Page 42 of Roadrunner

He pushed in slow enough that I felt every inch of the decision, then he stopped being slow. The couch complained. Someone downstairs turned a television up, which was the most dignity the afternoon was going to give us.

He said my name like it was the only word he trusted.

I had learned his body in rooms that were not this one. The Jeep. My apartment. His. This was different. This had an ending attached to it I had not said out loud yet. College was over and I had no idea what was next. I dug my heels into the couch and pulled him deeper.

I let the thought go.

He hooked my knee with his hip and changed everything. I came apart first, as always, a little angry at how easy he could still do that. I shook through it with my mouth on his shoulder so I would not say anything true.

He followed with his face against mine. It was a sound I knew, half growl and half prayer, the same one from a church parking lot that had started everything.

The crooked frame watched us like it had opinions.

I put my palm on his chest and felt his heart argue its way back down. Twenty-two years old and I still didn’t have a better word for what that did to me than the one I had used at eighteen.

It just fit better now.

“Root beer,” I said, because if I said anything else I was going to cry on his unbuttoned shirt.

“Predictable,” he said with a laugh.

“I’ll go.” I took his shirt and put it on. Nothing else. The machine hummed. Two bottles dropped. I felt numb. Mindless. My body had not caught up to the rest of the day.

His arm found me in his sleep.

I woke abruptly. What I heard was Riley.

Not his voice. The sound of him moving. Fast. Purposeful. The specific absence of hesitation in it raised the hair on my arms before I was even fully awake, some older, more animal part of me understanding the danger before the rest of me caught up.

I sat up.

The bedroom door was open, hallway light spilling in around Riley’s shape.

He was already on his feet, arm extended into the dark of the hallway. The ankle holster he never talked about and never let me forget sat empty on the nightstand. He held the gun steady in his hand like it weighed nothing.

It was pointed at the dark silhouette of a man.

I filled with every emotion known to man, all at once. A prickly warmth washed over me. Petrified, I stared. I rubbed my eyes.

Just beyond the bedroom threshold stood my father.

He was still in his travel suit, tie loosened, jacket rumpled from a flight and a long drive after it. His face, in that first frozen second, was doing something I had genuinely never seen it do before. The specific, undefended terror of a man realizing, in real time, exactly how badly he’d miscalculated.

“Then who the fuck are you?” Riley’s voice was flat. It wasn’t a question so much as a demand dressed as one.

My father’s hands came up slowly, palms out. “I’ve been trying to explain—” He rubbed blood from his cheek with the web of his left hand.

“Don’t fucking move.”

“I’m her father.” His voice cracked on the second syllable. His usual composure was absent. “I’m Alexander Carver. I’m her father.”

“Riley.” I said it once, quiet and clear, the way you’d say a word you needed to land exactly right the first time.

He didn’t lower the gun immediately. He held it a while longer, long enough for my father to understand something essential about the kind of man standing between him and his daughter. Then, slowly, he lowered it. He kept it in his hand.

My father exhaled like he’d been holding his breath since the flight into town.

I sat on the edge of the bed in the dark and looked at the two of them. I understood that whatever happened in the next few minutes was going to matter for a long time afterward.