Collision Course
The Harley's engine had gone cold twenty minutes ago, but Jake stayed leaning against it anyway, one boot hooked over the other, arms crossed like a man who had nowhere else to be. That was the story he'd tell if anyone bothered to ask—waiting on Diaz, some bullshit about a shipment, a name that would buy him enough time to loiter on this particular stretch of sidewalk without drawing questions. Nobody had asked yet. Nobody would. Men who looked like Jake didn't get questioned on street corners in this city. They got given room.
Across the street, the flower shop glowed like something out of a dream he hadn't earned the right to have.
Bloom & Wild, the sign said, hand-painted letters in soft green, curling like vines around the edges of the window glass. Buckets of ranunculus and peonies crowded the doorway, color spilling out onto the pavement in a way that should have looked messy but somehow looked like the opposite—like the whole block had been arranged around that one riot of pink and gold. Jake had passed this corner a hundred times before in his life, gunning his bike toward better trouble, and never once noticed it. Now he couldn't look away.
She was standing behind the…
