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Behind me, the mattress shifts.

“Do you want me to go?”

I grip the counter.

There it is. The question under the question.

Do you want me here?

Did last night matter?

Did I make a mistake trusting you?

I could turn around. Climb back into bed. Tell her waking up with her felt too damn good and I don’t know what to do with that. I could tell her I heard her say my name in her sleep and nearly crawled right back under the blanket because no woman has ever made my own damn name sound dangerous before.

Instead, I stare at the coffee maker.

“You got class.”

The silence is small.

Small things hurt worse sometimes.

“Right,” she says. “Class.”

I hear sheets move, her suitcase open, clothes shift. I keep my back turned because apparently I am a coward in steel-toed boots.

The bathroom door closes.

The lock clicks.

I stare at my coffee until the dark surface blurs.

Lena used to lock the bathroom door too.

Not at first.

At first Lena was bare feet, loud laughter, long hair in my sink, and sunlight across my sheets. She stole my shirts and told me I smelled like cedar and trouble. She said my apartment needed plants. I told her plants died around me. She said that was because I watered them with whiskey and neglect.

She thought she could teach me better.

I thought maybe she already had.

Then I came home early one afternoon and found Lena gone, most of my cash gone, and a run ledger missing from a locked drawer she should never have known existed.

She left a note on the counter.

I did love you, but love don’t pay debts.

The Reapers got the ledger. Three brothers paid for it in blood before we recovered what she sold.

Lena paid eventually too. Not by my hand. Not by club vote. She ran from men worse than me and wound up beneath a bridge outside Bristol with a needle in her arm and my name tattooed under her ribs like a joke nobody wanted to laugh at.

She ruined me in ways a bullet only dreams about.

Or maybe I let her.

Either way, I learned. Women leave. Love costs. Softness is an unlocked door. Trust is worse because trust makes a man stupid enough to hand somebody the key.