That makes it worse too.
He isn’t showing off. Not pushing speed to make me hold tighter. Not taking curves hard to prove he can. He rides like he remembers I’m behind him every second.
I don’t know what to do with a man who remembers.
Jeremy remembered things too.
He remembered what I wore when he wanted to accuse me. Remembered what I said when he wanted to twist it. Remembered old hurts and saved them like receipts. Remembered my mother’s shame, my missing father, my mistakes, my fears.
Derby remembers differently.
The thought terrifies me.
I loosen my arms a little because I realize I’m holding him too tightly.
He feels it.
Of course he does.
At the next stop sign, he turns his helmet slightly. “You good?”
No.
“Yes.”
He waits.
I sigh, my breath fogging the edge of the visor. “I’m not going to fall off.”
“Didn’t ask that.”
“What did you ask?”
“If you’re good.”
The answer sits in my throat, messy and inconvenient.
I’m not good.
I’m embarrassed because I almost kissed him. Turned on because I almost kissed him. Guilty because August is at Derby’s house while I’m out getting warm in the blood over a man who isn’t my husband. Confused because my husband is the nightmare and Derby is the danger, and somehow my body can tell the difference before my mind trusts it.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Derby’s shoulders shift beneath my hands.
Not tense.
Not relaxed either.
“Fair,” he says.
Then the light changes, and we ride on.
That is another thing I’m learning about him. He doesn’t always fill silence to make himself comfortable. He fills it when he wants to be an ass, sure, but not when it matters. When it matters, he can let silence stand beside us without turning it into punishment.
By the time we turn onto his gravel drive, my stomach is knotted so tight I can barely breathe.
Lights glow from the house.