All I had to do to enjoy my time with Jessica was exist. I could be my natural self. She accepted me entirely and cared nothing about my past. She didn’t get frustrated with the present and never mentioned her expectations of the future.

She truly lived in the now. She asked for nothing, was satisfied with simply being in my presence, and was grateful for every moment we were able to spend together. If she were a man, I would have asked her to prospect for the club.

Instead, I offered a little more of myself on each day, hoping she would continue to hold me in high regard despite my colorful past.

I picked up a piece of pita and swiped it through the hummus. “I can’t believe you like this stuff. No one likes it.”

“I love it,” she said.

I bit the bread in two, and then nibbled on what was left. “It’s a staple in my diet.”

“Mine, too.”

My friends in the motorcycle club didn’t care much for Mediterranean food. Sharing my favorite foods with someone who enjoyed them as much as me was exciting. Wichita had a heterogeneous array of people, many of which were restaurateurs. In the thirty-five years that I’d lived there, I’d become quite a foodie.

“Have you ever eaten pho?” I asked excitedly.

She draped the tip of her pita in the chickpea purée. “What?”

“Vietnamese noodle soup,” I said. “It’s called pho.”

Her eyes widened with excitement. “I love that stuff.”

“I eat it every Saturday afternoon. There’s a place on Central, down by my house. You’ll have to try it with me sometime.”

“It seems like you’ve got a schedule for everything,” she said. “You have biker meetings on Thursday nights, you eat that curry soup out east on Friday afternoon, pho on Saturdays, and you eat sushi on Sunday evenings. Oh, and you exercise on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, at midnight.”

“I go see my parents every Sunday afternoon, too.” I chuckled. “You forgot that.”

“Every Sunday?”

“Every Sunday.”

“That’s awesome,” she said. “My parents live in St. Louis. I see them a couple of times a year.”

Spending time with my parents was something I looked forward to, especially since being released from prison. I was aware their days on earth were coming to a close, and I valued our Sunday afternoons together.

“I spend three or four hours every Sunday with mine,” I explained. “It’s kind of a tradition.”

She wiped her hands on her napkin and relaxed against the back of the booth. “It seems like you know everything about me, but I know very little about you.”

“I’m an open book. If you want to know something, all you’ve got to do is ask.”

She finished eating the piece of pita bread she held, and then wiped her hands on her napkin. “You said you got divorced before you went to prison. Did you do it because you were going to prison?”

The question surprised me. “No,” I responded. “That had nothing to do with it.”

She reached for another piece of pita. “Is there a chance that you two will get back together?”

I choked on my response, coughing the words out onto the table between us. “Not a chance in hell.”

“What’s so funny?”

I blew out a long breath. I hadn’t discussed it with anyone since it happened. The men in the MC feared mentioning it would cause me to react in a manner that would earn me a trip right back to prison. The time I’d spent incarcerated was therapeutic for me, and I’d managed to find a way to forgive her for what she’d done. It didn’t make talking about it any easier.

I drew a breath of courage and then spoke in one rambling sentence. “While I was preparing for trial, my wife had sex with my best friend.”

Her hand shot to her mouth. “Oh my gosh,” she gasped. “I’m sorry.”

“Better that it happened before I went to prison. It would have been tougher to accept if it happened while I was in there.” I coughed out a laugh and continued. “I guess, in some respects it did happen while I was in there.”

I realized I was saying more about matters than I wanted to. I reached for my glass of water.

“So, did it happen while you were locked up, or afterward? I’m confused.”

“Before I went in. The fellas kept seeing her with him at the coffee shop. They said it didn’t look like they were just friends. I figured he was comforting her, and let it go. Hell, I knew it was hard for her to accept that I chose to fight my case and risk prison when I could have simply accepted their offer of probation. Six months later, I felt like the fellas were probably right. So, I asked her. She confessed to having an affair with him.”

“Holy crap.” She shook her head. “That’s awful.”

“It is what it is. I forgave her. I said if she cut her ties with him that we could get through it. She apologized, agreed, and I figured it was over. A month or so down the road, I caught them together on a Friday night. She was supposed to be working late. She wasn’t. They were out on a date.”

