Chapter 3 — Francis
I stand in my kitchen at six-thirty holding a glass container of pasta salad and trying to talk myself out of this.
The rational part of my brain says: put it in your fridge, eat it yourself over the next three days, stop manufacturing reasons to see him.
The other part, the one that's been winning arguments since I woke up this morning, says: you already made it, you already walked over there yesterday to get your car fixed, one more conversation won't kill you.
The other part is a liar but I listen to it anyway.
I pick up the container and leave before I can change my mind.
Outside the heat hasn't lessened even though the sun is lower now, turning everything amber.
I can smell cut grass from somewhere, hear a dog barking three houses down. Normal evening sounds in a normal neighborhood where normal people live normal lives that don't include standing on their ex-boyfriend's porch after seventeen years trying to figure out what the hell they're doing.
I knock before I lose my nerve.
The door opens and Knox is there in jeans and no shirt, hair wet, water still running down his neck.
He's just showered. His chest is broader than I remember. There's a scar across his ribs on the left side, pale and puckered like it healed badly.
I want to ask about it. I don't.
He looks at the container in my hands. Doesn't say anything.
"I made pasta salad," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I expected. "Thought you might want some."
It's a terrible lie.
He steps back without a word, holding the door open.
Inside the air conditioning hits like a wall. My skin prickles, too-hot blood meeting cold air.
I follow him to the kitchen because standing in his living room alone feels worse than being near him.
The kitchen is small, aggressively clean in that way that happens when someone doesn't cook much.
The counter has nothing on it. No coffee maker, no toaster, no evidence anyone actually uses this space for anything beyond opening takeout containers.
He takes the pasta salad from my hands and our fingers brush. Just barely, just enough that I feel the calluses on his palm.
Heat shoots up my arm and settles low in my stomach where it has no business being.
"You eaten?" I ask.
"Not yet."
He opens the container and stands there looking at it like he's trying to decide something. Then he pulls two plates from the cabinet, portions out the pasta with the kind of precision I remember from watching him work on engines.
Every movement deliberate, nothing wasted.
He hands me a plate and fork. Doesn't ask if I want to sit or stay.
We eat standing at the counter like people who've forgotten how to be comfortable anywhere.
I can hear the refrigerator humming, the air conditioner cycling on. Outside someone drives by with music playing too loud.
"Did your car start this morning?" he asks.
"Yeah. Thank you for fixing it."
"Battery's still dying. You need a new one."
"I know. I'll get one this week."
More silence. He finishes his pasta and sets the plate in the sink with a precision that makes me think he's counting seconds until he can ask me to leave without being rude.
Or maybe that's just what I'm telling myself.
"How long have you been in the MC?" I ask.
His shoulders stiffen. Not much, just enough that I notice.
"Seventeen years."
I wait for him to explain or defend it. He doesn't. Just stands there with his hands braced on the counter behind him, watching me with that same steady attention he used to give everything that mattered.
It used to make me feel seen. Now it makes me feel exposed.
"Is that why you bought a house here?" I ask. "For the club?"
"I bought a house because I needed somewhere to live."
"You could've lived anywhere."
"I chose here."
"Why?"
He looks away, toward the window where the light is going golden and heavy. "Because Bloomfield was familiar. The club was here. I knew what I was getting."
What he's not saying is louder than what he is. He stayed in the town where we met, where we were together, where I left him. He bought a house and made it into a place that looks like nobody lives there.
I think about my apartment in Harrisburg. About Ben's books on the shelves and my clothes in the closet and how none of it ever felt like mine even though my name was on the lease.
"I got married," I say.
His hands tighten on the counter. Knuckles going white, jaw setting in a way I recognize.
"When?"
"Four years after I left. His name was Ben. Healthcare administrator."
"Past tense."
"It ended two years ago. No drama, no fight. We just woke up one day and realized we'd been living next to each other instead of with each other."
Knox doesn't say anything. The silence between us feels like a living thing now, pressing against my ribs.
"Do you love him?" he finally asks.
I think about Ben. About the years of being competent partners who knew each other's schedules but not each other's fears.
About sex that was pleasant and forgettable.
About the relief I felt when he suggested we separate, like I'd been holding my breath for months and someone finally told me I could exhale.
"I thought I did. But I think I just loved not being the only one responsible for everything."
"Yeah."
He knows. I can hear it in that one syllable. He knows exactly what I mean because he's probably been responsible for everything in his life since he was old enough to understand nobody else was going to do it for him.
"Why didn't you come after me?" I ask.
His jaw tightens. He looks at me for a long moment and I can see him deciding whether to answer, weighing truth against self-protection.
"You were right to leave," he says finally.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got."
"Bullshit."
The word comes out sharper than I intended. Knox's eyebrows rise slightly, surprise flickering across his face before he controls it.
"You want the truth?" he asks.
"That's why I'm asking."
"I didn't come after you because you were right. I chose the second tour without asking you first. I signed the papers and told you after, and you deserved better than that. You deserved someone who could put you first and I couldn't do it."
"So you just let me go."
"What was I supposed to do? Beg you to stay so I could disappoint you again in six months?"
His voice is rough now, something cracking through the control he usually keeps locked down tight. I can see the muscle in his jaw working, see his fingers pressed hard enough into the counter that the tips are white.
"I loved you," I say.
"I know."
"I would've waited if you'd asked me to."
