Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
“Say when,” I replied honored to be beside him. “I’ll stand with you.”
He turned his eyes to the lot, found whatever he was looking for, and pushed off the wall. “Appreciate it.”
After a pause he spoke quiet like, “If there’s anything you think I’m not seeing—say it now.”
“You’re seeing it,” I gave back honestly. “All I can tell you is patience. She’s got a past that pulls on the line. Sometimes you gotta let her have space.” I tapped my sternum. “Doesn’t mean you let go. Means you hold even when she wants to shut you out.”
He left and I got back to the task at hand. By the time the sun tilted and the heat quit biting, I’d texted Melody to be ready for dinner. She’d sent back a thumbs-up and nothing else. Meant yes. Meant she was already tying her hair back, already shutting out whatever the day brought to give her full attention to our time together.
I rolled up to the hotel in the kind of evening light that makes everything look like it belongs in a photograph whether it deserves it or not. She was on the curb by the back door, boots on, loose braid over one shoulder, that soft T-shirt she wore when she didn’t care who saw her plain. When she saw me, she smiled like a thing in her had settled. It landed low in me, that look.
“You good?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She slid her tote strap across her chest, took the helmet like it was already hers, cinched the strap without looking, and hopped on. First time I put her on a bike she’d clutched with fingers that left prints. Now her palms found that spot on my middle and fit like she knew she found home.
We took the long way by instinct. Taking the cut through behind the lumber yard, the S-curve where the pines pull back enough to give you sky. She leaned with me, not against me. Half a mile in, the tension that rides under most people’s skin when they’re new to a bike slid out of her shoulders. She rested the crown of her helmet between my shoulder blades, a small weight I’d started keeping track of.
At my place, the trees held the day’s cool like a secret. I killed the engine, and the quiet climbed back on the world—cicadas, a soft tick from the pipes, some bird late to the evening. Inside smelled like cedar and soap and the faint metallic ghost of machine oil no amount of scrubbing ever takes out of a man’s life. She looked around the way she always did—cataloging without judging—then put her helmet on the chair by the door the same spot she always did. Little rituals felt big around her.
“Water?” I asked.
“Please.” She hopped up on the counter, heels knocking the cabinet, hands on either side of her like she needed to touch wood to stay in her body. I handed her a cold bottle. She took a sip, rolled it on her tongue like she was letting her day dissolve.
“Tiny called me,” she shared, eyes on the rim of her glass.
“Yeah?” I slid a cutting board out, set a steak on it, salted with the pinch that lives in my hand. “What for?”
“Asked me to go ring shopping with him.”
My knife paused. I didn’t make her look at me to know her face had gone careful. “And you don’t seem happy about that.”
She made the small move she makes when she’s picking between truth and safety—a quick glance down, a long breath, a lift of the chin that says she’s chosen.
“I want to be,” she said. “I love him for loving her. But I—” She stopped, swallowed, started again. “He asked because he wants it right. He wants it good. And I want that. I do. But there’s this…thing in the way. It’s not about him. It’s about before.”
“Say it,” I told her, quiet.
She set the glass down and twisted the stem once. “We grew up in a cult. Didn’t realize fully what it was until finding life here.” No tremor in the word cult now—just the flat edge of a fact worn smooth by living with it. “They have rules that laugh at the world’s. In their eyes, Lyric is already married. To BJ.” She said his name like taking out trash—get it out, get it gone. “Paper the state won’t recognize maybe, but paper the men back home would swing around if they wanted to make it ugly. She got out. But…you see what I’m saying.”
I did. I pictured a man with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, a room full of people who think the law is whatever their favorite man says it is, a piece of paper nobody should care about that can still be used like a blade.