My Biker Husband Spent the Night in the Other Woman's Bed novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Ask Birdie

Birdie admits she knew and kept quiet because Dutch asked. Jesse shows Hallie a photo from March.

Birdie's Diner opened at six, and I was on the third stool from the register by ten past.

My leather shop sat in the old garage bay behind her kitchen, and I had eaten breakfast on that stool for six years.

She came through the swinging door with a pot of coffee and her glasses pushed up in her silver hair.

"Hallie, honey. You look like you've been up all night."

"I have."

She filled my cup.

I watched her hands.

They were steady until I said, "Did you know about Rhett and Delaney?"

The pot stopped over the cup.

A little coffee ran over the rim and onto the saucer.

Birdie didn't look at me.

Behind me, a trucker's fork stopped halfway to his mouth.

Two old men in the corner booth, the ones who came in every morning for the early special, went quiet.

"Not here," Birdie said. "Come in the back."

"Here," I said.

"Hallie."

"He told me through my own front door that the whole club has known since April. He said to ask you."

Birdie put the pot down.

She put both hands flat on the counter, and I saw her knuckles go white.

"Dutch came in on a Tuesday in April," she said. "He sat right there where you are. He told me Rhett had gotten himself into something with Delaney, and it was being handled, and you'd be hurt for nothing if it got out before it was settled."

"And you believed him."

"I didn't believe him. I did what he asked." Her voice cracked. "He holds the lease on this building, Hallie. He holds yours too."

"Five months."

"I know how long it's been."

"I've eaten at this counter every morning for five months."

"I know."

"You put extra bacon on my plate."

Birdie started to cry.

She did not wipe her face.

She stood there in her apron with tears running down her cheeks and let every person in her diner watch her do it.

"I should have told you the day he said it," she said. "I let you sit there and eat the bacon. I'll carry that till I die."

One of the old men in the booth stood up.

He put a ten on the table and walked out without his change.

The trucker shook his head slowly at Birdie.

I picked up my coffee and drank it all.

It was too hot, and I let it burn.

"Thank you for saying it in front of them," I said.

"Honey."

"I'm not done being angry with you."

"I'd think less of you if you were."

I put a five on the counter, got up and went out the side door into the lot.

The sun was coming over the roofline of the garage across the way.

That was Calhoun Automotive, three bays, a rusted sign and a row of motorcycles with their tanks off.

A man was standing in the open middle bay, wiping his hands on a red rag.

I knew he had been watching the diner window.

Jesse Calhoun had been the Iron Pines' road captain once, before he gave back his patch.

He was thirty-five, tall, broad in the shoulder, with a scar through his left eyebrow and gray coming in at his temples.

He had fixed my truck for six years and never once sent me a bill that matched the work.

He looked at my face and put the rag down.

"I'm sorry," Jesse said.

"For what?"

"For not telling you in April."

I walked across the lot until I was close enough to see the grease in the creases of his knuckles.

"You knew in April."

"I tried."

"Tried how?"

"I came into your shop on a Thursday. I had it all worked out." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Rhett walked in behind me with a sack of burgers. He sat down on your bench and asked me if I'd look at his carburetor."

"And you looked at his carburetor."

"I looked at his carburetor."

"Jesse."

"I know." He met my eyes and didn't look away. "I could have said it anyway. I've been telling myself since April that I would. I didn't."

I wanted to hit him.

I wanted to lean against his chest and not move.

I did neither.

"Why are you telling me now?"

"Because you're already standing here."

He went to the workbench at the back of the bay, picked up his phone and thumbed through it.

Then he held it out.

It was a photograph taken through a windshield, from a distance, in daylight.

It showed a black Harley with a familiar dent in the saddlebag, parked at the curb of a small rental house.

The date in the corner said March.

The time said 2:14 in the afternoon.

"That's not the first time," Jesse said.

"It's the first time I've seen it."

"It's not the only one I have."

He kept holding out the phone.

I took it.

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