"I know that too. That's why I didn't ask."
The words hit like a slap. Not because they're cruel but because they're honest in a way that makes my chest ache. He didn't come after me because he knew I would've stayed, and he didn't want me to stay for the wrong reasons.
I don't know if that makes it better or worse.
"I grew up," I say. "I don't wait for anyone anymore. I built a life where I make my own decisions and I don't accommodate anyone else's timeline."
"Good."
"Good?"
"Yeah. You should've done that years ago."
"I did it because you taught me I had to."
He flinches. Slight, barely visible, but I see it. See the way something in him contracts like I just hit a nerve he didn't know was exposed.
His phone buzzes. Once, twice, three times in rapid succession. He doesn't move to check it.
"You need to get that?" I ask.
"If it's urgent they'll call."
"What counts as urgent in a motorcycle club?"
"Someone bleeding or someone dead."
The words are delivered flat, matter-of-fact, like he's telling me the time.
It makes my stomach go cold.
"A brother died three weeks ago," he continues. "Perry. Shot outside his apartment. He was alone. Nobody was waiting for him. Nobody knew he was gone for two hours."
My throat goes tight. "I'm sorry."
"He was thirty-four years old."
There's something in Knox's voice I can't identify. Something that sounds like fear dressed up as resignation.
"That's why you're not sleeping," I say.
"I sleep fine."
"I can see your light on at two in the morning."
His mouth tightens. "You watching me, Francis?"
"I'm awake too. Hard not to notice."
We look at each other across four feet of kitchen floor that feels like miles. His phone buzzes again and this time he pulls it out, glances at the screen. Something in his face changes, tension pulling his features tight.
"I have to go," he says. "Club business."
"Now?"
"Yeah."
He's already moving, crossing to the chair where his shirt is draped. He pulls it on, then his cut, the leather settling across his shoulders with a familiarity that tells me he wears it more than he doesn't.
His movements are efficient, practiced, someone who's done this a thousand times.
I should leave, go back to my house and let him handle whatever crisis is pulling him away.
Instead I stand there watching him lace his boots, watching the way his shoulders are already set for whatever's coming.
"Be careful," I say.
He stops with his hand on the doorknob, looks back at me. For a second something crosses his face, something vulnerable and quickly hidden.
"Lock up when you leave," he says.
Then he's gone and I'm standing alone in his kitchen with the sound of his motorcycle roaring to life outside, fading into the distance until there's nothing left but silence.
I rinse the plates. Dry them. Put them back in the cabinet exactly where I found them.
Then I stand there looking at the rest of his kitchen, at the bare counters and empty walls.
There's a coffee maker but no mugs visible. I open cabinets until I find them. Four identical black mugs, perfectly aligned.
Everything in this kitchen is functional, nothing decorative. No magnets on the fridge, no dish towels hanging, no evidence that anyone cooks here or lives here or does anything beyond exist in the most minimal way possible.
I walk through the rest of the house even though I shouldn't.
The living room has a couch, a coffee table, a TV. No photos, no books except for a motorcycle maintenance manual on the side table. No plants, no art, no personality.
Like a hotel room someone's been living in for eight years.
His bedroom door is open. I stop in the doorway without going in.
The bed is made with military precision, corners tucked tight. There's a dresser with nothing on top of it. A lamp. Blackout curtains.
The room is dark even with the door open, the kind of dark that makes sleep possible during the day if you work strange hours or can't sleep at night.
This is what seventeen years of solitary living looks like.
Not messy bachelor neglect but emptiness.
Every surface clear because nothing accumulates when you don't let anyone in.
No photos because there's no one to photograph.
No books because reading is something you do when you want to fill time and his time is already full with the club and maintenance and whatever else keeps him from having to sit still.
I think about my apartment in Harrisburg. How full it was with things Ben and I had bought together.
Furniture that looked good in magazines. Kitchen equipment we never used. Decorative objects that were supposed to make the space feel homey but just made it feel cluttered.
I moved out and took almost nothing with me.
Knox's house is empty but at least it's honestly empty. He's not pretending to have something he doesn't. He's just... not having it.
I lock his door and walk back to my own house in the dusk.
The air is still thick, still hot, cicadas screaming like they're angry about it. My body feels restless in a way that has nothing to do with the temperature.
Inside I take a cold shower that doesn't help. Put on pajama shorts and a tank top. Sit on my couch with the window open because the air conditioning in this rental barely works and try to read a book.
The words don't stick. I keep reading the same paragraph over and over, seeing Knox's face when he said his friend died alone.
At midnight I'm still awake. I can see his house from my bedroom window. The driveway is empty. He's not back yet.
At one I give up on sleep and go to the kitchen for water.
His driveway’s still empty.
At two his motorcycle finally pulls in. I watch from the dark kitchen as he parks, as he sits there for a moment without moving. Then he gets off the bike and walks to his door and disappears inside.
His light doesn't come on.
I stand there in the dark with my heart beating too fast and my hands wrapped around a glass of water I'm not drinking, thinking about the way he said "I'll try" before he left. Like it cost him something to admit he didn't know how.
I think about the way I told him I wouldn't wait, wouldn't accommodate, wouldn't make myself smaller.
I think about his empty house and my empty apartment and the years of building lives that work precisely because they don't require us to want anything we can't have.
Then I think about what happens if we both stop lying to ourselves at the same time.