Ike pressed the phone to his ear. “Dare, what do you have for me?” Pause. “Okay.” Pause. “Okay.” Pause.
Jess. Was. Dying. Literally dying. She searched Ike’s face, hoping something in his expression would give her a clue as to whether the news was bad or good. But she just couldn’t tell. “What’s going on?” she whispered.
“Got it,” Ike said into the phone, grasping her hand and pressing it to his heart. “Keep me posted on that and stay vertical, will ya?” Ike dropped the phone in his lap and exhaled like he’d been holding the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Jeremy and Kat are out of surgery and the doctors are optimistic about them both.”
Jess blinked. It was like her brain couldn’t process the information. And then finally, finally, it sank in. “They’re going to be okay?” she rasped.
“That’s what it sounds like,” Ike said, rubbing a hand over his head. “Thank fuck.”
“Oh, my God,” Jess said, sagging against Ike’s chest. “Oh, my God. Thank you.” The tears started again and her shoulders shook. “I don’t…know why…I’m crying now.”
“It’s the adrenaline letdown,” Ike said. “The sheer relief of it.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t know what I would’ve done…”
Ike pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “And now you won’t have to. None of us will.”
The kiss resurrected her memory of what Ike had said before Dare called. That everything would be okay…because she and Ike were together. Jess forced a deep breath, and then another one, and finally managed to bottle up her tears. She pushed herself up so that she could see him. “What did you mean? Before…”
“Just what I said.” Ike slipped his fingers between hers and clasped her hand. “When we’re together, everything makes sense. And when we’re not...” He shook his head. “It’s like everything falls apart.”
Uh, okaaaay. She liked the general sound of those words but had absofreakinglutely no idea what they meant, especially on top of everything else he’d said and done the past few days. “I like being with you, too, Ike. We’ve been friends for years and you’re one of the most important people in my entire life. But—”
“That’s just it,” he said, frowning. “I don’t want to be friends anymore, Jess. I want to be everything to you.” He looked her square in the eyes. For the first time, she saw complete and total openness there. She saw fear. She saw pain. She saw sincerity. And it slayed her to get such a rare peek inside this man. Her heart tripped into a sprint. “I’m not sure that I deserve it. I’m not even sure that I’ll be any good at it. But if you’ll let me, I’d like to try.”
Ike’s heart was about to beat the fuck out of his chest. From fear, from hope, from something else, something bigger, something completely overwhelming.
Love.
He loved this woman.
The clarity of his emotions had stolen over him in the quiet stillness of the night, and then they’d hit him like a tidal wave when he’d heard the news about Jeremy, Kat, and Nick. Once he recognized the emotion for what it was, Ike found it hard to understand how he hadn’t realized what the hell had been going on inside him all along.
As he watched her, studying her every reaction, Jess pressed a hand to her forehead. “I…I…” She shook her head. “Are you serious?” she whispered.
Aw, fuck. What an asshole he’d been that she felt she had to ask. Voices echoed out from the kitchen. “Will you take a walk with me?” he asked.
“Uh, okay,” she said, sounding confused.
He didn’t blame her. But he didn’t want an audience for this, either. He helped her stand up and took her hand, then he reached into the kitchen and grabbed a key ring off a hook. Ike guided Jess to a wide trail off the right side of the clubhouse. Within five minutes, they arrived at a row of six white cottages. Back in the heyday of the racetrack, they’d been additional accommodations people could rent out. Now, the club used them to house drivers during races, to help out a club member down on his luck, or to put up someone they were guarding or who otherwise needed their assistance.
Ike walked her to the third cottage and unlocked the door.
“What are these places?” Jess asked as she stepped inside. They were all the same—the main room had a bed and a tiny kitchenette with a small bathroom off to the side.
“The club uses them for different things, but I just wanted the privacy,” he said.
She looked around the room. “It’s surprisingly pretty.”
“All Bunny,” Ike said, following Jess’s gaze. “She remodeled them a few years back. Wanted to make them nice for the people we guard who need to stay here. Apparently this is country chic.”
Jess smiled. “It’s very un-biker-like.”
“Tell me about it.” He stepped up close to her and cupped her face in his hands. “But I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about us.”