I finished my food silently, meeting Dallas’s gaze from time to time as I chewed, but for the most part, I kept my attention focused on my plate and on the people hanging around the mechanic shop. The second I finished wiping my mouth off, I asked him something that had been bothering me for a while now. “Why aren’t you in the motorcycle club?”

Dallas set his elbow on the table as he shifted his body in the seat to face me, his temple propped on his closed fist. The side of his knee touched my thigh and didn’t go anywhere. “The club’s more of a legacy. Father to son kind of thing. My dad wasn’t in the MC. I told you he was a navy man.” He was watching me with those hazel eyes as he whispered and pointed in the general direction behind him. “But this is a big family at the end of the day. Look at it. They’re all here for Nana Walker, and she isn’t related by blood to anybody here.”

Huh. I guess he had a point.

“You don’t mind not being in it?”

Dallas shook his head. “I haven’t known any of these guys except my uncle and Trip my entire life. It’s different for me. I had a lot of friends in the navy. I’m not missing out on anything.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You ever had a motorcycle?”

He chuckled deep and shook his head. “No. I like AC just fine.”

“You got that right.” I grinned.

“Bikes aren’t really my thing.”

I was not going to give him squinty, flirting eyes, damn it. I wasn’t going to do it. I made sure to keep my eyelids normal as I asked, “Do you have a thing?”

“I have a thing. I have a big thing—” Dallas immediately closed his mouth. His ears went red.

He blinked at me, and I blinked back at him.

And we both started laughing at the same time.

“Someone’s cocky.” I cracked up.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” He chuckled in that low, loose way that sang straight into my crippled heart.

“I know. Me neither. I’m just busting your balls,” I told him, reaching over with my bad hand to touch the top of his.

His eyes met mine; we were both smiling at each other. And in that moment, it was the most connected I’d ever felt to anyone. Anyone ever.

God help me. It hit me. It hit me right then.

I was crazy in love with this motherfucker. I really, really was.

The realization had just entered my brain when a plate dropped onto the table in front of me, forcing us both to look over, shattering the moment into a dozen pieces. It was Jackson. Jackson who was already partially snarling as he pulled the chair out and dropped into it, carelessly, sloppy. I didn’t have to physically see the man next to me to know he had tensed. What I also didn’t have to witness with my own eyes was the hand that settled into the space between my shoulder blades, calming and steady. Dallas’s entire body shifted from how he’d been sitting facing me to suddenly facing forward, his attention on his brother.

“Where have you been?” was the first thing out Dallas’s mouth.

His younger brother picked up the plastic fork that had been on top of his plate of food and pecked at the portion of beans on it, his green-eyed gaze locked on Dallas. He seriously had the face of someone who had definitely been a little shit in his younger years and hadn’t outgrown that fucking attitude. “Around,” was his vague, muttered response.

The man who had been so at ease with me seconds ago, parked the elbow furthest away from me onto the table. He leaned forward, the palm on my back not moving an inch. His chest filled with a breath before he said, “I tried calling you a dozen times.”

“I know.”

I could feel Dallas’s tension skyrocket. “That’s all? You disappeared on me after the fire at Nana’s house and you can’t even answer your fucking phone?” the normally calm man growled.

I wasn’t imagining his face getting redder by the minute. It was definitely getting redder by the second, and it had nothing to do with us joking around.

Jackson stabbed his fork straight into his food, letting it stand, and glared forward. “Why do you act like you give a shit when you don’t?”

Dallas’s head cocked to the side. I could see him breathing hard; I’d never seen him react that way, but then again, siblings had this way of getting you right where it hurt. “Are you ever going to drop it? Twenty years later, you still can’t forgive me? We gotta keep talking about this?”

Oh no.

Jackson shook his head, his attention going down to the plate below him. When his attention was up again, he watched his brother as he angrily scooped food into his mouth, chewing with a mouth half open. He was trying to be an asshole. Really trying. What the hell was wrong with this man? As I looked through my peripheral vision at Dallas, I could see the muscles in the forearm resting on the table were flexed. I could see how tight his jaw was, and I hated it. This was the nicest man I’d ever met, and he lived with this stupid sense of guilt for no reason, all because of this prick in front of us.

Sensing me judging him, Jackson flicked his eyes in my direction, his expression an ornery one that drew his eyebrows low. “What? You got something to say?”

The palm between my shoulders slid up to drape over the shoulder furthest away from Dallas. He gave it a squeeze, and I knew it was a warning. The problem was I didn’t give a shit. “Yeah. You’re acting like a prick.”

Jack reared back like he was caught off guard or offended at what I’d said. “Fuck you. You don’t know me.”