“You all make it very hard to make a dramatic exit,” I mutter.
Maverick smiles with his voice. “That’s the point.”
I look out over the marsh and try to imagine a world where I can watch the tide for six more hours and not climb out of my skin. It doesn’t exist. Not for me. Not now. I need the old trick that kept me alive before I knew these men. Forward. The door. The bus. The next thing.
“I have to go,” I say. The words land in my mouth and settle like a decision that was always going to be made. “I can’t stay here and wait for an email to tell me who I am. I can’t sit in a room with three of the four men that I love and try tonotwant what I want while we wait to find out if I’m allowed to have it.”
“Phoenix—” Atticus begins, too careful.
“It’s all or nothing,” I say, turning, finding all of their faces in the doorway. “I can’t live my life in the maybe, or the halfway. I either get all of you, or I get none of you.”
I slip past them into the hall, heart pounding, legs steady. I grab a bag from the closet and throw in the stupid practical things I have learned to remember—cash, charger, a hat, sneakers, a hoodie that isn’t his. I take my tablet because there are policies on it that belong to me now, and I’ll be damned if the work I do for them is just… lost. I leave the shirt on Conrad’s pillow and stand there for one second longer than I should, breathing like a person learning to run again.
“Phoenix,” Atticus says from the doorway, voice raw in a way he never lets anyone hear. “Please don’t leave us.”
I turn, hand on the strap, decision burning a clean line through my spine.
“I’ll call,” I say.
I don’t promise when.
28
Phoenix
Spencer driveslike he’s been hiding people his entire life.
No music. No chatter. Windows up. The SUV smells faintly of cedar from the garment bag in the back and the lemon cleaner the security guys keep in the door pocket. Zeus is stretched across the entire second row like royalty, his cast thumping softly against the leather every time we take a long curve. I keep a palm on his ribs, feeling each breath like it’s a clock I can set myself by.
We left without ceremony. I walked out the door and Spencer was suddenly there with a coat, another baseball cap, and a question: “Do you want to walk for five minutes or leave for three days?” I said “three days” because it came out first and because staying felt like drowning politely. He nodded like I’d ordered off a menu and pushed the back door open.
Two of the security team fell in without being asked—Jace and Ortiz, shoulders like doorframes, eyes simultaneously absent and everywhere. Another car eased away from the curb a beat after us, a shadow with a license plate that would check out ifanyone cared. No one asked for a destination. Spencer already had one in mind.
Tybee falls behind. We take the causeway, then a side road I’ve never used, then two more that look like they were invented to throw people off. Spencer doesn’t touch his phone. His phone never pings. Every turn is decided a mile ahead, with room to change the plan if headlights appear that shouldn’t.
I try not to check the rearview in the backseat because the people who do this work don’t need me doing their job poorly over their shoulders. I hold Zeus, and I breathe.
“You’re doing fine,” Spencer says without looking at me.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Sometimes that’s the best thing,” he says mildly. “Not steering when you don’t know the road.”
I want to sleep and can’t. I want to cry and refuse to. My bones feel hollow and loud, like I could pour something into them and hear it slosh around in the emptiness.
“Where are we going?” I ask, finally.
“To a place that doesn’t belong to your boys, your enemies, or your past,” he says. “A place that has groceries, locks, and bad television so that we can decide what your next move will be.”
“That sounds perfect,” I say, and mean it.
We cross a low bridge over black water and I watch the river shoulder past pilings and out to sea. On the far bank the trees droop with Spanish moss like the night has fingers. We take a right, then a left, then a lane where the asphalt gives up and shells grind under the tires. The house sits back from the roadbehind a screen of live oaks and palmetto, a single-story box with a tin roof and a porch that sags a little in the middle. There’s a satellite dish pointed at the sky like it’s waiting for news. There’s a ramp built into the front steps that looks new.
Spencer pulls in without hesitation. Jace rolls past and parks nose-out across the street, already scanning the angles. Ortiz stays with us, climbs out first, and casts a cautious glance around.
“Come on,” Spencer says, and the way he says it makes it easy to follow.
Inside, the place is better than it looks on the outside. The floors are clean, and the two couches don’t match but are cozy-looking. The kitchen has a long table that will seat six. A short hall bears two bedrooms and a third small room with a daybed and a stack of folded quilts. There’s a crate with Zeus’s name taped neatly to the top and a bag of the fancy food Atticus insisted on. A water bowl is already down, filled. I don’t ask how. Spencer doesn’t answer questions I don’t ask.
