relaxed against him. Her voice was so small, he couldn’t know if she was speaking or not, so he just kept up the humming, and he rocked a little until he felt steps shaking the floor under his feet.
A moment later, a shadow walked into the room. Before he could feel any panic at all, the lights flickered—on, then off, then on and off once more before they burned a steady glow. His eyes adjusted, and he saw Smokey standing there with wide eyes under his trimmed brows. His mouth moved, but behind his thick beard, Logan couldn’t understand a thing, and Smokey seemed to remember that after a second.
‘Sorry.’ He signed it more like a pat with his fist over his chest, but Logan understood.
Shaking his head, Logan tried to turn the small girl, but she clung tighter, and he offered a helpless look to Smokey, whose mouth twitched up into a grin. After a second, the short biker crossed the room and gently rubbed his hand down her back, and her arms loosened.
When Madeline pulled away, Logan got a good look at her and saw she had calmed down considerably. Her dirty jeans and messy hair said she’d had a rough and tumble day, which he supposed was not out of the ordinary for motorcycle club kid.
Of course, his experience with clubs like that began and ended in TV shows with bad captions and actors covered in fake tattoos, so maybe what he knew was absolute bullshit. After all, Madeline never showed up to class looking anything other than totally impeccable—her shoes and tutu always in pristine condition. Even Smokey was nothing like the people on those shows, apart from the leather vest he wore, and the ink along his forearms. There had been times Logan wanted to ask what it was really like, but there was a small, prickling fear like maybe if he knew too much—if he got in too deep—he’d be trapped.
His hard-won life of freedom had already been an uphill battle. He didn’t need to make it worse.
It wasn’t long before Maddie transferred her hand to the other man’s, and Smokey held up a finger, asking him to wait as he walked her down the hall. Logan felt the fading footsteps in the balls of his feet, and then a couple minutes later, Smokey appeared again with a small grin on his face.
He had a towel hooked over one arm and a notepad in his other hand and waited patiently for Logan to clean himself up. He took the towel first, wringing out his hair until it felt five pounds lighter, then he swiped it over his arms and made a pathetic attempt to mop up the front of his jeans.
Smokey passed over the notepad when he was done, but before Logan could look down, the man pressed a wad of cash into his hand. His lips moved with words Logan couldn’t hope to understand, but then Smokey gestured at the notepad, and he glanced down at what was scribbled there.
‘Sorry for the mess and for Maddie. She’s not usually clingy, but I think the storm scared her. It’s going to be a while before it calms down, so can I give you a ride? We can throw your Vespa in the back of my truck.’
Logan wanted to say no, but there was a kindness and sincerity in Smokey’s eyes that he wasn’t expecting. The man was nothing like Logan’s father, and yet there was that protective ferocity that burned under his skin, and Logan could feel it. It was intimidating, but it was also addicting, and it made him miss his family more fiercely than he expected to.
After a beat, he sighed and nodded, because regardless of any of his reservations, he had no real choice. The rain wasn’t letting up, and he wasn’t going to make it far like that. ‘Thank you,’ he signed, and Smokey offered and old, archaic sign he was pretty sure had once meant, ‘You’re welcome.’
Chapter Four
By the time Logan was done with a long dinner shift, he felt more like ninety-one than twenty-one. Mondays were always the busiest day of the week for their take-out, and he didn’t have time to breathe, let alone give his muscles a rest. It left him twisting at the hip from stove to pot to counter, packing up an endless sea of ingredients for the people too tired at the end of their corporate days to cook at home.
And it wasn’t entirely that he minded the hard work, but it was chaotic in ways that made him twisted up inside. He wore his hearing aids in the kitchen because he needed to hear the bell from orders coming in, but the sharp background noises made his inner ear spasm, and he almost always left with a headache. Still, he was good at the job. He’d been working his ass off there since he was nineteen, developing a sort of kitchen pantomime with the staff so he knew exactly what they needed and when.
And under their careful tutelage, he learned how to create the perfect stretched noodle with just the right amount of curl as they dried, and how to balance the broth, and marinate the meats. After a year behind the line, he had perfected the soy egg enough that Sota asked for Logan to make his lunch when he took his breaks. He had made himself a part of the kitchen family—integral and wanted—and he was happy to exist in those chaotic nights because it offered him a stability he wasn’t always sure he’d have.
Peering at the clock, then at the dwindling orders stuck up on the line, he let out a slow breath and set his mind to the task at hand. Summers never offered much relief from the humidity, even late into the night, and he was looking forward to a cold shower and crawling under his sheets bare-ass naked.
He had a bottle of warming lube and a fat plug he’d just bought from the Garden of Eden shop tucked in a little grove off the freeway. There was a video calling his name with a lean, tattooed otter whose videos were always captioned down to the very last little grunt. His face broke out into a small heat, and he pushed those thoughts aside as he pulled noodles out of the pot and into the little cardboard container to his left, broth went into plastic tub, and the rest of the ingredients into the square box.
One, two, three—and done.
He slid the final orders toward the server, who offered him a wink and a grin, and he hoped they were feeling generous with their to-go tips that night because he’d used some of the extra hundred Smokey had tipped him to buy another dehumidifying fan for his room.
Swiping his hands on his apron, he waved his hand until he had the sous chef, Marco’s, attention, then pointed to himself and then to the back door. The guy gave him a sharp nod and waved him off, and Logan let out a heavy breath before pushing through the door and sinking down into a couple of green crates.
The alley smelled like hot garbage, but the breeze carried a hint of sea, and he closed his eyes with his head pressed to the brick as he let it cool him down. The sky was a rich sort of navy blue above him, but the lights were too bright for him to make out more than a couple of the largest stars.
It made him miss home, a fierce ache in his chest as he pictured his mom in the kitchen, tapping her feet to whatever she had playing on the radio. She took to living in Acadiana with her husband like she was born to do it, even when he knew she missed the Islands like a limb. She was never miserable though. She kept a happy home, a happy husband, and a son who never, ever spent a day unloved.
His dad would get home late, covered in specks of hair, wearing a grin that only got wider at the sight of his wife and child. They’d lay out in chairs and swat mosquitos, and he could hear the faintest, dull murmur of his parents talking as he’d stare up at the sky, waiting and hoping for shooting stars.