I slept about four hours.Which is four more than I expected after last night.Lucy Coe kept popping into my head every time I closed my eyes.Didn’t matter how many times I told myself it was nothing.Doesn’t matter that I barely know her.
My brain kept circling back.
Saged watches me over the rim of his mug.
“You look like hell.”
“Thanks.”
Dodge eyes me now too.“You thinking about the girl?”
I roll my eyes.“Jesus, is everyone in my business today?Fucking reading tarot cards, my palms, or are we calling a damn psychic?”
“No,” he says calmly.“You’re just obvious.”
Apparently that’s the theme of the week.“Guy grabbed her,” I share.“I handled it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s it.”I double down.
Saged leans back in his chair, balancing it on two legs.“Woman local?I called Marlaina, she teaches her daughter.Not sure where she’s from though.”
“I think she’s trying to find footing here.New to town, I think she’s only been here a few months.”
“You think so.”Dodge challenges.
“I didn’t interrogate her, Dodge.”I take another drink of the liquid mud.
“You interrogate everyone.”Saged counters studying me more.
“Not last night.”
“Which is exactly my point.”I stare at him with his challenge thrown down.He grins.“You like her.”
“I met her for three minutes.”
“Seconds.That’s all it took for me with Crystal.Three minutes is a damn lifetime, brother,” Dodge states with a proud smirk.
“Not how that works.”
“Sure it is.”
I shove my chair back and stand before this conversation can get more annoying.“I’m heading into town.”
Saged raises an eyebrow.“For what?”
“Parts run.”That part is actually true.
The club needs a piece for a fork lift that broke yesterday at the ship yard, and the parts place in town opens early.But if I’m honest?There’s another reason.
Saged knows it.He doesn’t say it.Just smirks over his coffee as I grab my cut from the back of the chair.
“Don’t scare her,” he calls after me.I flip him off on my way out.
The ride into the center of Freedom Falls is short.Ten minutes if you take it slow.Five if you don’t.
Morning air off the Gulf carries that salty humidity Alabama does so well.The roads are already waking up—pickup trucks heading toward job sites, fishermen hauling boats toward the water, a few early joggers sweating their way through the heat that hasn’t fully arrived yet.
