At Kinsey, who killed a man to save her own life and is still figuring out how to live with it.
At Ellie, who has survived everything this world has thrown at her and is still standing in the ashes holding a skillet and refusing to break.
These women are the backbone of this club, and I doubt they realize it.
I find Angelica at the Super 8 at four o'clock.
I don't tell Coin. I don't tell Garrett.
I drive to University Avenue with soot still on my scrubs and ash still in my hair and the image of Backroads burning etched into my retinas, and I knock on room 214.
She opens the door.
She looks worse than she did in the parking lot—thinner, paler, eyes darting past me to check the hallway before she lets me in.
The room is small and depressing.
Fast food wrappers on the nightstand.
The bed unmade.
A suitcase open on the floor, half-packed and half-unpacked, like she can't decide whether she's staying or leaving.
"What do you want?" she asks. No tears this time. No performance. Just exhaustion and the sharp, cornered look of a woman who knows she's running out of options.
"Sit down," I say.
"I don't?—"
"Sit. Down."
She sits on the edge of the bed. I stay standing.
Not to intimidate. To anchor myself, because what I'm about to say needs to be said from a position of certainty, and right now the only thing I'm certain of is this.
"I just came from Backroads," I say. "Ellie's bar. Someone firebombed it last night. Tildie was inside. She almost died."
Angelica's face goes white. "I didn't—that wasn't?—"
"I'm not saying it was you. I'm saying this is what's happening in Morgantown right now. This is what your debt brought here. People Coin loves, people I love, are getting hurt because of a number on a piece of paper with your name on it."
"It's not my fault that?—"
"Stop." I hold up one hand. "I didn't come here to argue. I came here to tell you something, and I need you to hear it."
She closes her mouth and waits.
"Those girls," I say. "Wrenleigh and Sadie Jo. They have spent ten years healing from what you did. Ten years of their father holding them together with his bare hands, ten years of holidays without a mother, ten years of questions they couldn't ask and answers nobody had. And they're finally,finally, starting to be okay."
My voice is steady. I've never been more sure of anything.
"If you hurt them again—if you bring more chaos into their lives, if you make promises you can't keep, if you do anything that sets them back, I won't wait for the club. I won't wait for Coin. I will handle youmyself." I pause. "And Angelica? I’m not afraid to get blood on my hands."
She stares at me.
The room is quiet except for the hum of the window unit AC and the muffled sound of traffic on University Avenue.
"You love them," she says. Not a question.
