I’d learned that morning that not only had she never been on a long trip on a motorcycle, she’d never been on a motorcycle, period. Short trip or long trip.
“I really, to the bottom of my heart, don’t care,” she told me as she swung over behind me. “I just…being with them…I’m not ready yet.”
I completely understood.
They were a lot for me, and I wasn’t family, nor did I have any memory loss.
I knew eventually, with time, it would be something that would get better. But damn. To have six people all up in your business ninety-nine percent of the time.
“How about I look into an RV or motorhome when we get to the next place we’re going that’s a bigger city? With the baby…” I left that hanging.
Her arms went to put the helmet on her head, but she stopped. “You’d buy an RV for me?”
It was looking like I’d do absolutely anything for her, even drive halfway across the country, quit my job and upend my life. Buying an RV would very well be the easiest thing I’d done in the last week.
“Absolutely,” I said.
She wrapped her arms around me, buried her face into my back, and gave me a squeeze. “Let’s go before they all decide to pull out and clog everything up.”
“Alrighty then,” I said as I started it up.
She lifted her face and said, “Don’t forget to wear your helmet, son.”
I’d had a rule since I was sixteen put in place for me by my dad. Wear a helmet.
If Val hadn’t had one, there was no guilt-tripping in the world that would make me take her.
It was something my dad had drilled into me from my first ride with him to the last day.
“Wear your helmet, son,” had been his way of saying, “I love you.”
“Son?” I teased loudly over the din of the motor.
“Well.” She giggled. “I’m not quite sure why that came out of my mouth the way it did. So I’m just gonna roll with it.”
I squeezed her thigh as I let off the clutch, and then we were off.
My nervousness at carrying her after such a bad accident was nothing compared to the way I felt with her wrapped around me as we hit the open road.
Riding had always been a freeing feeling for me.
Something that I experienced but sadly didn’t get anywhere near as much as I liked.
I’d even contemplated joining one of my buddy’s motorcycle clubs right after I’d gotten out of the military, but something had held me back.
It wasn’t six months later that we found out that my dad was well on his way to dying, and staying with him was something that I’d needed to do.
We made a turn that the GPS told me to take, and then I saw four police cruisers along the side of the road, which caused me to slow down because the sight of them made me nervous.
I made it through, though, and was happy to see that they didn’t turn on their lights and force us to stop.
I wasn’t sure the same could be said for those behind me, but I imagined that they would inform us if they were detained in any way.
But no calls came.
And the woman at my back held on for another three hours until I was forced to get gas.
When we stopped, I turned on my bike to face her and saw the most glorious smile on her face.
“You liked it?” I asked her.
Her eyes bright and shiny, she said, “I loved it.”
CHAPTER 16
If you think I’m short, you should see my patience.
-T-shirt
SIMI
I loved it and hated it by the time we got where we were going.
Over the last four hours we’d ridden, my memory had come back in short bursts.
At one point, I was fairly sure that I had all of it, but then another memory would hit—most of those stemming from old trips that we’d taken to the region we were traveling.
I now knew who my sisters were. I knew what I did for a living.
I knew that I was pregnant with the baby of a man that I’d only known for a very short but very intense period of time.
I also knew that I was in love with him.
If I hadn’t been after he’d traveled across the country to me, I would’ve fallen over that proverbial cliff at the sight of him standing in my hospital room, so concerned about me.
“You okay?” Coffey asked curiously.
I nodded and stood to stretch.
All of my bones and muscles shifted, reminding me that I’d just spent four hours on a bike after a car accident the day before.
“You know,” I said as I rubbed my sore neck. “I can’t exactly explain why I felt the need to be with you today for that trip, and I’ll definitely be feeling this ride tomorrow, but I’m very glad that I came with you. It was beautiful and breathtaking, and holy shit, there’s someone standing behind you right now who looks ready to jump on top of you.”
Coffey turned slowly, then the man behind him pounced.
One second, Coffey was standing empty-handed, and the next, the man was in Coffey’s arms, holding on for dear life.
Legs off the ground, wrapped around Coffey’s waist and everything.
“You are fucking shitting me right now!”
Then there were ten men piling onto the man hug that was going on in front of my eyes.
Coffey didn’t go down to the ground with their weight, but it was a close thing.
“I’m glad to see that you can handle a person as large as him hitting you,” I mused aloud. “I’m seeing good things for our child’s future.”
All ten men heard me, and then the one that’d done the original jumping into Coffey’s arms said, “Got something to tell us, Coff?”
Coff.
I liked that.
I liked, even more, the smile on Coffey’s face.
“Uh, yeah.” Coffey grinned wickedly then. “You’re looking at the woman that’s carrying my child. And the one that might or might not say ‘yes’ to marrying me in a couple of months. I just have to make sure I get her memory back first.”
There was a long moment of silence as all the men looked from me to Coffey and back as if they were trying to process his words and couldn’t.
“I think maybe you should explain the entire thing to them,” I said. “Would y’all like to join us for lunch?”
One of the men looked at their watch. A big, black, bulky thing that looked like it might be able to control the world.
“Uh,” the bulky-watched guy said. “We have exactly two hours until we have to be back on base.”
That’s when I put two and two together.
Norfolk, Virginia, was a massive hotspot for the Navy. As in, the last time I came through here, not me, but every single one of my sisters had hooked up with a dude from the Navy that’d decided to come check the circus out for the night.
“I think the story can be told in one,” I said. “That gives us time for actual eating. And”—I looked at my watch—“today is setup day, but tomorrow if you have time, y’all should come to one of the shows.”
“One of the shows?” the original jumper asked.
“Yes.” I smiled. “I forced your friend to join the circus.”
There was laughter and guffaws after that, and that’s how we wound up in the small diner in the middle of Norfolk, with eleven of the sexiest men I’d ever met.