“Shay,” I remarked.
Her gaze flicked to IvaLeigh. “You win. I’m out. Leaving tomorrow they said.”
IvaLeigh smiled, small and sharp. “There wasn’t a game.”
Shay swallowed a retort, nodded once, and walked on. It wasn’t grace. It was survival.
In the lot, I turned, boxed IvaLeigh against the tank of my bike with my hips, put my hands on either side of her and let the world keep spinning while I stayed still.
“You okay?” I asked.
She tilted her head. “With her? Yeah. I told you—no sharing. I trust you. But the no sharing, that includes space in my head.” She tapped my chest. “And that includes space in yours. She’s gone.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She grinned. “You learn quick, sir.”
“Trying.”
Back at the cabin, I chopped wood because the weather said I should, and she wrote on her laptop at the table because school still exists even when mayors die and judges fall and boys are pulled out of cages. The normal looked strange on me but somehow started to fit.
Mid-afternoon, Loco rolled in, Juanita riding shotgun in a rental that wanted to be a sports car and wasn’t. They got out with the weight of people who once broke each other and now held each other in respect or enemy regard, I wasn’t quite sure which. We sat on the porch, four chairs, two histories, and a stack of files that didn’t need to be here but are like a habit we can’t shake.
Juanita eyed me, then IvaLeigh and studied the way we interacted. She smiled like a woman recognizing a commitment even if it doesn’t have a ring.
“You look different,” she told me.
“Less ugly?” I asked.
“Less alone,” she shared.
Loco grunted. “Old dog finally brought it to heel.”
“Old dog finally found something worth sitting for,” I stated.
Juanita sipped coffee and watched Loco like she might kiss him or kill him, probably both. “Hampton Stanley’s fallout is going to splash,” she warned me. “Keep your house tight.”
“It’s tight,” I said on a nod, and felt Iva’s hand find mine where it hung over the armrest.
Satisfied with my answer, Loco took Nita back to the hotel she was staying at, leaving me with copies of what had been uncovered in the county deep dive.
When they left, the sun was burnt orange, the shadows long. I pulled IvaLeigh into my lap and we watched day come to a close. I thought about all the years I told myself—told the club, told my kid, told the mirror—I didn’t need what I now had. Exit strategies keep a man moving. They also keep him from arriving.
“I used to keep a go-bag in the truck,” I told her. “Cash, burner, clean shirt, toothbrush, ammo. So if any roof caved in I could be gone in sixty. I’d tell myself I was protecting us. Really I was protecting me from loving anything I couldn’t run with.”
“And now?” she asked, cheek to my throat.
“Now I’m taking it apart,” I said. “Put half of it in your drawer. The rest in the safe. We’ll go together, or we won’t go.”
She shifted to look at me. “Say that again.”
“We’ll go together, or we don’t go.”
Her lashes fluttered like the wind moved them. “Forever it’s you and me.”
“For life,” I responded back.
The words didn’t sound like a prison. They sounded like a place.
