Chapter 10 Dean
Dean
The morning after the Sultans bled their trouble all over the Humane Society, I swung by the cinderblock building to see if Emily would look me in the eye after last night, or if she’d revert to treating me like one of the wild ones—dangerous, possibly rabid, not to be trusted until sedated.
She was there, behind the counter, refilling the water bowls.
I watched her through the glass as she worked.
The movements were all wrong: hands moving too fast, spilling more than she poured; shoulders hitched up, like she was ready for a blow that never came.
She wore the same navy polo from yesterday, new stains crawling up the placket, but her hair was loose and unwashed, the color darkened by sweat and maybe a few tears.
When I stepped inside, the ammonia bit my sinuses.
The usual barking started, but this time it hit a higher, more desperate pitch.
Emily’s head jerked up at the noise, and she flinched so hard she nearly dropped the pitcher.
I forced my body language soft, hands out, like approaching a skittish rescue.
“Hey,” I said, keeping my voice lower than usual.
She didn’t look at me. She focused on the slow arc of water into the next dish, missing half of it. “Thought you’d be busy with club stuff.”
“Not till later.” I leaned against the counter, careful to leave space. “I figured you’d be home.”
She shrugged, then reached for the mop with a too-quick motion.
“We’re down three staff, and Taryn’s in the hospital.
Someone has to clean up the mess.” Her voice was flat, just a notch above monotone.
She wrung the mop with white knuckles, and I recognized the afterburn of adrenaline still cycling through her system.
A mutt in the corner started in with a series of barks, sharp and repetitive. Emily’s hand jerked, and the mop handle snapped against the sink. She cursed, then gripped the edge so hard her nails left crescent moons in the laminate.
“Rough night?” I asked, but it came out half-joking, half-patronizing.
She finally looked up at me, and her eyes were still ringed in yesterday’s makeup, lashes spiked and clumped like wet feathers. “I didn’t sleep.” She pulled her mouth into a smirk, but it broke halfway. “Too busy deleting security footage.”
I smiled. “We covered our asses.”
There was a pause. The hum of the air conditioner and the low, uncertain whimpering of a dog behind the door filled the silence.
I could see the exact moment she remembered everything—how I’d caught the knife, how I’d bled onto her, how we’d fucked in the back kennel like the world was going to end.
Her face flushed, but she held my gaze this time.
I wanted to ask if she was okay. Instead, I let the silence grow until it forced the truth out on its own.
“You should go home,” I said, gentler than I meant to. “It’s not like they’re going to fire you for one day.”
She bristled, chin up, mouth set. “I can’t. The place is barely holding together as it is.” She started mopping again, a little less violently, but I could see the tremor in her forearms.
The bell over the door jangled, and a round woman in a Humane Society t-shirt waddled in, arms loaded with donation bags. She took one look at Emily’s face, then at me, and frowned.
“You all right, hon?” she asked, setting the bags down.
“Fine, Marsha,” Emily said, not missing a beat, but her knuckles were still white.
Marsha looked at me with the scrutiny of a mother bear sizing up a problem bear. “You the biker from yesterday?” she asked.
I nodded.
Marsha grunted. “Well. Thank you for saving her, I suppose. Though you could’ve done without all the extra drama. Why don’t you take her for a walk, clear her head?” It wasn’t a suggestion. “You’re no good to these animals if you’re jumping at shadows, Em.”
Emily started to protest, but Marsha cut her off. “Out. Now. I’ll watch the desk.”
Emily blinked, then let the mop fall, water pooling around her boots. She opened her mouth, maybe to argue, but then something cracked in her face, and she let out a laugh—a thin, watery sound that was more relief than amusement.
“Fine,” she said, wiping her hands on her jeans. She didn’t look at me as she walked past, but when I followed, she didn’t tell me to fuck off, either.
Out in the parking lot, the sun was merciless. Emily squinted and ducked behind a shade structure, rubbing at her wrist like she was trying to erase last night’s handprint. I followed, keeping a careful step behind.
“You don’t have to ride with me,” I said, thumb hooked on my belt loop. “I can drive you, or walk, or whatever.”
