After a shower where Tex, true to his word, completely refused to touch her, or even look at her, Jessie toweled off and put on some basic makeup. Since he’d steadfastly refused to get into the shower with her — spoilsport — she’d asked him where they were going. He’d mentioned the name of the bar, Soloman’s, but it wasn’t a place she’d ever gone. She gathered it was pretty rough and tumble, not the kind of place that she would hit with her girlfriends for a night of clubbing — assuming she had girlfriends with whom she went clubbing, but that wasn’t the point — but when she’d asked what she should be choosing for clothes, he’d shrugged his inked shoulders. “You know, whatever you want.”

 

She hadn’t hit him. She’d been sorely tempted, but it wouldn’t have hurt him, changed anything, or made her feel better. She’d settled on skinny jeans and a loose, flowing blouse in a bright pattern. She kept her makeup light, but chose some of the more sparkly shades she didn’t tend to wear to work. Tex got himself kicked out of the bathroom after she bent over the sink to wash her face. He made a low, growling noise, and suddenly his hands were on her hips and his erection was pressed against her ass again.

 

She turned and swatted him then, to his surprise and laughter. “You had your chance,” she told him, as firm as she could be with cleanser on her cheeks. “You get out if you can’t behave yourself.”

 

He’d all but cackled, but he’d gone. She put on her makeup — eyeliner, shadow, mascara, and a touch of color for her lips — and then stepped out.

 

He’d gotten dressed while she was waiting, and he looked delicious. Same jeans he always wore, worn in the pattern of his long legs and lean hips, but he’d put on a button down shirt in a warm periwinkle blue. It set off the tan and freckles of his skin, and the few buttons left undone highlighted the hair at the top of his chest. She suddenly regretted sending him out of the bathroom. Her brain treated her to a gorgeous image of him lifting her up onto the sink and rutting against her, things falling off the counter and shattering, so lost in ecstasy that neither of them cared.

 

His eyes were sparkling with laughter; he had to know the effect he was having on her. The shirtsleeves were rolled up just below his elbows, and the bands of ink over his forearms disappeared under the fabric in the most tantalizing way. It was most delicious secret, knowing how the patterns played out where most people couldn’t see them. She knew what he was hiding, and that was fantastic.

 

“Ready?”

 

“Yes,” she said, reaching out and taking his hand. She let him lead her out of the house, back to his bike. Putting on the helmet and mounting up behind him was its own kind of foreplay now. She wasn’t shy about wrapping her arms around his waist or snugging her body up against his. She wasn’t anything like experienced enough to drive the bike on her own, but she felt comfortable leaning into turns with him, following his lead as he wove through traffic and switchback turns.

 

They kept out of town as the sun set over the Pacific, and he hit the highway heading north. He drove through two medium sized towns that Jessie knew well enough, and then kept going. In the middle of nowhere, he took a highway exit she’d never even fully registered before, and drove another few minutes over roads that rapidly degraded from the well-maintained coastal highway.

 

The bar was like something out of a movie set. The music, loud country that had been popular when she was a kid, boomed out over the scrub that surrounded it. The road might have been paved, once upon a time, but whatever had been laid down had degraded to the point that it was no more than dirt packed to a stone-hardness, and gravel. Tex slowed his bike to compensate for the shifting terrain underneath them, and then pulled around behind the main parking area. He tucked his bike into a quiet corner, then shut off the engine and pocketed the keys.

 

“Your chariot has arrived, madam,” he said, stepping off and gallantly reaching a hand out towards her.

 

“Isn’t that what you say before we leave? Like when the car comes around or something?” She took his hand, even though she didn’t need it anymore, as she stepped off the bike. When she was clear to the ground, she thought he’d drop her grip, but instead he turned his hand in hers, twining their fingers together. Apparently he was going to have the conversation with his body, even if she kept cutting off his words. That…meant something, she found. Something good and sweet that made the tight, constricting bands around her heart relax just a little.

 

“Maybe. I haven’t generally been the guy with the chariot.”

 

She stepped into him, letting him wrap his arms around her waist. They swayed a little to the twanging thumps of the pop-country blaring out of the bar, complete with shouts and hollers. “Who have you been?”

 

He shrugged, but something darker was flickering in his face. “The spoiler. The guy who fucks everything up and then rides away from the waste he has lain.”

 

“Not to me.”

 

“No?”

 

“Not even when we were kids. I missed you. But it wasn’t your fault. What happened to Danny. It wasn’t even my father’s fault. It was the man who rode him down. He is the one person responsible for Danny. I—Tex, I need to believe that, when Danny turned around and saw us? He was rolling his eyes and maybe kind of grossed out or super-protective, because his best friend was kissing his kid sister. But I need to believe that he would have been happy for us. He might have teased us and made horrible gagging sounds whenever we were close by. But you were his family, and so was I. He would have been happy for us.”

