He puts his cup down. “I love it. Come here.”
I walk into his arms, and he envelops me. My heart bursts a little. This is the safety I always wanted. A place, a home, with a man who knows how to care for me, with enough strength and masculine energy I can lean into.
“What’s with the bike helmet?” I ask.
“I’m not gonna push it, but the longer I stay off my bike, the harder it’s going to be to climb back on it.”
My chest tightens, a little. Kai’s fear lives in me. I’ve borrowed it, I guess. I never saw Garrett on the road. Never saw the way his body slid across the ground. But I saw Kai’s face when he stepped off his bike that night. I saw the horror of it.
“Did you deliberately wait until Kai left so he couldn’t talk you out of it?”
Garrett’s eyes are guileless when he looks at me. “Absolutely. Because I know what he would see if hewashere. It’s gonna take a few deep breaths to climb back on. And I never want Kai to see how scared I am, because his own fear is going to be hard enough for him to manage.”
“It’s tough to argue when what you’re saying is so noble and I understand it.”
Garrett lowers his lips to mine. It’s not sexually charged. It’s comforting. Or, perhaps, seeking comfort. Garrett just admitted to me that he’s scared too. Maybe my job here is cheerleader. Helping him to convince himself that this is just another ride.
“Will you promise you won’t push it? Because I know you. If it’s feeling even remotely good, you’re gonna head off down the highway to blow off some steam.”
He huffs a laugh. “If it feels good, and I need some air, you’re right, I will. But I’ll stay close. Riding in circles around our properties is better than not riding at all. And I know it might start aching, so I don’t want to be fifty clicks away from home if it does.”
“I’m sure Kai would want me to put some more boundaries on it.”
Garrett laughs. “He would. But I’ll give you the same response I’d give him: I do what I want.”
“I’m gonna go put on some jeans and get layered up to come watch you. Make me a coffee while I get dressed.”
He salutes, and it’s so military that, for a second, I get a flash of him in uniform. But I know from Kai it’s a period of his life Garrett doesn’t love talking about, so I don’t ask to see the pictures of him. “Yes, ma’am.”
Once I’m dressed, I hurry downstairs and find my coffee waiting on the counter for me. There’s the rumble of a motorcycle engine in the garage, and I hurry out of the house with my cup.
The garage door is open, the engine is running, a helmet is on the floor by his feet, and Garrett is just sitting on his bike, running his hands along it. There are seven bikes in the garage, and I wonder what made him choose the one he’s sitting on.
While it’s tempting to ask him, I let him have the moment. Reacquainting himself with the feel of the machine between histhighs. I’m sure there are a million thoughts screaming through his head, right now.
Good memories of time on the road with Kai and their motorcycle club brotherhood battling with fifteen seconds of uncontrolled skidding across asphalt. The feel of bones and joints and muscles and sinew being stretched and pulled in directions they aren’t meant to go. Wondering if this is going to be your last view of the earth.
When he looks up, he’s stricken. I don’t know what to do in these situations, but I remember Nanna saying toward the end of her life that one of the things she found hardest was the ways in which people tried to avoid talking about death directly.
I walk up the driveway to him and put my bare hand over his gloved one. “What did you think about, when you were skidding?”
Garrett glances up at the ceiling. “When I realized the momentum, my first thought was that, if I died, I would die doing something I loved. That I was on my bike, in a wide-open space I always dreamed of, with Kai, a man I loved, by my side, in a place we could finally call home.”
A lump forms in my throat. “That’s really beautiful, Garrett.”
He huffs. “Yeah, maybe. But I also thought how I wasn’t fucking ready to die. And how noisy the smash of my helmet against the gravel was. And how heavy the weight of the bike on me was. And how it was all so fast, it was impossible to know how I felt or what hurt.”
Knowing what to do, now, I climb on the bike behind him and slide my arms gently around his middle before resting my chin on his shoulder. “That’s a lot to process,” I say, close to his ear. “And I would think it’s perfectly normal to feel a little unsure. Maybe this is enough of a first step for today.”
“I always thought I’d fight death, but in that moment, I actually felt powerless, and I can’t explain why. And then, Kaiwas there. He tried to be calm. Telling me to stay down and not move. Telling me the driver didn’t stop. Calling Greer. But the look in his eyes, Isla…Never seen Kai so terrified. And I’ve seen him in plenty of situations that warranted feeling terrified before. He asked me what hurt, I told him my bike.”
I feel his chuckle rather than hear it.
“Look at you using humor in times of difficulty.”
He removes his gloved hand from the bike and puts it over mine, which are sitting at his middle. “Yeah, well, I then asked him to tell me whether my feet were moving.”
“Oh my God, Garrett. That must have been awful.” I’ve been so wrapped up in worries about the injuries he has that I forgot there must have been a moment where he was worried about whether he would walk again, and what that might mean to his life if he couldn’t.
