When I Reached the Accident Scene to Save My Biker Husband, I Found His Mistress Wearing My Tenth-Anniversary Gift for Him novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Garbage Bags

Hank takes Bree home and Travis arrives at dawn to find his clothes in two garbage bags on the porch. The club president turns up unsurprised, and the shop account reads zero.

Hank drove me home at four in the morning and did not ask me a single question.

He walked me up to my own porch, looked at the dark windows, and said, "I'm sleeping on your couch."

"You don't have to."

"I know I don't." He held up his keys. "My daughter's at her grandmother's until noon. Let me be useful."

I let him.

I did not sleep.

I sat at the kitchen table with the blue helmet in front of me and turned it slowly until the cracked bee faced the wall.

Then I got two black garbage bags out from under the sink.

I filled the first with his shirts, and every one of them smelled like cherry and almond.

I filled the second with his boots, his razor, his spare vest and the framed photo of the two of us at the courthouse.

I stopped at the photo.

Then I put it in the bag too, glass and all.

At six, I dragged both bags onto the porch and set them side by side next to the welcome mat.

Hank stood in the doorway with a mug of coffee he had made without asking where anything was.

"That's a lot of bag," he said.

"There's more in the garage."

"I'll get it."

By seven, the neighbors across the street were out getting their papers, and none of them were in a hurry to go back in.

A truck I knew turned onto our street at ten past.

It was Travis's friend from the club, and he dropped Travis at the curb with a nod and drove off.

Travis came up the walk with his left arm strapped to his chest and a bag of pills in his good hand.

He stopped when he saw the porch.

"Bree." He kept his voice low, because of the neighbors. "Let's not do this out here."

"You picked out here when you put her on the back of your bike."

"That's not fair."

"Your boots are in the second bag. The vest is in the first."

He looked past me and saw Hank in the doorway.

His face changed.

"Oh, that's nice. That was fast."

"He drove me home," I said. "He slept on the couch. You can ask him which one."

Hank didn't say anything, and he didn't have to.

Travis let out a short breath through his nose and tried again.

"Okay. Okay. I made a mistake. Eight months of stupid. I'm not asking you to forgive me today. I'm asking you not to throw out ten years."

"I'm not throwing them out. I'm putting them on the porch."

A curtain moved across the street.

He lowered his voice even more.

"The shop is half mine, Bree. I built that place up for a decade. You can't just lock me out of my own business."

"It's my father's business. The deed has my name on it, and nobody else's."

"Then I'll talk to a lawyer."

"Do that."

A motorcycle came up the street, slow and heavy, and the sound of it made Travis straighten.

It was a gray Road King with a white-bearded man on it, and he parked at the curb without hurrying.

Gus Rathburn had been my father's closest friend, and he had taught me to clean a carburetor when I was eleven.

He took off his gloves one finger at a time.

"Morning, Bee," he said.

"Morning, Gus."

He looked at the two garbage bags and the man standing over them.

He did not ask what had happened.

That was the first thing I noticed, and I put it away because I did not have room for it yet.

"I heard there was a crash," Gus said finally.

"There was a woman on the back of my husband's bike."

Gus nodded slowly, and nothing in his face moved.

"Bee, I'm sorry. I'll say this once, and I'll say it to both of you." He turned his pale eyes on Travis, and then back on me. "The club doesn't take sides in a marriage."

"Gus," Travis said, relieved.

"The club does not take sides," Gus repeated. "That doesn't mean I'm on yours."

Travis shut his mouth.

I picked up my phone.

I did not know why, except that I had been putting off a thing in the back of my mind for hours.

The shop's banking app opened with my thumbprint.

Business checking.

Travis kept the books, and I had not opened it in a year.

It was supposed to hold the cushion my father had built over thirty years, a little over sixty thousand dollars.

I read the number on the screen and then read it again.

"Travis," I said.

"Bree, listen..."

"Where is the shop's money?"

He stared at me, and Gus stared at him.

The balance on my screen was zero dollars and zero cents.

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