“I like pizza.” A hand slid down the curve of my spine until I felt a strong pinch on my bottom. "What are you gonna eat? Cheese?" he snickered.

"Spinach alfredo, smart ass." I snorted and took a step away from him, rubbing where he'd gotten me.

Dex wrinkled his nose but made his way around me, swatting my rear when he had the chance. "Spinach alfredo it is, babe," he said.

I got into the truck after him, smiling like a moron. I was in the middle of thinking all about magical thin crust delicacies as Dex steered us out of the cemetery. For some reason, just as we were stopping at the gates, I happened to look across the street. There was one of those pay-per-hour motels on the corner.

"Left or right?" Dex asked.

It was supposed to be a left but something had me zeroing in on the hooker hostel. "Right." Worse case was, we could circle around and head back in the same direction, right?

Dex turned right.

I craned my head to look into the parking lot. What would I really find? Nothing, more than likely.

And I didn't, at first at least. Cars and trucks. Then I saw the handlebar. It could have been anyone's but what if it wasn't? It couldn't be that obvious...

I reached over to slap Dex's arm. "Pull in there, please."

That wonderful man didn't even bother asking why I wanted him to turn into the lot. Swinging the truck to a hard left, he drove the pickup into the two-story motel's parking lot. Up close now, the bike was like a kick to the sternum.

It was still shiny, black with a coil of red shot through the body. Almost a decade later, I still recognized it like the back of my hand. Torn between the memories of being a kid and climbing all over it when it'd been parked in the driveway, and the last memory I had of my dad riding away immediately after Mom's funeral, a frog curled in my throat.

"It's him."

The tires squealed as he slammed down on the brakes. Dex didn't even bother pulling into a spot before parking behind two cars in the lot. I was out of the truck before him, looking at all of the doors like I had some type of internal radar that let me know which room he was in.

"Lemme go find out where he's at," Dex murmured with a squeeze to my forearm.

Uhh...

Yeah, maybe I didn't want to know how he was planning on getting that information.

I stood there as he walked in the direction of the tiny office by the parking lot's entrance. Looking, looking, looking. In less than five minutes Dex's loose gait had him standing next to me.

I took a deep breath to steady my nerves and tipped my head up, trying to be confident. "Is the employee still alive?"

He smirked, the corner of his mouth arching up so high those pretty white teeth flashed at me. He tugged on the hem of my shirt. "Alive and fingers intact, babe."

"Smart ass." Not laughing was impossible. I held up my hand for a high-five. Dex shook his head with a chuckle and slapped it, linking our fingers together afterward.

"Let's go."

I wrapped my free hand around the inside of his elbow, taking confidence in the dark tattoos on his arms. They reminded me of Pins, and my friends there. Safety. Familiarity. Tattoos were Dex. My friend. My protector.

"Let's do this," I agreed.

Up the stairs we went. Down the hallway. A turn to the right.

And we stopped.

Dex held up a hand to knock on the door but I stopped him by grabbing his wrist. I ducked my head and pressed my lips to his thumb, sucking a breath to steady myself. Dex was watching me with those dark, steady eyes—curious.

"Thank you for coming with me," I whispered.

His nostrils flared, and he nodded briskly.

I knocked but no one answered immediately.

I knocked again, this time harder.

Still nothing.

I knocked even harder, faster, more annoyingly persistent.

Still, nothing.

Dex leaned over me, pounding his fist against the door. "Open the f**kin' door," he growled.

Oh hell.

Six foot three and bossy? As long as it wasn't directed at me, it made my ovaries sing an opera.

The lock turning was the only thing that pulled me from my Dex-fantasies. For some reason, I suddenly wondered whether my dad still had facial hair or not.

It was just like a movie in slow motion.

The door opening.

The dark hotel room.

The expectation.

At the door, a woman stood in a t-shirt three sizes too large. A woman that was possibly only a decade older than me.

"Uh, can I help you?"

If he was in there, I was going to kill him. I decided that immediately.

I ignored the woman in front of me and looked over my shoulder at my dark-haired Dex. I wasn't going to have a panic attack or turn into a rabid raccoon with him behind me, that was for sure. "Are you sure this is his room?"

All he needed to do was nod before a confidence and a rage I wasn't extremely familiar with, flooded my stomach.

Fuck this.

With balls that I didn't even know I had, I leaned forward and spoke louder than I probably ever had. "I know you're in there, and I'm not leaving until you get out here."

Where the hell had meek little Iris gone?

"The f**k?" the woman spat, frowning.

Classy. "The man in there with you needs to come talk to his daughter."

"Daughter?" Baloney. This woman was absolutely baloney.

There was a noise coming from the recesses of the hotel room, a voice talking so low I'm surprised the person in front of me could hear. My ears were ringing so loud with adrenaline and frankly anger that I couldn't hear anything clearly.

I had my eyes locked on the lady in front of me, taking in her dark hair, olive skin, light eyes. She was a poor replica of my mother, I thought, as mean as I would have normally assumed the thought was. But I didn't care then. I sized her up. I watched her take a step back and turn around to talk to the man in there.

I had to swallow hard to keep from making some awful noise. If it wouldn't have been for the warm heat on my back that radiated from Dex's chest, I'm not sure what I would have done as I waited for my father to come to the door.

My father. The thought was so immediately detached it should have alarmed me, but I'm surprised by how freeing it was. Not my dad. My father. My sperm donor in Sonny's words.

"Iris."

He was there.

Shorter than what I remembered, or maybe the careful balloon I'd inflated with his memory had been too exaggerated. Or maybe I'd just been around Dex's long bones for too long.

Curt Taylor stood there. With his heavily tattooed forearms void of any past Widowmaker insignia. A salt and pepper mustache curling his upper lip. Hair still short. And so much older than I remembered.

My heart churned in recognition—in need. But only for a split second. For a millisecond I allowed myself to miss him. To miss the times he'd made me feel like I was the most important person in the world to him.

But that time had been decades ago. A faded photograph. It was broken and corrupted.

And most specifically and fortunately for me, I'd been patched up along the way.

I let my hand reach backward until I grasped Dex's thigh, using it to center me as I stared at the man I'd denied myself loving for so long.

But the love I knew, the form of love I remember as a child was completely different than the version I recognized as an adult. There’s no chemistry to it. You can’t break apart love’s properties and make it something it’s not. I knew that now.