Page 85 of Monk

John stood, brushing gravel dust off his jeans, and looked up at me. Our eyes met, and for one suspended beat, the whole world seemed to narrow down to the space between us—the porch, the bike, the child grinning in the yard, all of it blurring at the edges. “You ready to go?” he asked.

His tone was casual. His gaze was not. It was intense. Focused. Possessive in a way that sent heat crawling up the back of my neck. Like he was asking me something far bigger than whether I was ready to drive to a barbecue. Like he was asking whether I was ready for all of this—for him, for Tatum, for whatever shape our lives were taking now.

I swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah,” I said, though my voice came out rougher than I intended. “We’re ready.”

The screen door creaked behind me, and I turned to see my father wheeling himself out onto the porch with a grin that said he had been enjoying every second of the show. “Well, well,” he drawled. “Look who showed up.”

“Mr. Wilcox,” John said, straightening a little and giving him a respectful nod.

“John,” Dad replied, still grinning. “Good to see you, son.”

I moved automatically to help him down the ramp we’d installed the week before, but he waved me off with one impatient flap of his hand.

“I got it, Lina. Go help your man.”

Your man.I didn’t correct him. Didn’t have the energy to explain that John wasn’t my man, that we were complicated, that I didn’t know what the hell we were to each other beyond tangled and unfinished and entirely too intense for a Saturdaymorning. So instead, I walked down the porch steps toward the truck, pretending I hadn’t heard it, while behind me Tatum’s excited chatter rose up into the bright morning air.

“John, look! It fits! Does it fit? Is it on right?”

I glanced back over my shoulder and saw John squatting down again, those big, scarred hands of his moving with surprising care as he adjusted the strap beneath Tatum’s chin. “There you go,” he said gently. “Perfect fit.”

Tatum beamed up at him so brightly it nearly knocked the wind out of me, and then she asked the exact question I had been dreading from the second I heard his bike at the end of the driveway.

“Can I ride on the bike?”

My entire body went rigid.

“Yes,” John said immediately.

“No,” I said at the exact same time.

Tatum’s face fell instantly, all that joy dimming so fast it made me wince. John stood and turned toward me, his expression calm but firm in that infuriating way of his. “Lina.”

“No,” I said again, sharper this time, because panic was already trying to claw its way up my throat. “Absolutely not. She’s six years old, John. Six. It’s not safe.”

“She’ll be fine,” John said evenly. “I’ll keep her safe.”

“She’s too young,” I insisted, my heart pounding hard enough to make my hands shake. “She could fall off. She could get hurt. One wrong move and?—”

“Lina.” John’s voice cut clean through my panic—low, steady, impossible to ignore—as he crossed the distance between us in a few long strides. When he stopped, he was close enough that I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. “You rode with me,” he said quietly. “Remember?”

I did. God, I did.

I remembered every single ride. The way he would pull me close, the warm sun at my back. The way the wind would whip through my hair and steal my breath. The way I had always, always felt safe with him—even doing seventy down some back road with nothing but open sky above us and thunder under us. “That was different,” I said, but the protest came out weak. Fragile. Like even I didn’t fully believe it.

“How?” John asked quietly. “How was it different?”

“I was an adult,” I said. “I could hold on. I could?—”

“I would never let anything happen to her,” John said, and his voice dropped lower on the vow, rough with conviction. “Never, Lina. You know that.”

I stared up at him, chest tight and throat burning, because the worst part was that Ididknow that. Deep down, underneath all the fear and the protectiveness and the wild animal instinct to wrap Tatum in bubble wrap and never let her out of my sight, I knew exactly what kind of man John was when it came to the people he loved. He would take a bullet before he let harm come to her.

“She’ll be right in front of me,” he continued, gentler now, like he knew he was one frayed nerve away from losing me to panic. “I’ll have my arms around her the whole time. She won’t be able to move. Won’t be able to fall. I’ll keep her safe.”

I looked past him at Tatum, who was standing a few feet away in her too-big helmet, wide-eyed and hopeful, little hands clasped together under her chin.

“Please, Mom?” she said softly. “Please?”