Page 12 of Riding with the President Biker

I carry her toward the exit.

Snow hits us the moment we come through the exterior door, heavier than before, falling thick and straight in the still air. Cold against my face, against her hair.

The lot beyond the structure is quiet. Vehicles idling. Men emerging at intervals, moving toward designated positions. Grave comes around the north corner of the building in a long stride and his eyes find me and then find Leah and relief takes over his face.

He does not say anything yet. He just holds the look.

Leah's fingers tighten slightly in my jacket, the grip of someone who has been cold and afraid without showing it, finding something solid to close a hand around.

I do not loosen my hold.

We walk back through the snow to where the bikes are standing in the tree line, and the plant behind us goes dark as the last of our people clear it.

When we reach the bikes I do not set her down immediately.

I stand at the side of mine for a moment with her still against my chest, and the honest reason is that the transition requires thought, she is not fully steady yet, but the less honest reason is that I am aware, with a specificity that is going to become a problem, of exactly how she fits against me.

Of the curve of her hip under my forearm, the warmth of her through her jacket where my hand is spread at her waist, the way her breath moves in a slow rhythm against my collar.

I lower her gently, both hands at her waist, and hold her upright against the side of the bike while her feet find the ground. She takes her own weight without complaint, but I keep my hands where they are for a moment longer, fingers pressing into the soft curve of her sides, feeling her breathe, making sure.

"Can you ride?" I ask.

"I can ride," she says. Her voice is steadier than her legs.

I hold her gaze for a second, then turn to the bike and bring her in close with both hands at her waist, steadying her against it. She gets one hand on my shoulder for balance and swings her leg over, and I keep my grip on her until she is settled on the seat.

I swing on in front of her and reach back, finding her wrist, and pull her arm around my waist. She comes forward and her chest settles against my back, her thighs closing around the outside of mine, and I become immediately, inconveniently aware of exactly how much of her is now pressed against me — the weight of her full breasts against my shoulder blades, the inside of her thighs warm through denim against the outside of mine.

Her arms tighten at my stomach and I feel that too, her forearms pressing just below my ribs, and what moves through my head is that I want her thighs closing around me with a great deal less clothing involved, and I want my hands on her hips for a reason that has nothing to do with steadying her onto a bike seat, and that the warmth of her pressed against my back is going to make the ride back significantly longer than it needs to be.

I push it back.

She exhales against the back of my collar and relaxes into the position, and it does not help.

I start the engine.

Chapter 4 — Leah

The clubhouse runs on a different frequency after a rescue. Not relief, that would imply the tension dissipated. It just shifted register, from reactive to anticipatory, and the men moving through the building carry it in their shoulders, in the set of their jaws, in the way they handle equipment with more purpose than care.

I sit near the back wall with a damp cloth pressed to my lip and watch all of it happen around me.

Someone brought me food at some point, a plate that went lukewarm while I stared at the floor. Someone else dropped a flannel shirt next to me. Grave checked on me twice in the first twenty minutes after we came back, both times with that expression he wears when he is trying to determine whether I need practical help or emotional management.

I told him I was fine both times, he believed me on the second.

Hansen I have not seen in almost an hour, but I know he is somewhere in the building.

Near-death clarifies the things you were about to put off indefinitely. I have spent most of my adult life making practical decisions. The practical hospital, the practical city, the practical distance from a world I did not fully understand.

But I sat in that chair and I thought about his voice in the bar, the way he asked me questions like the answers mattered, the way he walked through a destroyed building and came for me in the dark, and how his voice when he said I've got you sounded like something much older than that moment.

I set the cloth down and stand.

The church room is at the back of the main building, past the corridor, behind a door that is heavier than it looks. I have not been inside but I know where it is from the way men move around it.

I push the door open.