My hands shake under the cape.
I don’t cry. I don’t snap back. I sit there and let my hair get washed and cut and styled like I didn’t just get labeled by a woman who knows exactly where to stick the knife. I didn’t just grow up poor. I grew up with everyone saying it was because my mama left with a married man, and it broke my daddy. Like she’s the reason he wasn’t a good enough man anymore.
When Tinsley spins me toward the mirror at the end, she pats my shoulder like she’s proud I didn’t break.
“Looks good,” she says. “Don’t let anybody tell you different.”
I tip extra because I don’t know what else to do with gratitude in a town that charges interest on kindness. Then I leave fast, the bell jingling too loud behind me.
Outside, the air feels heavier, like Hell shifted a couple inches closer overnight.
The parking lot is full of glare off windshields and heat off asphalt. I walk to my car and my skin crawls like I’m being watched even when no one’s calling my name. I yank my door open, slide in, lock it, and sit there with my hands on the steering wheel breathing through the pressure in my chest.
I hate that I’m scared.
I hate that I’m more scared of women than men right now, because women in biker country know how to kill you without ever touching a weapon.
The pawn shop is supposed to feel safer. It usually does.
Always smells like mold though, dust, and desperation, from the desperate folks who come in, putting on a proud face. And today it smells like baby powder too, because Lottie brought her kid to work again. The bell over our door is a different kind of jingle, not cheerful, just functional, like it expects trouble and made peace with it.
Like one day one of the distressed folks coming in might not take my low-ball offer for their family heirlooms and take it out on me. But in all honesty, our clientele are nicer than most and treat us like a bank since the banks rejected them.
Mason is a little boy, maybe two, not really sure since Lottie counts his age in months. His blond curls bounce while he toddles between the counters dragging a toy Monster truck missing one wheel. Lottie scoops him up when she sees me.
“Brit,” she says, relief and worry tangled together. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
She snorts. “Bullshit.”
She shifts Mason higher on her hip. He smells like peanut butter and wipes, warm and real and innocent. A reminder there are still things in Hell that don’t deserve what happens to them.
“This is Mason,” she says like she’s introducing him again on purpose, like she wants to anchor me to something normal. “You remember him, right?”
“Oh, I was supposed to babysit,” I say, forcing a smile that feels too tight. “Hey, buddy.”
Mason grins and shoves the truck toward my face like it’s a sacred offering. I take it and make a little vroom sound because that’s what you do when a toddler hands you something broken and expects you to treat it like treasure.
“Run him over to Hollar Dollar and get him some yum yums,” Lottie says in her best baby voice. Then she drops it and looks at me like she’s making an executive decision. “And take your time. I need five minutes with my thoughts before the universe hands me another problem.”
I take Mason on my hip and head for the front.
“Careful,” a voice says from behind the counter.
I jump so hard Mason giggles.
Becki Crowley is leaning on the glass case. Dark hair pulled back, eyes sharp, mouth set like she sees more than she says. She’s wearing a Hollar Dollar tee and jeans with a rip at the knee, and she looks tired in a bone-deep way I recognize. The kind of tired that doesn’t come from work. It comes from surviving the same story too many times.
“Jesus,” I say. “Warn a girl.”
She lifts a brow. “You ain’t the only one getting watched these days.”
That settles wrong in my stomach, heavy and cold.
I force a laugh I don’t feel. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means Hell’s got eyes,” Becki says, and her gaze flicks to the front window like she expects to see somebody standing there.
