Page 29 of My Veteran Biker

The possessiveness in his voice should bother me, trigger every feminist instinct I've developed over so many years. Instead, it makes me feel safe in a way I haven't felt since I left Harrisburg.

We stay in bed another hour, talking about nothing important. About his empty house and why he never filled it. About my marriage to Ben and why it failed. About my father's declining health and what happens when he's gone. About whether we're too old to be making decisions this fast.

We agree we probably are.

We do it anyway.

Chapter 6 — Knox

She's standing in my kitchen wearing one of my t-shirts and nothing else, making coffee in the machine I've had for six years and barely know how to use.

Her hair is tangled from my hands and there are marks on her neck from my mouth.

I watch her from the doorway and something in my chest pulls tight.

She turns and catches me looking. "What?"

"Nothing."

"Liar."

"Just not used to someone else in my space."

She hands me a mug. The coffee is strong, bitter, exactly how I like it.

"You remember," I say.

"Some things stick."

We drink in silence.

Outside the temperature is already climbing, the cicadas loud enough to hear through closed windows. It's barely noon and the day feels longer than it should, stretched thin by too little sleep and too much that happened in the hours before dawn.

My side aches where the wound pulls under fresh gauze.

"You should eat something," she says.

"Not hungry."

"When's the last time you ate?"

I have to think about it. Yesterday afternoon, maybe. Before the attack, before everything that mattered more than food.

She opens my fridge and stands there looking at the nearly empty shelves. Milk that's probably expired, condiments, beer. Nothing that constitutes an actual meal.

"You live like a college student," she says.

"I eat at the clubhouse mostly."

"That's not a defense."

She closes the fridge and goes to the cabinets, opening them systematically until she finds a box of crackers and a can of soup that's been there so long I don't remember buying it.

She heats the soup on the stove while I sit at the kitchen table and watch her move through my space like she belongs there.

It should feel invasive, but I just want her to stay.

She sets a bowl in front of me. Chicken noodle soup, crackers on the side. Basic, functional, the kind of meal you make when someone needs to eat and you don't have many options.