Bunny came in just as they were drying the last of the trays. “Another hit, Haven.” She helped them put away the last of the dishes. “You know, they say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. You realize you’re about to make forty bikers fall madly in love with you, right?”
It was a joke, of course, but the comment still whipped a shiver of nervousness across Haven’s skin. “Nope,” she said. “They’ll all be in love with you.”
Bunny grabbed her purse from a cabinet near the back door. “Ah, the old case of mistaken identity. How tragic for them.” She gave Haven a wink. “Rodeo and I are heading out for the night. Call me if you need anything. Or just ask Dare. The man never leaves.” She waved over her shoulder and disappeared back the way she came.
“You know what?” Haven said, feeling better, lighter, more hopeful than she had in a long, long while.
“What?” Cora asked, grabbing a couple of bottles of water from the fridge.
“Today . . . today was a good day.” Not that anything big had really happened, but Haven’s threshold for good days was sadly low.
Cora handed Haven a bottle and slung her arm around her neck. “I can’t even tell you how ecstatic it makes me to see you happy. Or, at least, happier.”
“How about you?” Haven asked. “Are you happy? I know all this was way more than we ever—”
“I’m happy, too, Haven. Really,” Cora said. “I’m with my best friend, who for the first time in years I don’t have to worry about being mistreated by her father and his goons. Leaving Georgia was no sacrifice for me, you know this. I left a waitressing job at the truck stop and a drunk-ass father who—” She bit back the words and shook her head. “You know what? I’m not even dwelling on the past, because what makes me happy is that for the first time, we have a shot at a good, safe future. Together. Whatever it is has to be better than what we left, right?”
Haven nodded, Cora’s words echoing some of Haven’s own thoughts. But that didn’t keep her mind from sticking on whatever it was Cora had been about to say about her father.
“So I propose a toast,” Cora said, tilting out her water bottle. “To the future.”
“To the future,” Haven said with a smile. They tapped their water bottles. “Though I guess toasting with water is pretty lame.”
Laughing, Cora shrugged. “One big adventure at a time. Ha! You know what you should do? You should make a list.”
Haven sipped her water. “For what?”
“Of all the things you want to do and experience. All the adventures you want to have. Now that you’re finally free to have them.” Cora looked at her like she’d just invented sliced bread.
“And toasting with something more than water should be on this list?” Haven asked. How sad was it that she’d led such a sheltered life that something so boring would be new to her?
Then again, she’d seen and overheard and experienced things in her father’s house that she hoped the average person never did even once. She’d seen men stabbed, shot, drugged. She’d walked in on more sex acts than she wanted to recall—not all of them consensual. She’d overheard plans to commit crimes and seek revenge and bribe officials. All of this was done in front of her like she was furniture, or like they believed she was such a doormat that she was incapable of posing a threat. But she’d also fought off unwanted advances, which the men usually got in trouble for, since she “belonged” to her father, but inevitably he would also punish her—for tempting them, for flirting with them, for causing trouble.
“You gotta start somewhere, Haven.” Cora’s words pulled her from the bad memories.
They knocked bottles again, Cora’s idea becoming less and less harebrained the more Haven thought about it. She’d already mentally started a list anyway, hadn’t she? Having her own kitchen, a place someday where she could bake to her heart’s content? Skydiving, because what would feel more free than that? So, what could it hurt?
Haven linked arms with Cora as they made for the door. “You know what? Maybe I will.”
“HAVE YOU SEEN Haven and Cora?” Dare asked Bunny as he and a few other guys helped her clear the breakfast table the next morning. Despite the generally macho culture of the club, they weren’t too good to clean up after themselves. Besides, Bunny had made it clear long ago that there’d be no home-cooked meals around there unless there was help cleaning up after the fact. Bunny might’ve been Dare’s great-aunt, but they all pretty much did what Bunny said rather than face her wrath, or her stubborn streak, which was legendary.
“Not sure where Cora went, but Haven’s out on the back porch, I think,” Bunny said as he followed her into the kitchen with an armful of dirties.
“Why doesn’t Haven eat with everyone?” he asked. Even when Cora did, Haven usually didn’t. Dare wasn’t sure why he noticed that, or why it bothered him.