 

Tex brought his mouth down to hers and kissed her, hard, pulling her tight against his body, so close that she felt almost crushed. She twined her arms around his neck and kissed him back, meeting his tongue and teeth with hers. They’d kissed so many times this past week, but this felt like something different, something deeper. Something that filled her up and emptied her out all over again.

 

When the kiss came to an end, he pressed his forehead to hers, still continuing that soft sway. “Thank you,” he said.

 

“Helps?”

 

“Helps.”

 

“Good. Ready to go in?”

 

“Yeah.” He took her hand again, and led her through the darkness to the front of the bar. There was plenty of light to navigate, but also shadows, and people taking advantage of the darkness. The thing that struck her most as they moved through the pairings was that there was less of that desperate loneliness in the air than she’d felt the few times she’d driven to San Jose or San Francisco for a night on the town. There was laughter in the air, and soft sighs that sounded contented and eager instead of just needing.

 

She’d thought it was loud outside, but as Tex threaded pushed open the big swinging door that led into the bar, noise swallowed her ears. The bar was either built around an old barn, or modeled after one; there were stalls that had been turned into booths, tables placed in an old hayloft, and a dance floor in the far corner. A long bar stretched the length of the building, with plenty of stools cozied up nearby. A raised area for a band was placed in the farthest corner from the door, but right now a DJ occupied the space. He was playing the sort of country that had falling out of popularity when she was a kid, when the lead singer was still expected to have a guitar strapped to him, settled far higher than a rock star would ever allow, when there was still plenty of twang, but bass guitar had replaced standing bass, and you had to look to find a fiddle solo.

 

Most of the men were dressed more or less like Tex. She’d vaguely expected to see some fringe or at least some bolero ties, but other than a bunch of huge hats, shirts and jeans seemed to be the order of the day. Glancing around at the other women in the bar, she could see why Tex had told her to wear whatever; some women were dressed to the nines, with big hair and makeup, short denim skirts and blouses with ruffles. Others were even more casual than her, wearing just worn jeans and t-shirts.

 

“Hungry?” Tex shouted into her ear, and she nodded. He pointed towards a table, then gestured that he would head towards the bar. She followed his pointing and made herself comfortable while he navigated the people—it wasn’t fair to call it a crowd, not really—bellied up to the bar.

 

It was interesting. She hardly ever went out because she hated crowds. She found herself worrying over whether people were staring at her, talking about her behind their hands. Were her clothes right, was she wearing too much makeup, or not enough? Was she talking too much, too loud, making a fool of herself in one way or another? None of that stuff had ever come naturally to her, and after spending the second half of her school career as “Jessie, you know, whose brother died?” it hadn’t seemed so bizarre to wonder whether or not people were paying her more attention than was entirely necessary.

 

For once, tonight, she felt invisible. It was strangely reassuring, to be just a person in a crowd. She didn’t know a single person here, and she didn’t owe any of them anything. If some stranger walked up to her and struck up a conversation, she could be an entirely different person. It was the most free she’d ever been in her life.

 

She’d grown up in Castello, and never really been tempted to leave. Sure, she’d thought about it a few times in high school, the same way everyone day-dreamed about walking away from their entire life and starting over. But there was no way her mother would ever move away from Danny’s grave, and as tempting as it would be to go somewhere where she could be seen as something different than she’d been throughout her childhood, she didn’t want to leave her mother. Mama had already lost her husband and her son; losing her daughter to the city would have been a harsh blow.

 

And she liked her life. She’d gotten her cosmetology license, and she’d started working for Delilah, and it had been fine. She’d never had huge ambitions, like some of the kids she gone to school with. Castello was enough for her.

 

But what would it be like to live her life on the back of Tex’s motorcycle? Dress in leather and be his bitch, his lady, whatever it was they called the girlfriends of the motorcycle guys in real life, instead of on TV? The way he talked, it seemed like he led a more settled life than she’d assumed, and that was its own kind of strangeness. If she were just a few hours away, how would Mama feel about that? Far enough that they got the space she’d always wanted, but close enough that they could both drive if they missed each other. If there were grandkids to visit – and, oh boy, did her cheeks flare up thinking about that. She’d never really wanted kids. She still didn’t really want kids. But with Tex, for the first time, the idea of kids wasn’t horrible.

