The Biker's Regret: The Enemy I Became.

Not just a stranger

(Reese)

I stopped at the supermarket on the way home.

It wasn't something I'd planned but the fridge was empty and I'd been running on coffee since five thirty and I needed to eat something that wasn't bought from a vending machine. I spent twenty minutes moving through the aisles putting things in the cart without thinking too hard about any of it. Bread. Eggs. Something for dinner that wouldn't require more than thirty minutes to put together. The ordinary business of a life that was supposed to be simple and organised and twelve minutes from the office.

By the time I got back in the car I felt closer to normal than I had all day.

The drive back took eight minutes. I parked in the lot beside the building, gathered the bags from the back seat and headed inside. The lobby was quiet the way it usually was in the middle of the afternoon, cool air and marble floors and the low sound of the city coming through the glass doors behind me. The doorman nodded and moved to help me with the bags but I shook my head and kept going. I had it.

The elevator was already on the ground floor when I got there. The doors were open and waiting. I stepped in with my bags and pressed four and stood back and let out a breath I'd been holding since I pulled out of the office parking lot.

The morning had gone well. The presentation had landed exactly the way I needed it to. The investors were interested and Simone had that look she got when she knew something was going to work. I'd done what I came to Atlanta to do and I'd done it well and that was what mattered.

A hand came through the closing doors just before they shut.

A woman stepped in. She was around my age, pretty in a way she clearly knew about, with her hair done and her clothes chosen carefully. Not overdone. Just right. The kind of put together that took effort but wasn't supposed to look like it. She was holding a coffee cup in one hand and her phone in the other and she smiled at me the way people smiled at strangers in small spaces when they'd just made them wait.

"Sorry," she said. "Almost missed it."

"It's fine," I said.

She looked at the panel and pressed four without looking at the numbers. Her finger went straight to the button without hesitation, the automatic movement of someone who'd done it enough times that it no longer required any thought.

Same floor as me.

I looked at the bags in my hands and said nothing.

We rode up in silence for a moment. She scrolled through something on her phone then put it away and looked at the doors. She had the kind of energy that filled a space without trying, not loud, just present in a way that made you aware of her whether you wanted to be or not. I was aware of her. I was aware of the fact that she'd pressed four without looking and I was aware of the fact that she was standing close enough that I could smell her perfume and it was the kind of perfume that cost what it cost and was chosen carefully.

Everything about her was chosen carefully.

"Long day?" she said.

I glanced at her. "Something like that."

She smiled. It was a good smile, warm and easy, the kind that made you feel like you were already friends. There was nothing wrong with it on the surface. Nothing I could point to and name directly. It was just a smile from a stranger in an elevator on a Tuesday afternoon.

But her eyes were doing something her smile was not.

"I hate Tuesdays," she said pleasantly. "They have all the stress of a Monday with none of the sympathy."

I almost smiled at that. Almost.

The doors opened on four.

We both stepped out into the hallway at the same time. She turned left toward 4A without checking the number on the door, without slowing down, without any of the small hesitations a person had when they were going somewhere unfamiliar. She walked to Noah's door the way you walked to your own front door, certain and direct, and knocked twice.

Then she turned and looked back at me.

"Sorry, I didn't catch your name," she said.

"Reese," I said.

"Brianna." She smiled again.

"Brianna Ford." Her eyes moved to the bags in my hands.

"Just moved in?"

"A couple of days ago," I said.

She nodded like that was interesting information. "Welcome to the building. It's a good floor." She said it lightly, easily, the way you said something that was meant to sound like nothing. "Quiet mostly. Good neighbours."

It was a perfectly normal thing to say.

But she'd pressed four without looking at the panel. She'd walked to 4A without checking the number. She was standing in front of Noah's apartment with the comfortable ease of someone who'd stood there many times before and she was looking at me with eyes that were taking in considerably more than her smile was giving away.

Noah's door opened.

I didn't wait to see his face. I turned to my own door, unlocked it with one hand, the bags hanging from the other, and went inside.

I set everything down on the kitchen counter and stood there.

I'd known girls like Brianna Ford in high school. The kind who smiled at you in a way that felt like a warning dressed up as friendliness. The kind who said perfectly normal things in a perfectly normal tone while their eyes did something completely different. In high school I hadn't always known how to read it in time. I'd learned.

She'd pressed four without looking. She'd walked straight to 4A like she owned the route. She'd looked at me in that hallway with a smile that was friendly on the surface and something else entirely underneath.

I needed to know who she was to him.

Not because I had any claim on that information. Not because the last few days meant something I was ready to examine. But because information was how I made decisions and right now I was making them without enough of it.

I started unpacking the groceries, putting things away in order.

Tomorrow I'd find out what I needed to find out. Not from Noah. He'd give me whatever version suited him. From somewhere else. From Brianna Ford herself if that's what it came to.

Everything about that woman had been chosen carefully.

None of it had been accidental.