Page 10 of Open Road

“Ready?” I ask.

“Yes,” Rose immediately says.

Janie says nothing. Her hands tighten slightly at my sides. Not gripping or letting go either.

The engine turns over. Rose laughs, short, pure, no calculation in it. The sound moves through the tank, up through my palms.

South on I-75. Jacksonville.

As the warm night comes in off the Everglades, Rose puts both arms out wide into the dark as if she owns it.

Behind me, Janie’s hands are barely touching my sides.

Forty minutes.

The miles peel away under the tires, and Rose laughs into the wind as if the whole night belongs to her. While behind me I can feel exactly how little of herself Janie is willing to hand over, every point of contact rationed and deliberate, the careful posture of a woman who has already found her exits and is only borrowing this one for as long as she has to. She’s temporary. She’s said as much without saying a word, riding back there as if she’s keeping count of the distance she means to put between us the moment the ground beneath her feels solid again. And by every rule I have ever lived by, I should be thinking the same way, marking the days until she’s somebody else’s trouble and the gate shuts behind her for good.

Instead, I roll the throttle on toward Jacksonville and find myself trying to work out why the thought of her gone scrapes at something I didn’t know I still had, and why I can’t make myself want it the way I know I should.

Chapter Three

ROAM

Twelve minutes into the ride, Rose falls asleep.

No warning, no winding down. One second, she had both arms out in the wind, explaining something about Mr. Rabbit’s preferences regarding the window seat, and then her weight changed, her head dropped, and a small body settled against my arm with the total surrender of a person who doesn’t know enough to stay alert.

My forearm shifts before the thought arrives.Hold her steady.

Behind me, Janie goes still.

Her hands are at my sides, barely there since we left the shoulder, a woman practicing the art of taking up no space. She leans into me for the space of a single breath, checking Rose is secure, accounting for the new angle of my arm, and what it means for her daughter’s weight. Then her hands ease back. Still barely touching, but she stopped making herself smaller after that.

It’s a small thing, but I note it.

Keep riding.

The Everglades are behind us now. The wide, dark stretch where the road runs flat and the cypress crowds both shoulders gives way to low concrete commerce, the first gas stations and chain diners of the outer metro. Jacksonville reaches a long way from its center. It’s a city that sprawls before it rises.

Rose’s head is against my arm. She breathes with the absolute confidence of someone who has completely handed the situation over.

No passenger on this bike has ever slept.

Something about that lands square in my chest, and I leave it alone.

The throttle sits where I’ve set it, not my usual speed, something slower, more deliberate, the right speed for what the bike is carrying tonight. The Softail handles differently with two up and a kid on the tank. The weight distributes in a way I’ve never had to account for before, and I account for it the same way I account for most things, without announcement and ceremony, adjusting until the machine does what it needs to do.

Behind me, Janie is awake.

She has been for the entire ride, her hands telling me this. The way they shift when southbound headlights appear in the oncoming lane. The fractional tightening at the overpass outside Baldwin, where the bridge structure closes in briefly from both sides. She reads the road the way someone reads it when they expect to be found on it, every passing vehicle a calculation, every pair of headlights a possibility she’s running out and discarding.

He hasn’t found us yet.

The gap betweenyetandwon’tis made of whatever the next forty-eight hours look like. I’ve been in this life long enough not to confuse a problem that’s gone quiet with one that’s over. Quiet is a man who doesn’t know where you went, working on the problem. He’s working it right now, somewhere behind us. What matters is the distance.

A sign for Jacksonville comes up in my headlight. Green, reflective, the kind of ordinary landmark you pass a hundred times and stop seeing. Tonight, I see it.

Rose stirs at the rumble of an expansion joint, her weight shifts, and resettles. She’s wearing my sunglasses, claimed them the moment I put them on her face, and something tells me I’ve lost them forever. One arm has slid down to rest against hercheek, the lens sitting half off her face at approximately thirty degrees.