She glanced at the bike, then at the sky. “If you think I’m climbing on that thing after last night, you’re insane.”
I grinned, hoping it would ease the tension. “You could walk. But I think you’d regret it after the first block.”
She rolled her eyes, then snorted. “Give me a helmet.”
We walked to the bike in silence. She paused at the curb, watching the heat shimmer above the pavement. I saw her take a deep breath, then another, like she was psyching herself up for surgery.
She climbed on behind me, arms wrapping tight around my waist. The pressure was desperate, almost painful, but I let her hold as hard as she wanted. I fired up the engine, and the vibration ran through us both, equal parts comfort and threat.
As we pulled away, I watched the rearview. Emily’s eyes were closed, face pressed into the leather of my jacket. She held on for dear life, but this time, I didn’t mind. This time, it felt like she was holding me together, too.
When we hit the main drag, I took the long way home.
Let the world slip past us, let the sun burn off the stink of everything we’d survived. Let her breathe, and maybe, just maybe, let myself breathe, too.
She started to loosen up a mile or so past the high school.
Her arms slackened, her body fell into sync with mine, so that when I leaned into the long right turn near the water tower, she followed, the two of us dipping low as a single unit.
The wind picked up, sharp and dry, peeling the sweat off my neck and slapping it down the front of my shirt.
I could feel her hair whipping across my shoulders, and every time it caught on my chin or cheek, I got a whiff of something clean, like lemon shampoo and hope.
We climbed the long hill past the nuclear museum, the only sound the steady roar of the engine and the occasional slap of wind in my ears.
I let the bike drift toward the double yellow, keeping a buffer between us and the line of pickups crawling in the other direction.
Every car we passed, I checked the drivers out of habit, not paranoia, though today the distinction was blurry.
I caught myself tilting the left mirror to keep an eye on the road behind, but nothing followed us.
No Sultans, no club, not even a loose cop with time to kill.
Emily pressed her cheek to the leather between my shoulders.
It was soft from a decade of use, and I wondered if she could feel my heart beating through it, or if she just liked the shelter of it—the way it blocked the wind and maybe a little bit of the world.
She didn’t say a word, but I could tell from the way her hands moved that the terror was starting to ebb, replaced by something closer to curiosity.
The way her palms explored the surface, the tips of her fingers tracing the Bloody Scythes patch, the slow realization that no one was going to yank her off this bike and put her down for being too fragile to fight back.
We crested the next rise, and the town fell away behind us.
To the left, the desert dropped off into scrub and red dirt, all the way to the line of mountains that ringed the horizon.
The right side was a mix of tumbled rock and the odd cluster of stunted pinon.
The air up here smelled different—less engine exhaust, more sun-baked sage and whatever was left after years of wildfires.
I slowed the bike, just a little, to let her see the view.
She didn’t let go, but she did lift her head.
I felt her inhale, her ribs pressing into my back, as if she needed proof the world was still out here and still hers for the taking.
She started to move with the bike, not against it, so when I banked into the hairpin above White Rock, she leaned with me, her chin bumping my shoulder, her hands splayed over my stomach now instead of locked tight.
“You good?” I shouted, voice nearly lost in the rush.
I felt the rumble of her laughter, or maybe it was just a shiver. “Better than good.” She didn’t let go, but now it was for her own reasons.
At the overlook, I swung off the road and killed the engine. The sudden silence was so complete, I could hear the heat clicking in the metal. Emily’s hands lingered at my waist, then fell away like she was letting go of a life raft.
She slid off the bike and landed on wobbly legs.
She shook out her arms and hands, then wiped sweat from her upper lip, eyes wide and alive in a way I hadn’t seen before.
Her hair was a disaster, the ends wild from the helmet and the wind, but she looked less like someone who’d survived a trauma and more like someone who wanted to see what else was out there.
I let her catch her breath before I said anything.
She walked to the edge of the pullout and looked down at the valley, the flat bowl of Los Alamos spread out below, the city blocks shrinking into colored Lego pieces.
She turned back to me, and for the first time all day, she smiled without forcing it.
“Did you do this for me?” she asked, voice a little raw.
