“I just want you safe,” he says.
“I’m tired of men saying that like it gives ’em permission to control me.”
We part stiff, like we’re strangers instead of whatever we were trying to be.
I don’t go home.
Because there ain’t one.
I finally told Lottie. Then I packed my clothes into plastic bins and moved into her finished basement like it was temporary, like I’m waiting on something better, like I ain’t terrified of getting too used to somebody else’s kindness.
After church, I drive straight there.
My eyes burn, but I refuse to cry again.
I push open the basement door without knocking and stop cold.
Oaks is on the couch.
Boots off. Elbows on his knees. Looking’ like a man who ain’t slept in a week and don’t care if it shows. For a split second neither of us speaks, and the air feels too tight to breathe.
“What are you doing here?” I demand.
He glances up slow. “Same as you, apparently.”
Lottie appears at the top of the stairs, Mason on her hip, her expression already tired like she’s been holding the whole town together with duct tape.
“Bethany threw him out,” she says blunt. “And the clubhouse ain’t an option right now.”
“Why?” I ask, my voice coming out thinner than I want.
Lottie’s eyes flick to Oaks and back to me. “They got a prisoner,” she says.
My blood goes cold. “Who?”
“Becki,” she says quieter. “From Pearly Gates.”
The room tilts, just for a second. From Pearly Gates, my ass. Our Becki.
“What did she do?” I ask.
Lottie says, “You don’t want to know.”
I think of the number she scrawled on a receipt for me. “Yes, I do.”
“She picked the wrong side in a war,” Oaks answers like that explains everything. “We found Sophie, and Becki’s been behind it all along.”
“Bullshit,” I say, not knowing where it comes from. A feeling more than anything. “She only does what she has to.”
Oaks stands slow, every inch of him controlled, like he knows what it looks like for him to move too fast around me.
“Before you start,” he says, voice rough, “it ain’t what you think.”
“I’m not thinking anything,” I snap, because my nerves are raw and my life is falling apart and he is the last complication I can afford. “I’m too busy being homeless.”
The word hangs there.
His eyes sharpen. “Homeless?” he repeats, like he didn’t hear me right. “Is that why you’re staying here? I thought maybe there had been another threat.”
