"Haven't met yours yet, have I?" he asks.
The question cuts close enough I flinch.
He sees that too and exhales roughly through his teeth. "We could handle your father. You know that, right? Whoever he is. Whatever he is. I've got men who'd burn the world down if I gave the word."
"You could. If I actually told you anything."
He looks at me for a long, loaded second. "Yeah. If you actually told me anything."
He doesn't raise his voice. Doesn't jab a finger. The comment is quiet. Offhand.
My fingers go cold around the mascara tube.
He rescued me from a parking lot in Chicago. Married me. Built a life around making sure I breathe another day. Two years later, he knows a name from a news article and a marriage certificate. That's it.
He doesn't know the address I grew up in, or the private-school uniforms, or the polished-princess version of me that disappeared the night a Mercer man closed his hand around my throat and reminded me exactly what family I came from. He doesn't know what my father's house smells like when he's angry, or the sound the front door makes when it locks from the outside.
Even though Knox could find all of it in two clicks if he wanted to, whatever he did in the military left him with teeth sharp enough to chew through any locked file, he hasn't.
He's waiting for me to give him the rest.
And I still haven't.
"Look at me." Softer now.
I do. Because he asked. Because he never uses my name like a weapon, even when it stings.
His thumb drags over my knuckles. He's found me again without me noticing.
"I didn't mean it like that," he says. "I just…"
"Want me to trust you," I finish, voice thin. A single nod. "I do," I say. "I just—"
"Can't yet," he supplies. He says it the way he'd say the weather.
"What if the second I hand it to you, you decide it's too heavy and set it down?"
"Then I'd be a fucking coward," he says.
He says marry. He says mine. Love only comes at night, when he's inside me and his mouth is at my ear. Never letting you go. You're stuck with me. Mine. I pretend he doesn't mean it.
He squeezes my hand and lets it go, the way he always does when he senses I've cracked open more than I meant to.
"Come on," he says. "Maggie's going to hunt us down with a wooden spoon if we're late."
We pay and push through the door into sunlight. Knox hooks the bag over his wrist and slings an arm around my shoulders, tucking me against his side as we walk to the clubhouse.
The closer we get, the louder the sounds. Kids shriek in the parking lot, weaving between bikes that tick as they cool. Someone curses near the smoker, cheerful about it, and from inside the clubhouse I can hear whatever old twangy thing Maggie's put on the jukebox.
By the time we turn into the lot, the whole scene unfolds.
Bikes lined up in a gleaming row. Trucks and SUVs parked farther back. There's a folding table sagging under aluminum trays. Smoke curls from the grill where James stands, king of his kingdom, beer in hand, spatula in the other.
He's laughing at something East says, shoulders shaking.
Knox steers me to an empty picnic table near the edge of the chaos. "Sit. Drink this."
He hands me a cup of sweet tea one of the women must've shoved at him as we passed.
