Chapter 19
Knife let her lead most of the way back.
He liked being able to keep an eye on her.
Liked watching her. He shook his head, because that was such an understatement, it leaned into dishonesty because he’d loved watching her experience his favorite trail all fucking day long.
But down that road lay danger, so he tried not to think too hard about the cherries and dark chocolate, salted with fancy flakes in her damned trail mix.
Her genuine annoyance at the disappearing creek, the way she’d described Blue Hole Falls as oversaturated, how she’d climbed the Fruit Bowl with fucking glee.
She only stopped a few times on the return trip, and he wasn’t at all surprised when one of them was the spot where the water disappeared, then where it reappeared. She stood in the dry creek bed and just stared upstream for several minutes, and he sat on a boulder and watched.
Her scent told him she let her wolf come up into her psyche to see it firsthand, and wasn’t that interesting?
But by the time she walked back to him, her eyes were human, but he had a feeling he’d have seen the wolf looking out of hers, if she’d have glanced his way several minutes earlier.
Even after eating twice as much trail mix as he’d figured they needed, he was hungry when they made it back to his bike.
He looked through the cameras covertly mounted to the frame, which he’d set to only record when motion was detected, and smiled at the herd of deer who’d circled and smelled it at length.
He showed her, and she said, “Wow, I guess leaving your bike unsupervised is different than leaving your car.”
“It is.”
He regretted that he couldn’t tell her the MC control center would’ve called the cops if the bike left the parking lot before he returned.
For things inside the city, the brothers would take care of it without law enforcement, but this far away, they’d tell the cops where the thief was. Or rather, where the bike was.
So instead, he told her, “There’s a mom-and-pop restaurant not far from here. Looks like a dive, but it’s farm-to-table country cooking, and has been since long before someone invented the term.”
“Sounds perfect,” she told him.
Potbellies Family Restaurant was a squat building with a barn-type roof, the parking lot about twenty times bigger than the building and half full even on a Monday.
He held the door for her and watched her walk in and stop.
She took in the laminated tables, the fact every table held an entire roll of paper towels, the huge chalkboard on the wall with the daily specials, and the chalkboard behind the register with the available desserts.
Her gaze went back to the main chalkboard, and she said, “They have chicken hearts.”
“They do today.”
She turned to look at him, and something in her expression had shifted into the focused pleasure of a person who had found exactly what they were looking for. “I want the chicken hearts, the liver and onions, and about half of their side dishes.”
“I’m getting the liver and onions, and probably their mega-burger.” Or maybe the country-fried steak. Decisions, decisions.
But she wasn’t stuck on decisions, and a woman who knew what she wanted and didn’t negotiate herself out of it was rare. He filed that away alongside everything else he’d been filing away all day.
They took a table by the window, and a twenty-something young woman came to take their order. Tuesday ordered without opening the laminated menu. “I want the liver and onions, and… how many chicken hearts are on a plate?”
“It’s a half pound. I don’t know how many that is.”
“Two orders of chicken hearts, collard greens, mashed potatoes, fried zucchini, pinto beans, fried okra, a bowl of chili, and…” She looked from the chalkboard back to the waitress. “Is the mac-n-cheese from scratch, or from a box?”
“Ain’t nothing here comes out of a box.” She paused and added, “’Cept the corn starch, but I guess we don’t sell that to you d’rectly, so it probly don’t count.”
She rattled the order off and was walking away when Knife started in with his order. Clearly, the waitress thought Tuesday was ordering for both of them.
The young woman blinked, and Tuesday said. “We hiked. We’re hungry.”
Knife wasn’t going to apologize for what he wanted, so he told her, “I’ll have the liver and onions, country-fried steak, mega-burger with extra bacon, pinto beans, and a double order of tater tots.” He paused. “And what the hell, some mac-n-cheese, too, since it’s actual cheese.”
The waitress wrote it down, repeated it back, and then asked what they wanted to drink.
Tuesday finally opened the menu, looked it over, and asked, “Water with lemon?”
The waitress nodded, and Knife told her, “Half sweet, half unsweet tea.”
When they were alone again, Tuesday asked him, “How’d you find this place?”
The question hit like a punch in the gut because he couldn’t tell her.
It seemed innocuous enough — Horse, the club’s ride captain, set it up for them to eat here when the club took pretty much the same drive he’d just taken Tuesday on, old 41 Highway along the Tennessee River and then up Monteagle, except they’d stopped at Foster Falls on the way up; a one-mile hike instead of a ten-mile trek.
He hedged and told her, “Came up here with a group.”
It cost him, not being able to share with her, and the look on her face told him she knew.
He considered what she might have figured out, and he realized he hadn’t tried to mask his scent, which meant she’d likely picked up on his regret, and probably the deeper ache beneath it, the whole damned thing reminding him she’d never be able to fully know him.
Part of him wanted to apologize, but he wasn’t going to. Still, he had to say something, so he blew out a breath and said, “Not really a secret, but…”
“It’s fine. I get it.”
Thankfully, the waitress brought Tuesday’s chili and set it before her.
Before she even picked up the spoon, Tuesday sniffed it and pronounced, “Southern style, to its core.” She poked and prodded at it with her spoon. “With plenty of beans, as any good chili should have, crazy people in Texas notwithstanding.”
She took a bite and then lifted a piece of cornbread from the dish in front of her and crumbled it into the bowl.
“I hate to eat in front of you. Want to share? It’s excellent. Plenty of beef, lots of tomatoes, perfectly spiced, and it’s simmered long enough the beans have soaked up all the flavor.”
She took another bite. “Whoever made this has been making it the same way for a damned long time. You can taste the confidence in it.”
