Page 1 of Meant for You

Chapter One

Dane

I lifted my hand to the window frame and looked down at the street below.

Everly.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she headed toward The Thirsty Mule, my cousin Bull’s bar, with the sun lighting up her auburn hair like wildfire. Her posse was with her—they were always with her—and no one was letting me get close. Not even my sister-in-law, Cassy.

Nothing had changed. After eighteen months of not seeing or talking to her, one look at Everly and everything in my world felt right again.

Well, almost right.

She was smiling, but that was because up here in my apartment above Rocktown Ink—the tattoo shop owned by my brother, Cal, and my place of work again as of tomorrow—she couldn’t see me.

Or run away from me.

Grifter moved in, following my line of sight. “Wondered what had you sucking face with the window. Which one is she?”

Grifter—also known as Riff, and in a previous life, Jessie Williams—was a member of the Ramblers MC, and in a short time he’d become family.

When I started working at Bunker’s Tattoo and Piercing, the parlor owned by one of his club brothers in Black Stone, we’d discovered we had a lot in common. Grifter was twenty-four, the same age as me, had a fucked childhood—though his was a whole hell of a lot worse than mine—and we’d both been close to finishing our apprenticeships.

Maybe we were just the same brand of fucked up. Whatever it was, we became tight.

“The redhead,” I said, still watching her. Grifter and I had spent more than one messy night confessing our ugly truths after a bottle of whiskey or two, and he knew all about my girl.

Leaving Rocktown had been hard, but Black Stone had been the right move for me after the shit I’d gotten into, almost getting sent to prison for assault, leaving Cal and Bull no choice but to bail me out of another fuckup.

Yeah, walking away had been the right thing to do for all of us.

But disappearing from Everly’s life had been the hardest thing I’d ever done. I’d stayed away from her because all I seemed to do was cause her pain, and in doing that, I’d lost her.

I’d lost my best friend.

Now she lived here, in my hometown, after striking up a friendship with Cassy and finally accepting a job on Cassy and Cal’s ranch.

“Any of her friends single?” Riff asked.

I shrugged. “The classy blond is Cal’s woman, Cassy. The woman beside her, dark hair, that’s Quinn. She’s Bull’s. And since Eves won’t look at me, let alone talk to me, I have no fucking clue who the brunette with the glasses is. And you know Trix.” The new tattooist Cal had hired six months ago.

“The brunette it is,” Riff said, leaning closer to the glass. “Yeah, she looks all clean and shiny and new. Bet she smells good, too.”

“Christ, the shit that comes out of your mouth.”

Riff shrugged, eyes still locked on Everly’s friend—well, I assumed that’s who she was. Going by the way they were all laughing, it looked like they were close. I liked that. I wanted her to make new friends. I also wanted her to stop ignoring me before I lost my damn mind.

“I’ve been through all the tail at the club, repeatedly,” Riff said. “I’m bored. I could do with shiny and new.”

I knew this already. Grifter looked like he could be a Calvin Klein underwear model. The guy had the face of an angel. And yeah, I’d literally heard women say that shit to his face. But he was also ruthless, would do anything for his club, and was covered in ink from the neck down.

“I don’t even have to talk to her to know that girl’s not the kind you fuck around with. She’s the kind you date exclusively, then put a ring on it.”

Riff jerked back from the window and clutched his junk. “Dude, my balls just climbed up inside my body. No fucking ring talk around me and the boys.”

Fucking nut. “I think it’s best you keep your boys away from that girl.”

Riff shrugged. “So we going for a ride or what?”