We sit on the floor. The party continues outside. His arms around me, my face in his neck, the tile cold under us and neither of us caring.
I didn't run. That's the thing that matters. My brain said run and my body said run and every instinct I've had since Iwas ten years old said run. But I didn't run. I hid. I froze. I fell apart in an eighteen-inch gap between a freezer and a wall.
But I didn't leave him.
The reason to stay is bigger than the reason to run.
We sit there for a long time. My legs go from numb to tingling to aching. The panic recedes from a roar to a hum, still there, still running, but not in control anymore.
"Talk to me," I finally say. "Tell me what happened."
Tex shifts his weight, pulling me closer against his chest. "He came up to the grill. Ordered a plate. Made small talk about brisket. Then he told me he was looking for his nephew. His sister's boy. Said the kid had drug problems, mental health issues. Said he found him strung out in a shelter in Tallahassee one time. Said his sister's been praying for him."
"His sister." A sound comes out of me that might be a laugh if it had any air behind it. "He doesn't have a sister."
"I know."
"He doesn't have a nephew. I'm not his nephew. I'm not his anything."
"I know all that too, baby. I know."
"Everything he said was a lie."
"Every word. And he's good at it. But I had the advantage of knowing the truth before he opened his mouth." His hand moves through my hair. Slow. Steady. "He gave me a business card. Smiled at me. Said he'd be in the area a few days. Then he got in a pickup and drove away."
"He'll come back."
"Maybe. But here's what's going to happen if he does. He's going to walk into a parking lot where Mickey is watching. Where Sheila is watching. Where every regular who comesthrough this bar knows your face and has your back. He's going to walk into our bar, Stormy. Ours. This is your bar too. Not just mine. And I will be standing between him and you. He does not get past me. I promise you that."
"He always finds me. He always—"
"He found a dot on a screen. A GPS tracker on a motorcycle that doesn't exist anymore. The tracker is hidden somewhere in an impound lot. The bike is in pieces spread across three states. He's got nothing. No tracker, no bike, no proof you were ever here. All he's got is a smile and a story about a nephew that doesn't exist, and that story only works on people who don't know the truth. We know the truth."
I press my face harder into his neck. The logic of what he's saying reaches me, filters through the fear, settles somewhere in the rational part of my brain that's slowly coming back online.
"Mickey's running the plate on his truck," Tex says. "I know what he looks like now. We know what he drives. He doesn't have the element of surprise anymore. He's in our territory, Stormy. Not his. This isn't some bumfuck town in Alabama. This is the place I grew up. The locals knew my dad, they know me. They've got our backs."
I breathe. In through my nose, out through my mouth. The way Tex breathes when he's steadying himself. In. Out. I'm not in a room with a locked door. I'm here.
"Do you want to go upstairs?" Tex asks. "Take the night off? I can handle the grill and Sheila can cover the kitchen. You don't have to go back out there."
I think about it. The part of me that's still shaking, the ten-year-old part, wants to go upstairs and lock the door. That part wants to be small and invisible and safe in the dark.
That was Matthew.
But there's another part. The part that feeds a hundred people on a Friday night without breaking a sweat. The part that pushed through exhaustion the day after almost drowning because Tex and Sheila were working and I wasn't going to sit on a stool while they carried the weight.
The Stormy part.
I climb off his lap. My legs are unsteady and my hands are still shaking. I stand up in the bar where I work, where I belong, where sixty bikers are outside waiting on plates that aren't going to make themselves.
I take a deep breath, shake my hands out and roll my shoulders back.
"I need to get back to work," I say. "I'm okay. I can do it."
Tex is still on the floor, looking up at me. I can see the war on his face. Every instinct he has is telling him to pick me up and carry me upstairs. Wrap himself around me and not let go until the sun comes up. His hands are gripping his own knees, holding himself in place, and I can see what it costs him to stay there instead of scooping me up.
But he doesn't move. He lets me decide.
