Page 21 of My Veteran Biker

I feel him wake up slowly. The change in his breathing. The tension returning to his muscles. The moment his brain catches up to where his body is.

He doesn't let go.

"Your wound," I say.

"Still there."

His voice is rough, scraped raw from too little sleep and too much adrenaline. I turn over to face him and immediately regret it because now we're inches apart and I can see the gray in his stubble, the lines around his eyes, the way he's looking at me like I'm a problem he hasn't solved yet.

"Let me look at it," I say.

He rolls onto his back and I sit up, pulling the sheet with me because suddenly I'm very aware that I'm wearing a thin tank top and pajama shorts and nothing else.

His eyes track the movement but he doesn't comment.

I peel back the gauze slowly. The wound is still oozing, the edges angry and red. It needs stitches. Probably needs antibiotics. Definitely needs better care than a first aid kit from under my bathroom sink.

"This is going to get infected," I say.

"Then I'll deal with it."

"You're being stubborn."

"I'm being realistic. I show up at the ER with a bullet graze at six in the morning, they call the cops. The cops show up at the clubhouse asking questions. That's a conversation Clint doesn't need to have right now."

I tape fresh gauze over it even though I know it's not enough. When I'm done I sit back and look at him, this man I loved at twenty-three and apparently never stopped loving because why else would I be sitting here trying to take care of him when he clearly doesn't want to be taken care of.

"What happened last night?" I ask.

"Marrow attacked the clubhouse."

"Did people die?"

"None of ours."

He says it like it's a football score. Casual. Final.

I think about what that means, about him being in a fight where people died, about the fact that he came to my door bleeding and I let him in without asking questions.

"I stood in my kitchen in the dark for two hours waiting to see if your bike came back."

His jaw tightens. He sits up, favoring his left side, and reaches for me. His hand cups the back of my neck, thumb brushing my jaw.

"I'm not dead," he says.

"This time."

"Francis..."

"What happens next time? What happens when Marrow comes back and you're not fast enough or lucky enough or whatever kept you alive last night?"

"I don't know."

The honesty of it hits me harder than a lie would have. He doesn't know. He's not going to promise me he'll be fine, that he'll come home, that I won't end up identifying his body at the county morgue.

"I can't do this," I say.

His hand drops. Something in his face closes off, that blank expression he used to wear when I told him I was leaving seventeen years ago.