Page 37 of Working For Her Second Chance

Not a promise. Not a plan. Not a spreadsheet with contingency tabs and color-coded timelines. Just two words, said in the morning light on a porch my father built, by a woman who drove away twelve years ago and drove back three weeks ago and is sitting beside me now with coffee in her hand and her boots on my boards and no intention of leaving before dawn.

"I know," I say.

And for the first time, I believe it the way I believe the ground under this house, the way I believe the sunrise, the way I believe the hum of the transformer on the county road—not because someone promised it, but because it's here.

She's here.

And home, it turns out, was never a line on a map or a row in a spreadsheet or a name on a building.

It was always this. The porch. The ridge. The chairs.

Epilogue

River

The Triumph idles in the yard, and the sound is my father's voice translated into displacement and combustion.

Six months since the rebuild. Six months of tuning, adjusting, dialing in the carburetor until the idle is smooth as a held breath. The chrome catches the April sun, and the exhaust blurs the air behind the tailpipe, and the 650cc twin ticks like a heartbeat that's been waiting forty years to find its rhythm.

Macy stands on the porch in jeans and my leather jacket—the brown one, too big in the shoulders, the zipper catching at her hip. Her hair is pulled back. No hard hat. No clipboard. No blueprints rolled under her arm. Just her, Saturday morning, bare-faced in the spring light with the jacket sleeves pushed to her elbows and an expression caught between curiosity and something I'd call hunger if I were a man who used that word casually.

"You said April," she says. "You said the roads would be clear in April and you'd take me."

"Roads are clear."

"Then stop staring at me and start the bike."

Hitch watches from the porch with the resigned expression of a dog who has accepted that his two humans occasionally do things that don't involve him and has chosen not to take it personally. His tail thumps once. Permission granted.

The helmet fits her. Of course it does—I bought it in February, drove to Grand Junction on a Tuesday specifically to find one that would fit her head, which required trying eleven helmets at three stores because Macy Sinclair has opinions about everything including the structural integrity of foam padding and the aerodynamic profile of a visor. She doesn't know I did that. She thinks the helmet was in the shop. I'm taking that secret to the grave.

She swings onto the seat behind me. Her thighs bracket my hips. Her hands find my waist, fingers hooking into my belt loops, and the contact sends a jolt up my spine that has nothing to do with the engine vibrating between my legs and everything to do with the woman pressed against my back.

"Hold on."

"I am holding on."

"Tighter."

Her arms wrap around my ribs. Chest against my back. Chin on my shoulder. The warmth of her through the leather, through my shirt, through the skin underneath—layers of fabric and all I can feel is her.

First gear. The clutch releases and the Triumph rolls forward, gravel crunching, and Macy's grip tightens and her breath catches against my neck and the sound goes straight to the base of my skull.

The county road opens up. Second gear. Third. The engine climbs and the wind pulls at us and the valley spreads wide on both sides—green, finally, after the long brown winter. Fence posts ticking past. The co-op yard. Kincaid's parking lot. Theturnoff to Ridgeline where Macy's community center is framed out, skeleton of steel and promise against the foothills.

Her hands shift from my belt loops to my stomach. Fingers spread flat across my abdomen, pressing in, and the pressure is deliberate. Not holding on. Holding. Her thumb traces the line of muscle above my hip and my grip on the throttle tightens because this woman is going to make me put a vintage motorcycle into a ditch.

Fourth gear on the straightaway past the reservoir. Sixty miles an hour and the road is ours and the sun is high and behind me Macy laughs—the real one, the unguarded one, the laugh that sounds like a window opening in a room that's been sealed too long. Her body leans with mine through the curves, instinctive, trusting the tilt, trusting me.

The overlook road climbs. I downshift through the switchbacks, the engine growling, and she holds tighter, and every point of contact between her body and mine is a live wire. Her inner thighs against the outside of mine. Her breasts against my shoulder blades. Her mouth near my ear, close enough that I can feel her breathing.

"Faster," she says. One word. Low. Not about the bike.

I pull into the overlook. Kill the engine. The silence rushes in—wind, birds, the river far below. The bench is there. Our bench. But I don't get off the bike because Macy's hands are still on my stomach and her fingers are moving south and her mouth is on the back of my neck, open, warm, and the sound I make is not dignified.

"Inside," I manage. "Home. Now."

"Now," she agrees, and the word vibrates against my spine.