Chapter 1 #2
He almost smiles. "You know those locks work fine. You installed them yourself."
He goes down the ladder before I can respond. Strategic move on his part.
* * *
I ride over to Nova and Mei's apartment after dark.
The sun's been down for about an hour, and the city has shifted into its nighttime gear.
Chihuahua at night loosens up, the heat backing off just enough that people spill out of doorways onto sidewalks, and the streets in the university district fill with students and noise.
The smell of street food hits me two blocks before I get there—corn on the cob slathered in mayo and cotija and chile, the sharp tang of lime, meat charring over coals at a taco cart on the corner.
I park my bike at the curb outside her building and pull off my helmet.
Sit there for a second with the engine ticking and the heat radiating off the asphalt.
Her window is lit on the second floor—the warm one, the lamp instead of the overhead.
There's a plant on her windowsill she's been keeping alive through sheer stubbornness and what she claims is a strict watering schedule that I suspect involves a lot of apologizing to the plant when she forgets.
Mei's window on the other side of the apartment is dark.
Early sleeper. Nightmares will do that—either they keep you up all night or they make you chase unconsciousness the second the sun goes down, trying to get ahead of whatever's waiting.
I take the stairs two at a time and knock. Three knocks, spaced even.
The door opens and Nova's standing there in leggings and an oversized t-shirt with the university's nursing program logo faded across the chest.
Her dark brown hair is pulled up in a messy knot with pieces falling loose around her face, her jaw, and the line of her neck.
She's barefoot. Toenails painted dark red.
I notice things I shouldn't notice. I do it every time.
The freckle below her left ear. The tiny scar on her chin she told me she got from falling off a bike when she was seven. The way her collarbones catch the warm light from that lamp.
"Let me guess," she says, leaning her shoulder against the doorframe and crossing her arms. "The locks."
"Security check." I step past her into the apartment.
The place is warm and lived-in.
Textbook open on the couch, highlighter uncapped beside it, notebook with her handwriting—small, neat, slanted left—covering half a page of notes on pharmacology or anatomy or whatever they're drilling into nursing students this week.
A mug of tea on the coffee table, the tag hanging over the rim.
The kitchen light is on and there's a pot on the stove, lid slightly askew, steam curling toward the ceiling.
Whatever she's cooking smells like home in a way that makes my chest do something I'm going to ignore.
"Mei's asleep," Nova says, closing the door behind me and locking it. "She had a rough one."
I nod. Mei's rough days don't need explaining.
I check the front door deadbolt—solid, no play in the frame.
Move to the living room window—locked, security film intact.
Kitchen window, same.
The sliding door to the small balcony—latch engaged, dowel in the track the way I showed her.
"You know," she says from behind me, and I can hear the grin without turning around, "for a man who barely strings two words together, you sure do find a lot of excuses to show up at my apartment."
I turn around.
She's leaning against the kitchen counter with her mug in both hands, watching me over the rim.
Those dark eyes that miss nothing, that see straight through the security check bullshit and the lock inspections and every other excuse I've manufactured over the past month to stand in this apartment and look at her.
"Locks are good," I tell her.
"They were good last time." She takes a sip. "And the time before that. And last Monday, too."
"Can't be too careful."
"Emiliano." She says my name and I go still.
Nobody calls me that.
My mother sometimes, when she's scared or proud and can't tell the difference.
Nobody else has used that name in years.
But Nova found out and decided she could, and every time she says it, I feel it land somewhere low in my stomach.
"The locks are fine," she says. "You know that. I know that. Mei knows that, and she told me to tell you that if you wake her up rattling the balcony door again, she's throwing your helmet off the roof."
I almost crack a smile. "Mei doesn't scare me."
"She should. She's meaner than she looks." Nova sets her mug down on the counter and takes a step toward me.
One step. She's close enough now that I can see the faint dark circles under her eyes from too many late nights studying, and the place on her lower lip where she's been chewing on it while she reads.
Close enough to touch if I let myself, and I am not going to let myself.
"So why do you keep coming over?" she asks. Her voice is lower now, quieter. Not teasing anymore.
"You know why."
"Maybe I want to hear you say it."
She's looking up at me and her lips are parted.
Her hands are at her sides and she's close enough that the heat coming off her skin is coming to mine even through my shirt, and every single functioning brain cell I have left is telling me to step back. Walk out. Get on the bike. Go home.
She's Roxy's daughter. Three fathers. Montana blood. Club family, club royalty down to her bones.
If I touch her, there's no version of this that stays simple.
There's no casualness with a woman like Nova.
There's no hitting it and walking away.
She's the kind of woman you burn your whole life down for, and I've already burned down enough.
But she's standing barefoot in her kitchen, looking at me like none of that matters.
Like she's already done the math and decided the risk is worth it, and she's just waiting for me to catch up.
"It's late," I manage.
"It's barely past eight."
"I should go."
"Probably." She doesn't move. Neither do I.
The refrigerator hums. The pot on the stove ticks softly as it cools. Music from a bar a few streets over carries faintly through the walls—a bass line I can feel more than hear.
Nova's standing close enough that I can count the loose strands of hair against her neck, and my hands are at my sides.
I'm holding them there through an act of will that's costing me more than any fight I've ever been in.
She reaches up and adjusts the chain around my neck. Just barely. Her fingertips brush my collarbone and I stop breathing.
"Buenas noches, Emiliano," she says softly, and steps back.
I don't trust my voice so I just nod, turn around, and walk to the door.
I let myself out and pull it shut behind me.
"Lock it," I say through the door.
I hear the deadbolt slide home, her footsteps moving away from the door, and then nothing.
I take the stairs down and walk out into the Chihuahua night.
The heat wraps around me like a second skin after the cool of her apartment.
I throw a leg over my Dyna and pull my helmet on and sit there in the dark with my hands on the grips, not moving, not starting the engine.
Just sitting with it. Whatever this is. Whatever she's doing to me.
I start the bike and ride back to the compound, and the whole way home, I think about the softness of her fingertips on my collarbone.