Because it's mine. I built it. I own it.
Breathe out.
I would never let it go.
I open my eyes. I need to go inside and find Stormy. I need to look at his face and make sure the world is still on its axis. I need to hear his voice, see his eyes and know that he's here and untouched by the evil who just described owning him like a machine he rebuilt in his garage.
But I can't go inside yet. Not with this face. Not with what's behind it.
I think about what Mickey said at the deli.If you go to prison, who takes care of the kid?I believed that was the one thing that would keep me grounded. The logic of it. I can't hurt Ron because if I hurt Ron I lose Stormy. The simple, terrible truth.
I didn't account for standing across the grill from the man and hearing him describe it. Hearing the pleasure in his voice. The ownership. The pride.I shaped it exactly the way I wanted.He's proud of what he did. He isn't haunted by it. He doesn't lie awake at night wondering if he's a monster. He lies awake at night the way you'd miss a favorite car thatsomeone stole from your driveway. Inconvenienced. Annoyed. Determined to get it back.
Stormy isn't a person to him. That's what this conversation told me. Not in the abstract way I understood it before, reading the letter, or hearing Mickey describe the legal difficulties. I understand now in the devastating way of watching his face while he talks about riding something he built every single day and seeing nothing in his eyes. No guilt. No shame. No flicker of the understanding that the thing he's describing is a human being with a name and a heart that belongs to me.
There's nothing in him but pure evil.
I won't go to Alabama to put my hands on this man. I can't leave Stormy alone in this world because I couldn't control the thing inside me that wants to end Ron Jackson's life.
But I won't let him come back to this bar and do what he did today. I don't know what the answer is yet. I don't know what it looks like. But I do know one thing.
He said he'd be back, and I believe him.
When he comes back, I'll be ready.
And it won't be just me.
I pick up my phone. I text Mickey. Three words.
He was here.
Then I go inside to find Stormy.
Chapter 33: Stormy
I know before he tells me. Tex comes in from the parking lot and I know. Not because of his face. His face is doing what it always does, the smile, the easy posture, the body language that says everything is fine and the world is good. It's not his face that tells me.
It's his hands.
Tex's hands are always moving. Reaching for things, adjusting things, touching things. They're the busiest part of him, always in motion, always doing. Right now, his hands are at his sides and they're perfectly still.
That's how I know something happened at the grill.
He comes behind the bar, pours a glass of water and drinks half of it in one swallow before setting it down. The smile fades. Not all at once, in stages, like a light on a dimmer.
"Sit down," he says. "We need to talk."
"I'm stocking the—"
"Please sit down, Stormy. Please."
I sit on my stool. The one with the slight wobble that I keep meaning to fix and never do because the wobble has become part of it, part of the way this place belongs to me now.
Tex leans on the bar across from me, his forearms flat on the wood. His eyes on mine.
"Ron was just here."
The fear ripples outward through my body in a wave that I can track—chest, stomach, arms, legs, fingers. My hands go cold first. Then my feet. Then the back of my neck, where the hair stands up the way it used to stand up when I heard boots.
