Page 21 of Rogue
He didn’t kiss me.
He just held there.His forehead against mine, his hand at the back of my head, and his eyes closed.I could feel his breath, slow and even now, the warmth of it against my lips without touching them.His hand remained where it was, steady and unhesitating, like someone who’d already reached a decision.
“It means nobody gets near you,” he said.Low.The way he said things he meant without needing volume to carry them.“Nobody.”
I lifted my hands and my fingers found his wrist -- both hands, wrapping around it, the small bones there familiar under my thumbs -- and I held on.Not to pull him away.Not to move him at all.Just to hold on to the thing that was there, solid and warm and chosen.
He stayed where he was.
Everything around us was still.The coffeepot had stopped its ticking an hour ago.Outside the window, the pines moved, and the afternoon light was going gray at its edges.I breathed out slowly and felt the last of the tension I’d been holding since I’d watched him cross the yard go somewhere and stay there.
After a while -- I didn’t know how long -- he pulled back.
Just enough to study my face.Three or four inches, his hand still at the back of my head, my hands still around his wrist.He looked at me like a man who’d just finished a long, hard calculation.The answer was right there, and he was only now beginning to understand what it meant.
I watched it settle into him.
The shift was small, visible in his jaw and eyes.He had brought me in out of a gas station parking lot because it was the right thing to do, and somewhere, that had stopped being what this was.
He knew it.I could see that much.
Neither of us said so.
Chapter Eight
Lennox
The road he picked was nothing -- a cracked two-lane that ran south off the back of the property through a long flat between two stands of pine, no houses I could see and no other vehicles for the half mile we’d been on it.He slowed without signaling, because there was no one to signal to, and rolled the bike onto the shoulder where the asphalt gave way to weeds and broken glass.The sun was low and gold.He killed the engine.
I got off the back with one hand on his shoulder for balance.I stepped back into the gravel and tucked my thumbs into my front pockets.I looked at the bike, and then I looked at him.
“No,” I said.Before he’d said anything.
“I haven’t asked you anything yet.”
“You were going to.”
He swung a leg over and got off the other side, stood the bike on its kickstand, and put his hand flat on the seat.He looked at me across the saddle.His eyes held something I hadn’t seen before -- a small amusement more in the corner of his mouth than anywhere else.
“Come here,” he said.
I came.
He moved me where he wanted me without making a production of it.A hand at my shoulder, light, turning me to face the bike.He took my left wrist -- gentle, but not asking -- and set my hand on the grip.He helped me straddle the seat, then he took the right hand and did the same.He stepped in behind me and reached around my body to put his hands over mine and adjust the angle of my fingers on the throttle, and the warmth of him at my back was a thing I was aware of and decided not to think about.
“This is the throttle.Roll it toward you, you go.Roll it away, you slow down.”His voice was at my ear.Low.The way he said things he intended me to hear once and remember.“Right hand also has your front brake.Two fingers, that lever.You squeeze that hard at speed, you go over the bars.Two fingers.Light.”
I nodded.
“Left hand is your clutch.You’ll be in first the whole time.We’re not shifting today.”A pause.“Left foot, gear lever.Right foot, rear brake.Use the rear brake more than the front.The bike will tell you the rest.”
He stepped back half a pace and looked at my posture.Then he came back in and put one palm flat against the small of my back, low, where the hoodie was thin, and pressed gently -- not pushing, just communicating a direction.“Hips forward.Shoulders down.You’re sitting on it.You’re not bracing on it.”
I let my shoulders drop.
“Better.”
His fingers, sliding off my waist, caught the cuff of my sleeve where I’d pushed it up that morning, and the back of his knuckle brushed the inside of my wrist -- the place where the bruise had gone from purple to that soft yellow-green.He paused.He didn’t say anything about it.He settled his hand at his side, and he stepped back, and the only acknowledgment of any of it was the half second itself, which I noticed and which he meant me to notice and which neither of us would mention.
