Page 22 of Riding with the President Biker

"Your leave from the hospital." His thumb moves at the back of my neck, a slow easy motion. "How much of it is left?"

I look up at him. "About three weeks."

"Three weeks," he repeats.

"Yes."

"Mm." He is not pretending to think about this. He already knows what he is about to say and is simply taking his time arriving at it. "I'm going to need most of that."

"Is that right?"

"There's a clinic in town that could use someone with your emergency experience. Legitimate operation." He holds my gaze. "Thought it might be worth a conversation."

I feel the weight of what he is actually saying, not the clinic, or not only the clinic. He is describing a life.

He is telling me he has already been thinking past last night, past the war, past the temporary logic of adrenaline and proximity.

"You're very certain for a man who only met me a few hours ago in a bar fight," I say.

"I'm certain about most things," he says. "Takes me about twenty minutes."

"And it took you twenty minutes with me?"

"Closer to fifteen." He pulls me slightly forward by the back of my neck, just enough to close most of the remaining space. "The last five were mostly trying to remember why it was a bad idea."

"What was the conclusion?"

"Still working on it."

I put my hand at the collar of his shirt and hold his gaze. "I don't scare easily," I tell him. "I thought you should know that before you invest three weeks."

"I know that." The warmth in his voice is steady and real, not performed. "You told three Deadwood men no in a concrete room and memorized the layout on the way out."

"I did."

"And then you came back and told me about it naked in the church room."

I laugh and he makes that almost-laugh sound again, and something about the combination of it, the two of us in the middle of all of this laughing at something small and private, feels more intimate than almost anything that has come before it.

He kisses my forehead, which is not something I expected from a man of his particular profile, and the gesture is so sweet that it does more damage than anything dramatic could.

"Come on," he says.

"Where are we going?"

"Somewhere that is not here." He glances briefly at the men who are making a collectively reasonable effort to look busy, and then back at me. "I'm going to need to talk to you about something."

"About what?"

"About the next few weeks." A pause. "And the ones after those."

I study his face. The bruise at his jaw. The lines at the corners of his eyes.

"You're going to talk," I say. "Just talk?"

"Among other things." The look he gives me with that is very specific.

"Hansen!"