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Then she reached up to pull her hair back and I saw the bruise. My smile vanished instantly at the sight of the bruise, ugly and yellow on her right side. It was faded enough to tell me it was maybe a week old, but for there still to be evidence now meant whoever did it to her, had really hurt her. My jaw tightened and I took a step forward. “What the fuck happened to you?” It came out harsher than I meant it to. I already knew who’d done it, but I wanted to hear it from her mouth. As if I needed another reason to hate that fucker.

Ivy sucked in a short breath, but she held her ground. She was scared but she flinched less than she had a week ago. Progress.

“Ivy.”

She took a step back, trying to shake off my worry. “It’s nothing.” She insisted.

“It’s not.” I kept my voice level. “Tell me. Please.”

She looked at me and then looked away, wrapping her arms around her middle. “Can we just go?”

I nodded and let it go for now.

She reached for a green bag I hadn’t noticed before. Canvas, soft-sided, worn with a thick strap.

“What’s that?”

She grinned wide, as if the past sixty seconds hadn’t happened. “Camera equipment.”

So my wife was a photographer? That was interesting. I took another look at her outfit, this time trying to ignore her perky tits and the way the fabric of her pants clung to her ass.

“We’re riding to the trail, so you might wanna stick a pair of jeans over those leggings. I can lend you a leather jacket,” I said.

For a moment something crossed her face and I wondered if she thought I didn’t approve of her outfit. Then I remembered the bruise and what an asshole Rex was. “Don’t want you gettin’ road rash on that peachy ass if you come off. You can change once we get there, okay?”

***

The ride up took fifteen minutes, but it felt shorter.

She sat behind me with her arms wrapped tight around my waist, and she leaned into the curves like she’d been riding on the backs of bikes her whole life, which didn’t square with what I knew about Rex Price. I barely thought about the road. The mountain roads around here had a way of pulling me back to a specific night, one I didn’t revisit by choice, but her arms around me were a weight that kept me grounded in the present. I only thought about that fucking night twice the whole ride up, which was better than the usual count.

We parked at the lookout. After stuffing our clothes in the saddle bag, Ivy pulled out her camera. She had one of those fancy proper cameras and started shooting at the snow covered peaks in the distance. The view up here was fucking incredible in the morning, and she moved around as if Mother Nature was putting on a show just for her.

“You do this a lot?” I asked.

“When I can,” she said without looking up from the viewfinder. “Which is almost never.”

We set off on the trail at an easy jog. I kept the pace slow and steady without making it a big deal. The air was cold and clean, and my head was already starting to clear, the noise settling into something I could actually fucking manage.

She ran easy for a stretch before she opened up. “Rex is an asshole,” she explained simply, like it was just a fact everybody knew. “He doesn’t like when I talk back.” She kept her eyes forward, her breathing even. “When I don’t agree with him. When I breathe wrong or look at him wrong.” She paused for a long moment and then sighed. “That’s what happened.”

I didn’t say anything. What the fuck could I say? There wasn’t anything useful to say, so I kept moving my feet forward, and I waited to see if she had anything else to say.

She didn’t.

Not about Rex. Not about her bruise.

Or the more faded ones that covered her arms, chest and back.

She stopped to take more photos, waving me ahead with a reassuring grin. “Keep going. I’ll catch up.” She did. Each time she stopped, she caught up to me a few minutes later, camera bouncing against her hip. “I know your father founded Iron Vows MC, but did you always want to be a biker?”

I smiled and thought about me as a boy in my pint-sized cut and shades. “For almost as long as I can remember. Thought my dad was the coolest motherfucker in the world. Still do.”

“What do you do when you’re not running the club?”

“I work at Iron Works mostly. I’m good with anything with an engine.” I glanced over. “You always this curious?”

“Definitely not,” she answered with a bitter laugh. “But I’ve never been married before, never mind to a stranger. Now that I know what Rex’s plans are, at least a small part, I figured it was time I got to know my husband.”