Page 46 of Gonzo's Grudge
“On it,” he said, and vanished with the locksmith’s curse following him down the steps.
When the new locks at home, I could exhale. I set keys on the hook and turned to find IvaLeigh at the sink washing two plates that didn’t need it. Busy hands. Busy head.
“She said I’ll never be faithful,” I repeated again because sometimes you have to say the thing twice to sand off its edge.
She set the plate down, dried her hands, and walked over until her toes touched mine. “You already answered that,” she continued. “Now answer this: are you going to let what she said make you keep me at arm’s length, or are you going to let it make you hold on tighter?”
I thought about the study at her parents’ house and the way a man can make threats sound like manners. I thought about GJ’s face through bus glass and Pop’s gavel and Hampton’s smirk and Walsh’s smile and the set of a woman’s mouth when she’s been left alone with rooms too big and promises too small.
“I’ll hold on,” I vowed. “If you promise to tell me when I squeeze too hard.”
She grinned. “I’ll bite your hand.”
“Fair.”
We spent the rest of the morning doing nothing in a way that felt like everything. I changed the bulb over the porch and she read me a paragraph from her paper, stopping to argue with herself halfway through. I told her she thinks like a lawyer and she said that was an insult. I laughed. The sound felt like a new thing that had been in me a long time and forgotten how to get out.
By noon, I had to go. Church wasn’t called, but there’s always something—the kind of errands you do when your life is built of engines and loyalty and the need to be seen by men who measure you in how steady you keep your word.
I strapped on my holster and picked up my keys. She packed her bag, slid into her jacket, then stepped into me like she cherished being in my space. Hands flat on my chest. Eyes on mine. “I choose you,” she stated again, not for drama, for record-keeping.
“I heard you,” I replied. Then because she deserved more than the grunt of a man who doesn’t know how to give words without feeling like he’s throwing knives, I added, “I choose you back.”
She kissed me like she was stamping that into something official. I wasn’t sure how to take that. Every passing moment with her I was only digging my grave deeper in shame and guilt.
We walked out to my bike. Her helmet went on—chin strap tug, click. Mine after. I swung my leg over and she climbed on behind, knees bracketing my hips, arms sliding around me like they live there now.
The engine caught and the road pulled us forward. I checked the mirrors the whole first mile out of habit, half expecting Cat’s car to tail, half expecting a cruiser to pull out from behind a side road with a ticket that was really a message. Nothing. Just sky and asphalt and a woman against my back who had heard the worst parts of me and hadn’t moved an inch.
At a light, I felt her mouth close to my ear through the helmet. “Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“She said you’ll ruin me.”
The light turned green. I rolled us through it. “I might, but I don’t want to,” I told her honestly. I didn’t know if it was a promise or a prayer, but I meant it like both.
“Good,” she responded, settling in. “Because I plan on ruining you first.”
I barked a laugh that turned a head in the next lane. “Too late,” I told her, and let the throttle out.
We moved like a single decision down the highway, wind in our teeth, trouble on our flank, and something new under my ribs that looked enough like faith I didn’t try to shake it.
Cat was wrong about one thing and right about another. I had been playing house. But the thing about houses? You can reinforce them. You can add locks and braces and a beam where the roof sags. You can decide that what’s under that roof is worth the fight it brings to your door.
I was an outlaw. I was also a man who had a son in a cage and a woman on his back who believed I could pick the lock on two impossible doors at once.
So I did what I know.
I rode. I planned. I held on.
And when the storm came, because it always does, I knew exactly who I was going to be standing next to when it broke.
Chapter 15
IvaLeigh
I was already exhausted by the time I left class. My professor had given back our midterms, and even though I’d done fine, my head wasn’t in it. Every line of red pen reminded me of the bigger fight gnawing at the edges of my life—the one I couldn’t put on paper or solve with a library session.
