He came in slow, eyes flicking once to the bloodstains on the t-shirt I’d slept in, then to the half-empty beer on the nightstand, then back to me. He stood in the middle of the room like a storm cloud, just radiating this static charge that made my skin crawl.
“Sit,” he said.
“Am I under arrest?”
He didn’t laugh. He waited until I perched myself on the edge of the bed, then crouched in front of me, elbows on his knees, hands clasped like he was preparing to say a prayer or break my kneecaps.
His hair was still braided, a neat line along the nape of his neck, but the beard looked rougher, new growth mixed with dark stubble and one stubborn white patch on his chin. He smelledlike road salt, gasoline, and the kind of soap you only buy at truck stops.
“What the hell happened?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper, but with an edge that could have sliced steel.
I forced a shrug, even though it sent a flash of pain through my ribs. “Got jumped. Wrong place, wrong time. They wanted my bike more than my charming company.”
His eyebrows twitched, just enough to show he didn’t buy it. “They take it?”
“More like they drove a truck through it.” I tried to make it a joke, but it landed with a splat. “Bike’s fucked. I’m pretty sure they scraped it up with a snowplow or something.”
He stared so hard I felt myself shrinking, like he could see the whole story scrolling across my face in subtitles. “And you just let them?”
“I didn’t exactly get a vote,” I said, picking at the edge of the gauze. “Couple guys, maybe three. They had bats.”
“Names?”
“Didn’t catch ‘em. They were busy rearranging my dental work.”
He let that hang there for a second, the only sound the distant wheeze of a semi on the highway. Then he unclasped his hands, rubbed them together once, and straightened up. “Tell me about the damage.”
I blinked, caught off guard. “It’s totaled, Jo. You can call the tow yard if you want, but it’s probably already in a hundred pieces.”
“I meant you, Bodean.” His tone had zero humor, zero room for argument.
Oh. That.
I flinched and looked down at my hands, which were a roadmap of dried blood, ink, and cigarette ash. “Hospital said noconcussion. Just stitches. Some bruised ribs. I can still walk, I guess.”
He reached out and tilted my chin up with two fingers, slow and careful, like he was handling a busted watch. His touch was dry and hot, calluses scraping the skin just below my jaw. I made myself look him in the eye, and for the briefest second, I thought I saw something—something softer—but it was gone before I could grab it.
“Could’ve been worse,” he said.
“Always is.” I tried to laugh.
He didn’t.
He let go, then paced the width of the room like a caged animal, every step a silent accusation. “You call the cops?” he asked.
I snorted. “You think I want to fill out a report? Last time I talked to a deputy, they tried to book me for my own DWI.”
He shook his head, lips set in a hard line. “You don’t ever make it easy, do you?”
I looked away, letting my gaze wander to the window. The light outside had gone from blue to a pale, sickly white, like the world was being scrubbed raw and all the old stains were coming to the surface. “That’s kind of the point,” I said. “If it was easy, it wouldn’t be my life.”
He stopped, standing with his back to the mirror, and crossed his arms over his chest. The jacket pulled tight across his shoulders, and I could see the faint outline of a tattoo on his left wrist, something geometric and clean, the kind of thing I used to doodle in the margins of my notebooks when I was trying not to think about him.
“You want to tell me the truth now?” he said, voice gone low and dangerous.
I shrugged again, even though it felt like my whole ribcage was made of ground glass. “It was just a couple of biker wannabes. They wanted to make a point. I let them.”
He barked a laugh, and this time it was a sound I’d never heard from him before—sharp, almost bitter. “No, Bodean. You don’t let anyone do shit to you unless you want it.”
