Chapter Eleven
BY THE FOURTH day I had her life memorized, and it was the worst damn thing I’d ever done to myself, and I’ve done some things.
Seven-oh-two out the gate every morning, that little Honda swinging onto the county road with the sun still low.
She drove careful. I hadn’t known that about her.
Two hands on the wheel, mirrors checked more than they needed checking, a girl who’d learned young that whatever was behind you mattered, and I fell in far enough back that a stranger wouldn’t have made me, close enough that nothing got between us without going through me first. Across the bridge she always slowed at the same stretch, just for a few seconds, eyes cutting toward the water, and it took me two mornings to figure out she was doing it on purpose.
Ten seconds, maybe. Just her and that river before she hit campus.
By the third morning I was slowing too, far enough back she wouldn’t notice, looking at the same damn water like some lovesick asshole.
Closest I was getting to sharing anything with her, so I took it.
Then we hit the city.
And there was the fucking boy.
Sawyer. I’d run him the first damn day, the way you do when some man starts putting his hands on somebody you’re charged with keeping alive.
Nineteen. Clean sheet. Part-time job. Mother out in Summerville.
No warrants, no drugs, no debts, no bad company, not so much as a speeding ticket worth getting excited over.
Fucking choirboy. Should’ve made my job easier. Didn’t.
Instead I spent days watching him put his hands on her and learning a new way to hate a man who hadn’t done one damn thing wrong.
First morning, the kid walked right up behind her, bent down, and put his mouth on the top of her head.
I damn near came off the bike.
Not because he’d done anything wrong. That was the problem.
He did it easy. Familiar. Like he’d done it a hundred times and planned on doing it a hundred more.
Then he sat his ass down beside her, put his arm along the back of her chair, got close enough that his shoulder touched hers, and Amy let him.
Fuck me, she let him.
She leaned into him. Laughed at whatever he said. Let him take her hand and keep it right there on the table like there was nothing in the world to think about, and I sat two lanes away watching some kid touch her like it was the easiest thing he’d ever been allowed to do.
With Sawyer, she sat with her back to the damn door.
Took me a minute to understand what I was seeing.
Amy. Back to a door. Didn’t check it every time it opened.
Didn’t track every man who passed their table.
Didn’t keep her hands tucked close or her shoulders ready.
She just sat there loose and laughing, letting that kid lean all over her while the damn world moved behind her back and she never once turned to check it.
Safe. She looked safe with him. That one hurt worse than the kissing.
I knew what that kind of easy cost her. I’d watched her take near a year getting there with me, inch by stubborn inch, until she’d quit watching my hands and quit checking how close I stood and started walking out to my cabin alone without thinking twice about what kind of man waited inside.
She’d sit in my dirt with her knees muddy, follow me into the woods with a basket over her arm, turn her back on me without needing to know where I was every second.
Then I’d fucked it up.
Now some nineteen-year-old kid had what I’d spent a year earning. No. That wasn’t fair. He hadn’t taken a damn thing from me. I’d handed it over. Didn’t mean I had to enjoy watching him have it.
Kid hadn’t done shit wrong. I’d checked.
Still wanted to put him through the coffee shop window.
Wanted that arm off the back of her chair.
Wanted his hand off hers. Wanted his mouth about six fucking feet from the top of her head, and none of it cared that I had no claim on her or that I’d been the one who made damn sure of it.
Jealousy isn’t much interested in what’s fair.
I’d told myself months ago this was what I wanted.
Amy with somebody her own age, somebody clean, somebody she could plan a future without making her part of anything ugly.
I’d shoved her away for exactly this, so she could land somewhere soft instead of spending another year getting tangled up in a man old enough to know better and mean enough to make her regret it.
Well. There she was. Soft landing. Fucking hated it. Worst part was, it started screwing with the job.
I caught myself one morning watching Sawyer’s thumb move over the back of her hand instead of watching the intersection, and that pissed me off worse than anything the kid had done.
Devil put me there because I was supposed to be better than that.
Amy belonged at the side of my sight and the street belonged in front of me, but I had it backward, watching some boy touch her while half of King Street could’ve walked up behind me carrying a damn rifle.
Amateur shit.
I dragged my eyes off them and checked the street. Cars. Corners. Storefronts. Faces. Same woman with the dog I’d seen yesterday. Delivery truck making its second pass. Nothing wrong.
Thirty seconds later I was looking at her again.
Some watchdog.
The muffin came on the third day.
I saw Sawyer clock me from across the street.
He’d been doing it since the first morning, both of them had, because there wasn’t much hiding a bike and six-plus feet of patched biker sitting on it for hours at a time, but this time the kid got a look on his face I didn’t like.
Happy. Pleased with himself. Then he stood up from their table with a little white bag in his hand.
