I nod. “Thanks, but not mine.”
Smoke studies me for a beat too long. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”
“No.”
He exhales. “Probably better that way.”
We ride until dawn bleeds into the sky, the road stretching and folding beneath us like it always does. By the time North Carolina comes back into view, the ache under my ribs has nothing to do with old wounds.
Salemburg comes to life slow, same as ever.
Country Boy’s truck is already parked at the clubhouse when I pull in. He’s waiting out front, coffee in hand, eyes sharp.
“You’re back early,” he states.
“Business done no need to linger,” I answer.
He watches me dismount, takes in the bike still dusty from miles, and really studies me. “You look like you left something out there.”
I meet his gaze, expression blank. “Just the road.”
He doesn’t buy it. But he’s Country Boy and he doesn’t push. Some things don’t need pressing.
I head inside, wash the road off my hands, and sit down at the table with my ledger. Numbers. Columns. Order.
It helps.
But later, when the clubhouse quiets and the sun dips low, I find myself staring west without meaning to. All while thinking about a woman who sleeps with her porch light on, diagonal in a bed. My mind is stuck on a house that has family memories. My brain is on a loop of regret about a name I didn’t give and a goodbye I didn’t say.
I tell myself it’s better this way. The road always takes more than it gives.
And I’m always choosing the road.
Four
Danae
Three weeks is long enough for something to settle into your bones.
Long enough for the adrenaline to fade, for the sharp edges of fear to dull, for a memory to stop feeling like a moment of torment and start feeling like a question you don’t know how to answer. Long enough for the absence of someone you barely knew to feel heavier than their presence ever did.
Miles never came back.
I didn’t expect him to. I told myself that the first night, and the second, and every time my eyes drifted to the driveway half-hoping to see a motorcycle that didn’t belong there. He was a man who lived on roads, not routines. Men like that don’t circle back.
Still, the porch light stayed on longer than usual. I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t understand why he was back any way. I hadn’t seen him up close since the night I stitched him up. Only these visions of him from afar watching, not regularly, not consistently, just enough to let me think my mind was playing tricks on me. Once again, everything with Miles left me with a ton of questions and never a single answer.
Work filled the space where thinking might have been if I allowed it.
The ER stays relentless, same as always. New faces. Same pain. Same rhythm of urgency and yet a whole lot of waiting. I settle into it like armor, letting competence be my shield. It’s easier to focus on other people’s emergencies than sit with your own unanswered questions.
Dr. Lucas Reeves, unfortunately, has decided to fill the silence Miles left behind. He’s the kind of man who can’t let something or someone off the hook that easily, so it seems.
It starts subtle.
“Well,” he says one afternoon as we scrub in for a procedure, voice pitched low enough to sound like a joke, “I see you’ve got a type. Quite surprising actually.”
I don’t look at him. “Focus on the patient.”
