Page 1 of Crash’s Secret

CHAPTER 1

CASSIDY

The prospect spots me in my car through the chain-link and drops his clipboard.

“No way.” He hauls the gate open one-handed. “Cassidy Harlan.”

“Hey, Trapper.”

“Saber told us you were coming tomorrow. He’s gonna lose his mind.” He bounces on his heels, twenty-three and as loyal as a golden retriever. “Go. Go in.”

He waves me in. I park in front of my brother’s MC clubhouse.

Gravel pops under my boots the whole walk up. The clubhouse is loud enough to rattle its own windows with bass and laughter.

There are more bikes parked than I’ve ever counted here before, with plates from all over the country, instead of just Arizona.

Guys’ cuts in the parking lot have bottom rockers from charters that aren’t Ash Valley. Because the Hellborn Kings has chapters across the country, and above all of them sits National. The men who outrank even Saber.

The men who don’t ride eight hundred miles for a party.

The out-of-towners rode in two months ago, after years of trouble with a club called the Crimson Warriors.

And the Warriors have been lying low since National got involved. That doesn’t mean the danger is over.

The guys from National aren’t staying much longer, though, from what Saber told me. Two months is a long time.

I push the door open.

The noise hits first. Then the smell—beer, smoke, and leather. The main area of the clubhouse is exactly how I left it four years ago: pool table, the bar running the length of the far wall, and a kitchen near the back.

And him. Crash. The Vice President of the Ash Valley Hellborn Kings.

He’s behind the bar, telling a story to a group of guys. Tall, dirty blond, a beard, ink down both forearms, and that grin. He’s just as hot as I remember him.

A woman on a stool is flirting with him, and he’s flirting right back, leaning in close like she’s the only person in the room. He doesn’t touch her. He doesn’t have to. She wants him regardless.

I used to think that was charm. Whatever it is, he’s never once aimed it at me.

I’ve been in love with my brother’s best friend since I was a kid. When I left for college, I told myself I’d forget about him. It’s been four years since, and my body still hasn’t gotten the message.

One look at him and I’m a teenager again, infatuated with a man who’s never looked at me twice.

He’s been friends with my brother since grade school, and since they’re nine years older than me, I’ve known Crash my whole life. He’s been at every barbecue, every party, and every big event.

It wasn’t one thing that made me fall for him. It was a million small actions that formed one big feeling.

It was him remembering I took my coffee with too much sugar and pouring it that way without asking, every time, for years.

It was the summer I was fourteen, and a couple of older boys hung around the edge of a club barbecue looking at me, and Crash drifted over and stood at my shoulder until they found somewhere else to be. He never said a word about it, to me or them.

It was the way he’d actually answer my questions about the bikes instead of waving me off like a kid.

It was a hundred Friday nights of him sliding a soda down the bar to me before I asked.

None of it meant anything to him. That’s the part that took me years to understand. He was being good to his best friend’s little sister, the same as he’d have been good to anybody Saber loved. To Crash, it was nothing. To me, it was everything.

His eyes find me. His grin disappears.