He hadn’t thought about food that way, but he knew what she meant the second she said it. The same way he could tell when a carcass had been broken down by someone who’d done it ten thousand times versus someone who was still thinking about where to put the knife.
“That’s a good way to put it,” he said.
She shrugged. “Food either knows what it is or it doesn’t. This knows.”
The liver came on two oval plates, the onions caramelized dark and soft, the brown gravy pooled around the edges. She pulled her plate toward her and inhaled before she picked up her fork.
“Good liver smell,” she said, almost to herself. “Not iron-heavy. Fresh.”
“They source local,” he said, poking a liver from his plate onto his fork. “Have for years.”
“I can tell.” She cut into it, checked the color, and ate a bite at the same time he did, though he didn’t cut his first.
She closed her eyes a second while she tasted it, and then chewed and swallowed, clearly enjoying it.
“Cooked through but not punished,” she said. “Perfect, through and through. Kinda makes me want to meet the cook.”
He ate his own and didn’t say anything, because there was nothing he could add to how good it was.
The chicken hearts arrived next, sautéed with butter, garlic, and what smelled like a little Worcestershire. She moved the plate between them without asking, the way you moved food between people you’d already decided to share food with, and he took that in alongside everything else.
He speared one. Rich, slightly mineral, the texture firm without being chewy — properly cleaned and properly cooked.
“These are better than they have any right to be,” he said.
“Right? You don’t expect a place with tater tots on the sides board to nail chicken hearts.”
He grinned at the food snob finally coming out. “Maybe you should.”
She considered that. “Maybe. If they’re doing liver this well, the hearts make sense. Same philosophy. Don’t be afraid of what the ingredient is. Most people cook them to death to be safe, but they’ve kept them tender and scrumptious.”
He grinned. “Scrumptious? Is that a technical term?”
“No, but this food is… it’s real food, you know? I can’t use all the fake-sounding terms to describe it.”
He looked at her across the table and rethought the food snob judgment.
This woman who’d shown up at his butcher shop in four-inch heels and known how to read a tenderloin on the rail, who’d made trail mix with Maldon salt and candied ginger and carried it in a silicone bag because glass wasn’t practical, who’d moved through the Fruit Bowl like she’d been doing it all her life, and ordered chicken hearts in a Tracy City diner without a second thought.
He’d expected her wolf to be fine here. The wolf was a predator who ate rabbit and deer on the pack lands, and her inner animal wasn’t going to be snobby about organ meat in a country diner.
But he realized he’d expected Tuesday to be a snob about this place from the start, and was pleasantly surprised to be wrong.
Tuesday was genuinely pleased with her meal.
The culinary consultant who undoubtedly charged New York restaurants serious money for her expertise was sitting before a paper placemat eating liver and onions, and talking about confidence in a bowl of chili, and she meant every word of it.
He’d considered taking her to the fancy restaurant a few miles away in the old Al Capone mansion, but nothing on the mountain compared to the food here. Now, he could be honest enough with himself to admit he was hoping to find a strike against her when she was too good for the cooking here.
In retrospect, he probably should have considered she’d be impressed by good cooking, no matter the style.
All the side dishes arrived together, and she tasted the collard greens first, declaring, “Fatback. Long cooked.” Another bite, and then, “I’m going to need to think about whether I resent these or love them.”
“Why would you resent them?”
“Because they’re better than mine. Better than my grandmother’s, but I could never tell her that.” She said it simply, no drama. “I make good collard greens. These are better. I’m going to need to figure out why.”
He found himself smiling.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
She gave him the look she’d given him when she thought he was about to make fun of the Maldon salt — the preemptive don’t — and he shook his head.
“I’m not laughing at you. I do the same thing with a good cut. Try to figure out the source, the handling, what I’d do different.” He speared a tater tot. “It’s a compliment to the food. Means it’s worth thinking about.”
She looked at him for a moment with an expression he couldn’t entirely read, and then looked back at her plate.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what it is.”
They ate in the easy silence of two people who were comfortable with food and comfortable enough with each other not to fill every pause, and outside the window, the parking lot filled.
Eventually, the waitress came back and asked, “Did ya’ll save any room for dessert?”
“Oh, wow, the banana pudding is tempting,” Tuesday told her, “but no, I think I’m good without it.” She took a breath. “I will pay three hundred dollars to get the ingredients that went into the collard greens, along with any special instructions needed to cook them so they taste exactly the same.”
“I want sweet potato pie with vanilla ice cream,” Knife said.
The waitress nodded to him and told Tuesday, “I’ll ask the boss.”
Three minutes later, the man Knife recognized as the owner came out to them.
“We don’t generally share our recipes, ma’am. Is there a reason you’re askin’?”
“Because you make them better than me, and I love collard greens. I’ll go to five hundred, if it helps.”
He looked at Knife, who saw the instant recognition in the other man’s face. “I’m terrible with names, but I never forget a face. How is Horse and his lovely Gabby?”
“They’re good, thanks for asking.” He offered his hand. “Knife.”
They shook hands and the owner said, “Ah, yes. The butcher. You spoke with my wife at length about the best woods for smoking pigs.” He turned back to Tuesday.
“Apple cider vinegar that’s locally made, a little Worcestershire, cooked with ham bones, fatback, and a touch of brown sugar.
Everything else is the norm – onions, garlic, some red pepper flakes, bone broth. ”
She pulled her wallet from her backpack, and he shook his head. “I ain’t gonna fleece a friend of Knife’s.” He looked back to Knife. “I hope everything was to your liking?”
“Exceptional, as always. My friend here raved over your liver and chicken hearts.”
He smiled, “Woman after my own heart.”
The waitress stepped out with Knife’s sweet potato pie with ice cream, and Knife handed her his credit card before Tuesday could try to pay. “Both of us on the same ticket, please.”