“Did what?” I played dumb, but she saw right through it.
“Pick this spot. This view.”
I snorted, hands busy with the bungee on my saddlebag. “You’re the first.” It was true, and I let her see it. “Bikers are supposed to be secretive. Vulnerability is just another way to get shot.”
She considered that, eyes narrowing. “So why bring me?”
I unzipped the bag and pulled out the battered old thermos.
“Because you saw me. Last night, in the kennel. Not just the blood, or the rage, or the mess. You looked me in the eye after, and you didn’t flinch.
I can’t say that about anyone else. I know what people see when they look at me.
I don’t fucking blame them for thinking what they do. ”
She went quiet, a subtle tension rolling off her, but she took the thermos when I offered it.
We found a flat spot on the big rock that jutted out like a throne for two, legs dangling over the drop.
The stone still held the warmth of the sun, but the air had already begun to chill, the kind of desert cold that snaps into place as soon as the light starts to die.
We sat, side by side, passing the thermos back and forth. The coffee inside was bitter, gone lukewarm, but she drank it like she was dying of thirst.
I traced a line in the dirt with my boot, the words coming slowly.
“After my dad died, I came up here a lot. Not sure why. Guess it was the only place that felt honest.” I thumbed the dog tags at my throat, the metal cool against my skin.
“Everything down there felt like a movie set. But up here—” I swept a hand at the world, the vast, empty space.
“Up here, I remembered how small my problems really were. How easy it is to disappear if you stop trying.”
She pulled her knees up, hugging them to her chest, the coffee cradled between.
“I get that. When things got rough at home, I’d stay after hours at the shelter.
Scrub floors, organize meds, anything to not be alone in my head.
” She drew a pattern on the knee of her jeans, a nervous tic.
“It’s easier to care for animals than people.
Animals don’t betray you or change their minds.
Even when they bite, you see it coming.”
I looked at her, the cut on her cheek healing already, the eyes sharper and brighter than when I’d met her. “You’re not alone, you know. Not unless you want to be.”
She made a sound, soft and dismissive, but she didn’t move away. “I’ve always been alone. Even when I’m not.”
We sat like that a long while, letting the silence fill up with sky. The sunset hit its stride, casting everything in shades of blood and honey, the kind of light that makes even ugly places look holy. I wanted to reach for her hand, to break the distance, but I waited.
Eventually, the wind picked up, and she shivered.
I shrugged out of my jacket and draped it around her shoulders.
The leather was too big for her, the sleeves dangling past her hands, but she pulled it tight and closed her eyes, inhaling deep.
I could see her shoulders relax, the shiver replaced by a slow exhale, a visible settling.
“Smells like you,” she said, voice half-muffled.
“Better than smelling like dog piss,” I replied.
She laughed, the sound sharp and sudden, then looked at me sidelong. “I think you’re trying to be romantic.”
I shrugged, a little embarrassed. “Maybe I am. Maybe it’s not as hard as I thought.”
The moment stretched. She turned to face me, her hair whipped by the wind, her face so close I could see the freckles across her nose. I brushed a strand from her cheek, slow, so she could stop me if she wanted. She didn’t.
When I kissed her, I went gentle. I waited for the flinch that never came. Her lips were cold, then warming against mine, and the kiss deepened, a slow burn that built until she pressed in, hand catching the back of my neck, holding me there like she was afraid I might vanish.
We broke apart, both a little breathless.
“You don’t do this often, do you?” she said, and for once, there was no armor in her voice.
“No,” I admitted. “I’m not very trusting.”
She rested her head on my shoulder, the cut of her jaw perfect against the curve of my collarbone. “Me either. So let’s not fuck it up.”
I promised her nothing, but I meant everything. We sat together, the sky fading from red to blue to black, and watched the lights of Los Alamos flicker on, each one a signal that somebody else was still out there, still holding on.
Maybe it was enough, for now, to just sit in the dark and not be afraid.
Maybe that’s what hope felt like, after all the bullshit and all the blood: a cold wind, a borrowed jacket, and the sense that, for the first time in your life, someone had chosen to stay.