Page 18 of My Wild Biker

I lean against the doorframe and watch. My heart is still pounding. My mouth is dry.

"You're really good at that," I say.

"Practice."

"How many times have you done this?"

He looks at me in the mirror above the sink. "You want the honest answer?"

"Yes."

"More than I can count. Less than you're probably imagining." He dries his hands on a towel, examining the damage. Two knuckles split deep enough they're still seeping blood. "It's part of the job. Has been for twenty-five years."

I process that. "The kid pulled a knife."

"Yeah."

"You could've shot him."

"Could've. Didn't need to." He opens a cabinet and pulls out gauze and medical tape that's seen use before. "He was drunk, stupid, trying to prove something. Shooting him would've been disproportionate. Would've escalated into something bigger. Breaking his nose and his wrist sends the message without starting a war."

"That's the code? Proportional response?"

"Part of it." He starts wrapping his right hand with practiced efficiency. "We protect Bloomfield and everyone in it. We don't start fights but we finish them. We don't target civilians. And when someone threatens us or ours, we handle it fast enough and hard enough they don't try again." He pauses, meeting my eyes in the mirror. "But we don't kill unless there's no other choice. That kid had a choice. He made the wrong one. I made sure he'll remember that."

"And if he'd made a different wrong choice? If he'd actually attacked you with that knife?"

Chuck looks at me directly. "Then I would've done what was necessary and I wouldn't apologize for it."

The honesty is brutal and complete and I'm grateful for it. No softening, no apologizing, just truth.

"Does this happen a lot? People showing up to threaten you?"

"Not a lot. But Marrow's been pushing boundaries for months. Testing us." He finishes wrapping his right hand and starts on his left. "That kid was checking whether we'd respond, whether we're as dangerous as our reputation says. Now they know."

"And the message he mentioned? About Crane being tired of playing defensive?"

"Means the war's escalating. Means Clint will need to make decisions tomorrow about how we respond." His jaw tightens slightly. "Means the next few days might get complicated."

I think about the violence I just witnessed. The speed. The control. He didn't lose his temper or go wild. Just identified a threat and eliminated it with the minimum necessary force required to make sure it didn't become a bigger threat.

That should scare me. My ex never raised his voice, never showed anger, never did anything but gently erode my sense of self through eight years of accommodation. This is different. This is violence in service of protection, brutal and necessary and permanent.

I step into the bathroom behind him and put my hands on his shoulders.

He goes completely still.

"Isla—"

"I'm not scared of you," I say quietly. "I'm scared of what could've happened if you'd been slower. If he'd gotten that knife into you instead of you breaking his wrist."

He turns around in the small space and we're very close, my back against the sink, his body blocking the door. He's taller than me and the bathroom is tiny and I can smell leather and sweat and the metallic tang of blood still on his skin.

"I've been doing this twenty-five years," he says. "I'm good at not getting stabbed."

"But you could've been."

"Yeah. I could've been." His hands come up to frame my face, gauze rough against my cheeks. "You should've stayed inside like I told you."