Chapter 32 #2
She looks over her shoulder, braid swinging, and gives me a look that says yeah, I do without saying it.
I follow her down the hall, snagging clean clothes while she disappears into the bathroom.
Jeans, dark T-shirt, my cut, boots. She steps out in black leggings and a soft gray sweater that slips off one shoulder.
It shows a clean line of skin I'm eager to put my mouth on in six different ways.
She zips her leather jacket, fingers quick, and all I can think is mine.
"What?" she asks, catching me.
"Nothing. Just admiring my life choices."
Her ears go pink. "You're impossible."
"Yet you're still here."
Outside, cool air that smells of exhaust, wet pavement, and the faint bite of someone's woodstove. The bike waits, black and chrome.
I settle her helmet over her head, fingers careful under her jaw, checking the strap the way I always do.
She holds still for it, eyes on mine. Then I swing on and she climbs up behind me without hesitation.
The engine rumbles to life. Her arms slide fully around my waist, her chest to my back, cheek between my shoulder blades.
Yeah. This.
I pull out and open her up on the main two-lane road.
Once we're straight and steady, my hand finds her thigh and traces the seam of her leggings with my thumb.
Trees flash by. Her thighs bracket mine, gripping when I lean into turns.
My hand stays on her leg, only leaving when I need both hands for the road, always coming back.
By the time we roll into the gravel lot, some of the static in my head has burned off in the wind. I cut the engine, sudden quiet ringing. I swing off and lift her helmet off. Her cheeks flushed from cold and speed, eyes bright.
"You good?"
"That helped," she says simply.
Inside, the diner is exactly as shitty as always, sticky tables, squeaky vinyl, old coffee and fresh grease baked into the walls. The clown mural leers from the back corner. I scowl at it on principle.
Mara, our usual waitress, clocks us and smirks. "Clown view?"
"Don't start. Window."
She snorts and leads us to a booth. I take the side facing the door out of habit. Sloane slides in next to me instead of across, hip pressed firm to mine, as though there was never any question where she belongs.
If I die today, that image is going with me.
Mara fills our mugs without asking. Coffee's terrible and exactly right.
Sloane wraps both hands around her cup, watching steam curl. Shoulder leaning into mine.
"What?" she asks when she catches me watching.
"Just thinking I love this on you."
She glances around. "Greasy diner lighting and clown-adjacent ambiance?"
"You. Me. Pancakes. Nobody screaming your old name as a threat. You sitting next to me because you want to, not because the world's on fire." She looks down, blinking too fast. "Pancakes or waffles?" I ask, dragging us to safer ground.
"Both," she says immediately, then freezes as though she didn't mean to say it.
I grin. "Both it is."
We order too much. Mara doesn't blink, just yells the ticket.
"She thinks we're monsters," Sloane says.
"Good thing she's fond of monsters. Keeps the coffee coming."
The food comes fast, pancakes the size of her face, waffles drowning in strawberries, bacon, eggs, toast. She takes one bite and closes her eyes as though it's church.
I nearly groan. "That good?"
"Best thing I've ever eaten," she says around a second bite.
"Rude. I've definitely given you better."
Her eyes cut to mine, heat flashing. "I was being polite." If she keeps talking that way in public, I'm going to forget we're in public.
We eat and let the heavy stuff sit in the corner. Talk drifts to Maggie's campaign to feed the county, the prank war, Frankie plotting pastel revenge murders, Darla turning East's revenge costume into a strip-show power move.
Sloane jabs her fork at me. "You started Operation Payback. You can't complain now that it's evolving."
"It was supposed to rattle you. Not inspire Ruby to launch a livestock acquisition plan."
She grins and digs out her phone. "Speaking of. Ruby's serious about the goat." She tilts the screen toward me. There are two photos of smug pygmy goats. One with floppy ears, one staring straight at the camera as though it already owns the place.
"She's narrowed it down. General Mayhem or Nasty Nash Jr."
"Absolutely not," I say, but my brain's already painting the picture. Ruby leading a goat on a glitter leash while Nash pretends he doesn't care and everyone else pretends we're not doomed.
"She's already Googling fencing," Sloane murmurs.
"Over my dead body is a goat moving into my clubhouse."
Sloane laughs quietly, soft and warm. That sound hits somewhere behind my ribs.
The curve of her mouth, the way her eyes light when she talks about our people.
Then it hits me. It's not the goat she's testing.
It's us. This. The idea that there's a future where she can say our clubhouse and our chaos without anybody snatching it back.
Her gaze goes distant. "It never stops feeling strange. Saying things out loud. Planning around something. And no one telling me it's too much, or stupid, or not mine to keep."
I want to burn every person responsible for that sentence down to ash.
"You say it's yours," I tell her, hand sliding under the table to squeeze her thigh, "and it's yours. No take-backs. That's the deal."
She bites her lower lip, eyes flicking to mine. I'd rather be the one biting it.
After breakfast, we ride with no destination.