Amy said something. He grinned. She said something else, and the grin disappeared.
Kid came across the street anyway.
Right at me.
I ran the possibilities before he hit the curb because that’s what you do, and none of them came back threat.
No tension in the shoulders, no hand buried in a pocket, no second man moving with him, nothing but a skinny nineteen-year-old carrying a bakery bag and enough confidence to walk straight up to a man twice his size who’d been glaring at him for days.
Which somehow made it worse.
“Morning,” he said, grinning up at me. “You’ve been out here a while. Every day, actually. I figure whatever this is, it’s a long shift.”
He held out the bag.
“Blueberry. They’re the good ones here.”
I looked at the bag. Looked at him. Did not look at Amy. “I’m alright.”
“Yeah, that’s not really how this works.” He shook the bag once. “Full disclosure, my girl specifically told me not to come over here, so this is already costing me, but I feed people. It’s not a choice. It’s a condition.”
My girl.
There it was.
Two little words and every bad instinct I owned sat up.
My eyes went past him before I could stop them, straight across the street to Amy sitting at that table watching us with one hand already halfway over her mouth.
His girl.
Fuck that.
Thought came fast and ugly, and I killed it just as fast. Wasn’t mine to fuck anything. I’d seen to that.
Sawyer was still talking. “You’ve been sitting out here since breakfast looking like Motorcycle Batman and I’m starting to feel responsible for you.” He pushed the bag closer. “Blueberry. Take it.”
I stared at him. Motorcycle fucking Batman. I almost respected it.
“Kid—”
“Take the muffin. Please. If I bring it back, she gets to be right, and she’s already unbearable with unverified confidence. I cannot give her evidence.”
Amy was still watching us, so I took the goddamn muffin.
What else was I going to do? Making a thing of it meant standing there arguing with him longer, and every extra second was another second I had to look at the hand that had been holding hers ten minutes ago and remember exactly where I’d wanted to put that hand.
“Thanks,” I said.
Kid beamed like he’d won something. “Stay hydrated, Tall, dark and felonious.” Then he trotted his ass back across the street.
He had a strange way with words that was for fucking sure.
Amy was waiting for him. She smacked him the second he got close enough, hard enough in the shoulder that he rocked sideways, and the little bastard only laughed and dropped into the chair beside her like getting hit by her was one more good thing that had happened to him that morning.
I sat there holding a blueberry muffin from my own personal hell.
I ate the goddamn muffin, and of course it was good. Little bastard couldn’t even bring me a shitty muffin so I’d have one clean reason to hate him.
Sawyer was decent. Funny, apparently. Took care of her. Made her laugh. Had the good sense to bring a man food even when that man had spent everyday considering what he’d look like going through plate glass. Couldn’t hate him clean.
Tried.
Didn’t take.
That was the whole damn problem with the kid.
If he’d been some mouthy little punk, I’d have had something to work with.
If he’d treated her wrong once, put a hand where she didn’t want it or made her shrink even an inch, I’d have been across that street before he finished doing it and slept fine afterward.
But he didn’t. He watched her. Fed her. Made her laugh.
Knew when to get close and when to leave her alone, and she trusted him enough to sit with her back to a window while he was beside her.
Sawyer wouldn’t do what I’d done.
That was the part that kept grinding.
Kid would probably take her to class, buy her coffee, kiss her damn head, and never once decide he knew better than she did what she ought to have.
Wouldn’t make her stand in a clubhouse full of people and watch him walk off with another woman.
Wouldn’t give her something good and then rip it out from under her because he’d decided hurting her once was better than maybe hurting her later.
Exactly what I’d wanted for her. Exactly what I’d shoved her toward. Fucking hated him for it. Good, I made myself think.
Didn’t feel good.
Felt like chewing broken glass and pretending my mouth wasn’t bleeding.
I finished the muffin, balled up the little white bag, and shoved it into my cut pocket instead of dropping it on the ground, which I wasn’t going to look at too close. Then I put my eyes where they belonged and made myself do the damn job. Corners. Cars. Faces. Doors. Amy there but not the center.
Worked for maybe a minute.
Then she laughed.
My eyes went straight back to her.
When she left, I followed her home. Same distance. Same road. Same little Honda in front of me, her purple hair just visible through the back glass. We reached the bridge and she slowed at her spot, those ten seconds of water she kept for herself.
I slowed too.
Watched the river because she was watching it, then watched the back of her car the rest of the way home and told myself it was the job.
Josie was on the cabin steps when I got back, two beers sweating beside him, and he took one look at my face and didn’t say anything for a while, which is the thing about Josie.
Then he said, “You’ve got crumbs on your cut, brother.”
I looked down. Blueberry. Fuck my life.
“Long story,” I said, sat down next to him, took the beer, and didn’t tell it.