Maybe they'd changed numbers. Maybe they'd died. I had no idea. It didn't really matter to me that much either way. It wasn't like we were good friends or anything. But it left me with nothing to give to Fallon. Which also meant I had no reason to contact him again as the days stretched on.
The members of his club rolled back into town in shifts, driven in bullet-resistant SUVs and flanked not only by the Hailstorm guards, but local allies as well.
And then, nothing.
Absolutely fucking nothing.
Days slowly turned into weeks.
And eventually, life had to start going back to normal.
My club had their parties which I'd only ever briefly shown my faces at, just to show I wasn't a complete buzzkill, even if that was how I felt.
I often found myself going back to that goddamn laundromat, climbing up onto the roof, and watching the Henchmen club.
Not like a rival watches their enemies.
Oh, no.
Like a desperate woman just wanting to catch a single glimpse at a man.
I watched as their people were tentatively released from the clubhouse, going back to their own lives, but with guards keeping them company.
I watched the wives come and go from the clubhouse, spending time with their husbands when they were on long guard shifts.
But I hardly ever caught sight of Fallon.
That wasn't to say he wasn't moving around, but rather I was only letting myself be somewhat creepy and pathetic.
A girl's got to have a little bit of self-respect.
So I only went to the roof for a half an hour or so when I could sneak away. Not a full-on stalker, but damn sure stalkerish, which wasn't a good look either, but I couldn't seem to stop myself.
The thing is, I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to see him.
And I had no way to do that.
So I tried to fill that surprisingly desperate urge with something, anything that might help me stop obsessing for two fucking minutes put together.
I would love to claim it was just pure, undiluted, all-consuming lust. That would be easy. I could wrap my head around that. Because the sex was good. Great. Fucking amazing, if I were being honest. It was natural that I would want more of that.
I did.
Absolutely.
But as much as I tried to convince myself that there was nothing more to it, I knew that wasn't true.
There was more to what I was feeling with Fallon than just attraction.
If all I wanted was an orgasm, I could easily get it by opening the box under my bed and installing some new batteries.
It was more than that.
I wanted to see him. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to be near him.
I didn't understand any of those urges, I just knew they were there. And that the longer we went without any contact, the more intense the need seemed to grow.
So I let myself watch.
Just a little bit.
Which was how I saw him on the day he closed on his house—a little bungalow-style place that I wouldn't have thought he'd pick, but I found oddly charming.
It was how I saw some of the guys help him move some of his shit from the clubhouse in.
It was also how I knew he'd just bought a big sectional for his living room and a king-sized bed.
"Enough," I grumbled to myself, slamming my head back against the brick wall after coming down the stairs of the laundromat.
It had stopped being acceptable weeks before.
I was the kind of pathetic that I would have made fun of before. The woman trailing after a man with puppy-dog eyes like she had no fucking self-control, like she didn't realize how laughable she was making herself.
I never trailed after a man.
I never gave a shit about what they did with their lives.
Men had always been a prop in my life. Glorified sex toys, even. That was it. That was all they could ever be.
So it made no sense why I was letting myself become creepy over Fallon.
So what if we'd had some great sex?
So what if we'd both shared some things?
It didn't mean anything.
Clearly, it didn't mean jack-shit to Fallon who didn't seem like he was giving me even a passing thought as he got his life and his club back on track.
Hell, he wasn't even reaching out with any information he might have found about potential threats.
He didn't give a shit about me.
So I needed to get myself together.
On that thought, I got on my bike, making my way back toward my part of town, stopping to order at the pizza place to surprise the guys with, deciding I was going to spend the night in with them for a change.
It had been a long time since I'd shared more than a drink or two with them.
I needed to focus on what mattered, on what I worked my whole life for.