Just asphalt, air, her arms around my waist. My hand on her thigh, her palms flat against my stomach.
With every mile, those small defensive tensions bleed out of her shoulders.
By the time we end up downtown, her thumbs are drawing idle circles against my abs.
We park outside the bookstore Maggie loves. The bell chimes. It smells of dust, paper, and faint incense.
I buy her a book without reading the back because she tells me her teenage self had to hide one under her mattress so her father wouldn't see. Her grown-up self shouldn't have to sneak romance novels.
She tries to argue. I arch a brow. She rolls her eyes and lets me pay. Progress.
By the time we head home, the sun's higher, air warmer. She's quieter on the ride, in that thoughtful way she gets when she's sorting new data. The kind of quiet that's not closing off, just rearranging.
We pull in, engine ticking down. She swings off and I follow her inside.
The house feels different. Less staging ground. More as though it's something we both live in. I shrug off my cut, hang it on the hook, then pull my shirt over my head.
"Knox." Sharp. I glance over. She's staring at my ribs.
"When did this happen?" she says, already crossing to me.
Her fingers hover over the bruise, which has spread wide across my left side, the edges yellowing while the center has gone a deep, angry purple that means the damage runs deeper than surface.
The Holloway garage. The support beam I helped Kyle leverage off that woman. My ribs took the brunt when the metal shifted, but there was too much adrenaline and too many screaming people to register it.
"Holloway," I say. "When we pulled that woman free."
"That was days ago. You've been walking around with this and didn't say a word."
"Wasn't a priority."
"Deep tissue contusions are always a priority." Nurse voice. Clinical. Pissed. "You should've said something."
"Why?" I catch her wrist gently. "So you could add it to the list of things you're carrying?"
"So I could've treated it." She pulls free and heads down the hall. "Bathroom. Now."
She's already pulling supplies from under the sink when I get there. She straightens, kit in hand, and points at the toilet lid. "Sit."
"Yes, ma'am," I drawl.
She gives me a look that says don't start and I drop onto the lid. She steps between my knees without hesitation. The space puts us close, closer than professional, and she has to know what that does to me.
"Let me see," she says, fingers already reaching.
I lean back. Her touch is gentle, professional, testing for breaks. Brow furrowed, bottom lip caught between her teeth.
"Does this hurt?"
"Not when you touch it."
A look. "Knox."
"It's true."
Her hands turn me so she can check the mirror. She sucks in a breath. "You have a cut here too. Deep enough it should've been cleaned days ago."
"Do I?"
"Don't play dumb." She reaches for antiseptic. "This could've gotten infected."
"Hasn't yet."
"That's not the point." She dabs with more force than necessary. I hiss.
"Baby," she murmurs automatically, leaning in to blow cool air over it.
My hands find her hips. "Keep doing that and this isn't staying professional."
"I'm cleaning a wound."
"You're touching me." I pull her closer between my thighs. "Nothing professional about what that does to me."
Heat floods her cheeks, but she doesn't pull away. "Impossible."
"And you love it."
She doesn't deny it. Just keeps working.
She cleans and closes the cut with butterfly strips, then layers gauze and tape over it.
When she moves to the bruise, she presses a cold pack against the worst of the purple and holds it there, her other hand braced on my shoulder for balance.
Her touch gentles as she traces the edges, mapping the damage as though she's committing it to memory.
"I'm sorry," she whispers.
"For what?"
"For not catching this sooner. For being so wrapped up in my own—"
"Stop." I frame her face. "You had every right. You just told a room full of people your darkest secrets. Confessed things you've been carrying for two years. You think I'm mad you didn't treat a bruise in the middle of that?"
Her lip trembles. "I'm supposed to catch these things. I'm a medic."
"You're my wife first. Medic second. I'm good with that."
A broken sound, and she leans forward, pressing her forehead to mine. We stay there. Breathing together. Then she shifts, lips brushing my temple. My cheek. The corner of my mouth.
"Thank you," she whispers.
"For what?"
"For being patient with me."
I pull back enough to see her. "Sweetheart, I'd wait forever if that's what you needed."
She leans in and presses her lips to the edge of the gauze on my ribs. Soft. Reverent. My hands tighten on her hips. She kisses the bruise next, gentle as a whisper. Then the unmarked skin beside it. Then higher, over my heart.
"There," she says, meeting my eyes. "All better."
"Not even close," I rasp, thumbs brushing the undersides of her breasts through her sweater. "But we're getting there."
Her eyes darken. Her hands slide from my shoulders to my chest, fingers splaying over the ink.
"Knox." Soft and dangerous.
"Yeah, sweetheart?"
She holds my gaze, cheeks flushed, breathing shallow. "Take me to bed."
Every circuit in my head fries. Instantly. My control snaps. I stand up and lift her in the same motion. Her legs wrap around my waist, her mouth finding mine, hot, desperate, perfect.
"Yeah," I growl against her lips, already carrying her down the hall. "I can do that."