We stepped out into the dawn, the sky already warming to gold. Jo fell into step beside me, silent and solid, a force of nature you could lean against if you didn’t mind the risk of being swept away.
I walked toward the truck, feeling every bruise and cut but also feeling—maybe for the first time in months—like I was going to make it through the day. If I was really lucky, maybe even through the night.
The walk to Jo’s truck was only fifteen steps, but I felt every inch of it like a slow march to the firing squad. The air outside had that dusty, almost metallic chill of early morning, the kind that scrapes your lungs raw and leaves you hungry for something warm—coffee, a cigarette, a pair of arms you could crawl inside. I shoved my hands deep into my jacket pockets, head down, letting Jo’s heavy boots set the pace.
He didn’t say a word. Just clicked the doors open and waited for me to climb in before circling around and sliding behind the wheel. The interior was as immaculate as I remembered: dashboard wiped clean, leather seats free of so much as a single dog hair. Even the floor mats looked vacuumed, which I’d never seen in a working man’s truck before.
We sat in silence for a minute, both of us staring straight ahead. I could feel my pulse in my tongue, in the fresh throb along my cheekbone. I glanced at Jo, caught the way the muscles in his jaw rippled as he chewed the inside of his cheek. Hishands, big as catcher's mitts, gripped the steering wheel so tight I thought I heard the leather creak.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“You here to pick me up or just bust my balls?” I tried to sound bored, but it came out weirdly hopeful. Like maybe if he busted my balls, he’d be doing it for a reason.
His gaze snapped to mine, and before I could finish a single defensive thought, he was on me—so fast I barely registered the movement.
His hand locked around my throat, just under the jaw. Not tight, not choking, but with the kind of measured force that said: Sit. Stay.
The heat of his palm burned through the layers of skin and pride and every single barrier I’d built for myself. His thumb pressed against the side of my neck, right over the pulse point, and I swear to god he could feel my heart going a million beats a second.
He leaned in, close enough that his beard tickled my chin, close enough that I could smell the aftershave he’d used (wood smoke and orange zest, clean but wild), and he spoke in this low, dangerous rumble.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t play the clown with me, Bodean. I want to know who did this to you.”
There was no anger in his face, just this cold, clear need. The kind of need that promised violence, but only for my sake.
It took me a second to remember how to talk. I tried for a smile, but his grip kept my jaw tilted up, so the best I managed was a lopsided, trembling thing. “Why?” I said, voice gone whispery. “You gonna go all Liam Neeson and kill the bad guys for me?”
He bared his teeth—not quite a smile, more like an animal showing you what it could do. “If that’s what it takes,” he said. “You matter, Bo. Even if you don’t think so.”
My brain short-circuited, static filling the space between my ears. Nobody ever said shit like that to me, not without expecting something in return. It scared me how much I wanted to believe him.
“You could just let it go,” I said, breath hitching. “I’m not a charity case.”
He squeezed, just enough to make it clear that he could take all the air away if he wanted, then eased off and ran his thumb along the bandage on my cheekbone. The touch was weirdly gentle, almost apologetic.
“Not a charity case. Never were,” he said. “But you keep picking assholes who hurt you. That end tonight.”
I squinted at him, trying to read the fine print in his expression. “Why do you care, Jo? Why now?”
He sat back, releasing me so suddenly I almost missed the contact. He looked out the windshield, then back at me, the lines of his face gone hard and old. “You’re not ready to know,” he said.
The words hit harder than the punch I took in the alley. I wanted to demand an answer, to scream at him for playing games, but all that came out was a feeble, “What the hell does that mean?”
He shook his head, the braid flipping across his shoulder. “Means we’re not having this conversation in a parking lot. You want answers, you come back to the valley. Until then, we’re done talking.”
I flexed my fingers, feeling the ghost of his grip on my neck, and tried to pretend I wasn’t shaking. “Fine,” I said, twisting toward the door. “If you’re so eager to play hero, let’s just get it over with.”
“Buckle up,” he said, voice soft, but absolute.
I hesitated, then did. He started the truck, put it in drive, and peeled out of the lot with a growl that matched the sound of hisengine. We didn’t even make it to the city limits before Jo started in on the bike.
“Where is it?” he asked, still not looking at me, eyes fixed on the rising sun slicing the horizon in half.
I wanted to ask, “Why do you care?” but I bit down on it, knowing it would only make him clamp down harder. “Tow yard, maybe? Last I saw, it was getting scraped off the highway.”
He grunted, not as acknowledgment but as confirmation that he already knew. “We’re stopping first,” he said. “I want to see if it’s worth fixing.”
Something sour twisted in my stomach. The bike was a lost cause. I’d known it when I watched it skitter across three lanes of blacktop, gas tank bursting like a split artery, the custom paintwork I’d spent months on blooming out into a river of metallic flakes and sad, glittery tears. But Jo wasn’t the type to let things die easy. He’d rebuilt machines from piles of rust and bone dust before; if anyone could coax a miracle out of a bent frame and mangled chrome, it’d be him.
