"He pulled in while I was setting up the grill. Said he was heading back to Alabama and wanted ribs for the road. Then he showed me a photo of the Sportster and asked if I'd seen it."
"What did you say?"
"I said no. Same thing I said last time when he asked about you. Never seen it."
"He didn't believe you."
"No. He didn't believe me." Tex pauses. His jaw works under the beard. He's choosing what to tell me and I can see the choosing happening, see the filter engage, and I know he's holding back. Not to deceive me. To protect me. There are things that happened in that parking lot that he's carrying so I don't have to. I can see the weight of them in the set of his shoulders.
"He said he'd be back."
The survival scenarios start running automatically in my head. I don't choose to do it. It just happens. I have money now and a better knife. I can be gone in four minutes. I've timed it in my head. Not consciously, not on purpose, but the way you time things when you've been running your whole life. You always know how long it takes to disappear.
"I need to go."
The words slip out. They come from the deep place, the ten-year-old who learned that the only person who can keep you safe is you. I need to get out of here.
If I'm not here, Ron has no reason to come back. The bar is safe. Tex is safe. Sheila is safe. The blast radius shrinks back down to one person.
"No," Tex says.
"You don't understand. If I leave—"
"You're not leaving."
"Tex, listen to me. If I'm not here, he has no reason—"
"Stormy." His voice drops. Not loud. The opposite of loud. Low and certain. The voice that has never once wavered or cracked or given me reason to doubt a single word it's said. "You're not leaving. You're not running. You're not going to disappear out the back door in the middle of the night."
He comes around the bar. He stands in front of me, and his hands find my shoulders and his eyes find mine.
"This is not Alabama," Tex says. "This is not his stomping ground. This is not his town. He doesn't have the key to this door. This is your home. This is your bar. Yours, Stormy. This is ours. And he doesn't get to take it away."
"He always takes it. Every time, Tex. Every time I've ever had anything, every time I've started to feel like maybe this time—"
"Listen to me, Stormy. This time is different."
"That's what I thought in Tallahassee."
"In Tallahassee, you were alone. You showed up at a shelter and slept in a room full of strangers. The next morning, he was in the parking lot because nobody was watching out for you. Nobody knew. Nobody cared." His hands tighten on my shoulders. Not painfully. The way you grab onto something you're afraid the wind will take. "You are not alone anymore. You have me. You have Sheila. You have Mickey, who has a badge, a gun and the legal authority to arrest a man from Alabama who's stalking people in his county. You have a bar full of people who know your name and will not let someone walk in here and take you."
"But if he hurts you—"
"Worrying about me is not your job. I'll worry about me. Your job is to be here tomorrow. And the day after. And every day after that."
I take a deep breath. The shaking doesn't stop but it changes. I'm still sitting on the stool. I'm still here.
"Okay," I say. "I won't run."
The front door opens. Sheila stomps in with a bag from the restaurant supply store and the expression she wears when she's been running errands in the August heat. She sees us and immediately reads the room in two seconds flat. Her eyes move from my face to Tex's hands on my shoulders.
"What happened?" she asks.
"Ron came back," Tex says. "About an hour ago. I was in the parking lot. He showed me a photo of the bike and asked if I'd seen it. Then he said he'd be back."
Sheila sets the bag on the bar. She sits down and her face does the thing I saw the first night Ron showed up. The warmth drains out, and what's left is steel. Sheila is the kindest person I've ever met, after Tex. But underneath the baby and the sweet tea is a woman who has been handling dangerous situations in bars for years and has never once flinched.
"Mickey knows?" she asks.
