Page 8 of Open Road

Why not?

I answer each one.

Out of my peripheral vision, the woman has moved back to the car door. She is watching, so I don’t look directly at her. Rose asks whether the exhaust pipe is hot right now.

“Yes, but you should never touch it,” I say.

“Because it could be hot?”

“Because it could be.”

She thinks about this seriously. Nods. Then, “What’s your name?”

“Roam.”

She files it with great solemnity. “I’m Rose. This is Mr. Rabbit.” She holds him up. “He doesn’t talk.”

“That so.”

“He used to. He stopped…” A pause. “Mama says he’s resting his voice.”

Look at this kid. Three years old, managing a stuffed rabbit’s social calendar, bare feet on a dark highway, not afraid of a single thing. She’s looking at me like I am simply part of the world, a big, interesting, motorcycle-owning part of the world, and there is nothing in her face that says she’s been taught to be afraid of it yet.

Her mother made sure of that.

Something in my chest shifts, but I don’t examine it.

Instead, I stand.

The woman is watching me across the hood. Her hair is still forward, arms still crossed. The quality of the read has changed, though, less threat assessment, more something harder to name.

“You got someone to call?”

Something moves across her face. Quick, then gone. “I’m working on it.”

Working on it meansno.

The highway is empty in both directions. Three in the morning on I-75 with a kid, a dead car, and a woman who rehearsed the leaving so many times it became efficient.

I know before I open my mouth what I’m going to say. Knew it at the fuel pump and before that, at the fist she almost made, or maybe when she said ‘I’m fine,’and I heard everything that it wasn’t.

“I’ve got a place,” I say. “If you need somewhere to be while you figure out next steps…” he pauses. “A club compound. Jacksonville, forty minutes back the way I came.” Another pause. “My president’s wife is there. Good woman. She’ll see you right.”

I put it down and don’t push it.

She studies me the way she’s been studying me since I pulled over, looking for the thing beneath the surface of the thing. I let her look. I don’t fill the silence, press the offer, or explain why she should trust me because this is her call. She knows it, and she needs to know I know it.

“I’m Roam,” I say. “Royal Bastards MC, Jacksonville.”

A beat. Then, with steel underneath it, “Janie.”

The kid tugs on her jacket. Demanding.

“This is Rose.”

“Hi, Roam.” Very serious. “Our car is broken.”

“Yeah, I heard.” I look at Janie. “How far are you going?”