Her eyes slowly widened. “What did you do?”

I was ashamed of how I reacted to the situation and regretted what I had done. I’d lived my life shielding others from the ridiculous decisions I often made. Confiding my mistakes revealed my weaknesses, and I preferred not to be perceived as being weak.

With Jessica, however, I felt complete transparency was in my best interest.

I let out a long sigh. “That night, after their date, they went to his house. That’s where I found them. I went to a friend’s house, got a gun, and then parked across the street from his house. I sent them each a text and explained if I saw either of them come out, I’d kill them.”

“You’re not serious!”

“I’m afraid I am.”

She covered her mouth with her hands. “You didn’t…”

“No, I didn’t. I sat there and smoked an entire carton of cigarettes. I don’t know how much time passed. The sun came up, and then went down again, I know that. I smelled like a wet goat. At some point I realized that her falling in love with him wasn’t something I had control over. It was human emotion. So, I sent them a text, apologized, and left.”

She blinked a few times. “Wow. That’s…it’s…that’s kind of extreme. Is that how you handle everything? With violence?”

“Not really.”

“What do you mean, not really?”

“I’m not a violent person. I consider myself kind and loving. When someone crosses me, I often feel the need to teach them a lesson, though.”

“What was your lesson going to be? On that night?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I think my frustration with the court case came to a head. I’d been battling with them for three years at that point and things didn’t look good. I’m ashamed for what I did. For what it’s worth, I apologized to him the next day and wished him the best in his endeavors with her.”

Her eyes bulged. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Are they still together?”

“They got married while I was in prison.”

“Oh, wow.”

I rarely offered my personal experiences to others. If someone wanted to know something, they had to carefully extract the information from me. In an effort to maintain complete transparency with Jessica, I decided to continue, offering her a little more.

“I dated a couple of women after that. I was trying to cling to some form of normalcy during my legal battle, I guess. The last relationship I ended up in continued until the day I surrendered to US Marshalls. She said she’d wait for me until I got out of prison. I had my doubts, but it was nice to think about.”

I took a drink of water and mentally prepared to drop the next bomb.

“I’m guessing she didn’t wait,” Jessica said.

I shook my head. “I found out two months into my sentence that she was pregnant. When the fellas found out when the expected delivery date was, they figured the baby was mine. The date of conception would have been about a month before I got locked up. With me being in prison, communicating wasn’t easy. Letters were written back and forth. Then, in one letter, she told me what happened. She had sex with one of my other friends a month before I surrendered. That’s when I cut off all communication with the outside.”

With her mouth hanging open, she stared back at me. After a moment, she swallowed heavily. “That really happened?”

“It sure did.”

“I’m so sorry.”

I shrugged. “I’m not. I believe everything happens for a reason. All that crap got me here. I like where I am now.”

“Do you have trust issues?” she asked.

I did, but I was surprised that she asked. “Why do you ask?”

She pointed at herself. “Because I have them. So, I’m sure you do, too.”

“I suppose I do.”

“You can trust me,” she said. “I’ll never lie to you, or cheat on you.”

“That’s good to know.”

She seemed offended by my response. She pushed the plate of hummus aside and leaned against the edge of the table. Her gaze met mine. “I’m serious.”

“I believe you,” I said, even though I didn’t.

I didn’t trust anyone at that point. Men, or women. After what I’d been through, my faith in mankind, entirely, had diminished to nothing.

I’d hoped that telling her about my past would cleanse me of what ill feelings I still harbored. My rising blood pressure proved I wasn’t prepared to be in a relationship with anyone at that point.

As long as I didn’t allow myself to fall in love with Jessica, she wouldn’t be able to hurt me. Throughout my life, friends had come and gone, each leaving me with fond memories of the time we shared together.

She would be no different.

I needed to maintain a friendship with her, and nothing more. Doing so would protect me from the inevitable.

At that moment, I made the decision.

Jessica would be a friend, and nothing more.