 

Tex flagged down a bartender and spoke for a few minutes. He was passed a couple glasses of beer, and pointed at a table. The bartender nodded, and Tex moved back to her. “They have grilled chicken and steak sandwiches,” he said, pitched loud enough to carry over the music. “I got one of each, and I’ll take the one you don’t want.”

 

“Fool,” she said, making a face as he sat. “You get grilled chicken. Steak for me.”

 

He grinned, settling back with the glass of beer. “That’s my girl.”

 

Her stomach flipped hard, shooting straight to her nerves. She traced a finger through the condensation already pooling on the outside of the glass. When had the bar gotten hot? She’d almost been cool when they’d come in. “Am I? Your girl, I mean?”

 

His face went still. His teeth closed on his lower lip, and he stared off into the distance for a moment. “Yes,” he said, after the moment settled and passed.

 

“Do I get a vote?”

 

He didn’t say anything, just turned his gaze back to her with his eyebrows lifted.

 

“Fair point.”

 

He nodded, like it was all settled.

 

“I love you, too,” she said, all in a blur before she could choke on the words. She wasn’t looking at him, which meant that she accidentally timed it for just as he was taking a sip of his beer. He didn’t quite spray her, but it was close; he hacked and coughed for a minute until he got his breath back. She studied her fingers, twined tightly together around the glass he’d brought her.

 

“Sorry,” he said. “Not the ideal reaction, I know.” He took a deep breath, and she made herself look up at him, though she couldn’t quite lock his gaze with hers. “I take it you heard me before?”

 

She could play the fool, but what was the point. “I mean, I honestly wasn’t sure you heard yourself.”

 

He nodded. “It’s not something I say so often that I would say it by mistake. Granted, I wasn’t planning to declare myself to you in a post-orgasmic haze, but things happen how they happen.”

 

“And you meant it?”

 

He nodded. “Have since we were kids.”

 

The darkest thought she’d had in the past week bubbled up and broke, and she had to ask the question she hadn’t even wanted to think about. “If Danny hadn’t—hadn’t been killed. Do you still think there would be an us? Or would we have ruined everything?”

 

His gaze was so sharp that it almost cut; no wonder she still couldn’t bring herself to meet it. “You mean, would we have been like most middle school or high school couples and dated for a few weeks, then made some dumbass mistake and stopped speaking to each other? And would we have decimated Danny’s and my friendship at the same time?”

 

God, it hurt to have it all laid out like that. “Yeah. That’s what I mean.”

 

He sighed and leaned back in his chair, his gaze redirected towards the ceiling and away from her. She could take a deep breath again. That was good. “Jesus, Jessie, I don’t know. There’s no way to tell. I remember us both being pretty smart for our age, but I also know I did a lot of things in my teens and twenties that were dumb as shit. And I was gung-ho to join the armed forces, even then, and you were kind of a peacenik—”

 

“Excuse me, did you just call me a peacenik? Like some kind of lost flower child?”

 

“You wore bell bottoms literally all the time.”

 

“First of all, how do you know what they were called, and second, they were in fashion, and I was a kid, I wore what my mother bought me. Peacenik?”

 

“The point is,” he said, very firmly, “That if we could go find the alternate universe us, where Danny didn’t die, but I still kissed you that day, I don’t know what we’d find. I can see it going so many different ways. I know people who’ve been in love with the same person since they were kids, and people who are in their fifties and still haven’t bothered to settle down. I don’t know what would have happened. But I know what did happen, and I know I’m right here, with you, and there’s nowhere else I’d like to be.”

 

“Okay.” It was. It really was. “Yeah. Okay.”

 

“Good?”

 

“For now.”

 

“If it helps, I do this to myself, too. I worry. I’ve always tried to treat the people I date well, but with you? Sometimes it’s like Danny’s hanging out just behind your shoulder, telling me not to fuck up.” His voice trailed off as he surveyed some quiet inner pain.

 

“That would be awkward sometimes,” she said, suddenly desperate to lighten the mood.

 

He laughed, following her back to a happier place. “Well, yeah. I kick his ass out then.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “I don’t know what the hell happens next, gorgeous girl. I know how I feel about you, and I know what I would like to see happen, but there’s still so much to —” He cut off suddenly, his head tilting up.

 

“What is it?”

 

He held up a silencing finger and turned his head again, like he was straining to hear something. All she could hear was the music.

 

“Tex, what’s—” And then the song the DJ had been playing, something about a heart that was both aching and breaking, cut out, and as he started to announce the next big event for the week, she heard what Tex had been straining to hear. The roar of motorcycles. Lots of them. His color had drained away under his tan, leaving his ink like dark stains against his tanned skin. “What’s wrong?”

 

Just a bunch of motorcycles. What could be wrong?