"If I see you here again," I continue, "if I hear that you've been calling her or texting her or breathing in her general direction, I will arrest you. Stalking and harassment charges. You'll spend the night in a cell, and I'll make sure every news outlet in a hundred-mile radius knows exactly why."
"You wouldn't." But his voice is less certain now. His scent sours with worry.
"You've known me for twenty years, Callum. When have I ever made a threat I didn't follow through on?"
He stares at me. I stare back.
The silence stretches between us, heavy with history. All the years of friendship. All the football games and parties and late nights. All the times I watched him treat Jessica like property instead of a person and said nothing because I thought it wasn't my place.
It's my place now.
"You'd arrest your best friend?" Callum asks finally. "Over a woman?"
I lean down until we're eye to eye.
"Try me."
His mask cracks. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to see the ugly thing underneath. The rage. The entitlement. Theabsolute certainty that he owns everything and everyone around him.
His scent turns acrid with it.
"This isn't over," he hisses. "She's mine. She's always been mine. Some backwater sheriff isn't going to change that."
"Drive safe, Callum. It's a long way back to wherever you came from."
He peels out so fast his tires spray gravel. I watch until his taillights disappear around the corner.
My hands are shaking. Not from fear. From the effort of not dragging him out of that car and beating him until he understood exactly what happens to men who terrorize women in my town.
The scent of his expensive cologne lingers in the air. Fake. Covering up rot.
I pull out my phone and text the pack group chat.
Nacho: Callum was here. Circling Jessica's house. I ran him off but he'll be back.
Sergio responds immediately:How did Jessica take it?
Nacho: She doesn't know yet. She's at Rosie's.
Carlos: You took her to dinner?
Nacho: She needed to eat.
Pedro: Is she okay?
I think about her crying in my office. The wet spot on my shirt that's slowly turning cold in the evening air. The way she looked at me when I told her she was safe.
The way her scent mixed with mine like we were meant to blend together.
Nacho: She will be.
I drive back to the diner.
Jessica is still in the booth, milkshake clutched in both hands, staring at the door like she's been counting the secondssince I left. Her face floods with relief when she sees me, and her scent blooms sweet again.
"What happened?" she demands before I even sit down. "Who was it? What did they want?"
I slide into the seat across from her. Look at her swollen eyes and her tangled blonde hair and her borrowed coat that's too big for her shoulders.
