“Sleep,” I said, and stood before I cried. “I’ll be right outside.”
I found Hannah in the hall, back to the wall, eyes soft and sharp at the same time.
“I didn’t break them,” I whispered, shaky laugh lodged in my throat.
“You won’t,” she said. “You’ll make mistakes. You’ll say the wrong thing sometimes. We all do. But you won’t break them.” She nudged my shoulder with hers, small and solid. “Welcome to your first intake, Harbor Holly.”
“Don’t call me that,” I muttered, but the smile crawled up anyway.
Monday morning, Athens sparkled like a postcard and I drove back in for a study group I was definitely not prepared for. When I cut across campus, Dalton was pretending not to hold court in front of the dining hall, hood up, signing a jersey like he hated it.
“Don’t start,” he warned when he saw my grin.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said. “How much are you charging per autograph these days? I’m keeping a ledger.”
He groaned. “My life is misery.”
“Uh-huh. You love it.”
He fell into step with me, tugging my tote higher on my shoulder like I wasn’t carrying half the library. “You good?”
It was the way he asked that did me in—throwaway tone, eyes doing a full scan. But for once, I could say yes without lying. I nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Because I’m not. That econ prof is trying to kill me.”
“You should read the syllabus.”
“I did. Burned my retinas.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“You love me.”
“Unfortunately.”
He bumped my elbow with his. I let him.
By Friday evening the pull toward the clubhouse was a rope under my ribs. I drove back as the sun bled into the tree line, the road memorized under my hands. Maria was on the porch when I arrived, rocking lazily, Jewel’s old rabbit now tucked into Lila’s elbow as the two young girls colored at her feet. Lila was patiently trying to teach Jewel how to stay within the lines. Lila looked up, checked the door, relaxed when she saw me. That tiny, instinctive act hit me harder than anything had all day.
Inside, August was building a shelf like a man negotiating peace with stubborn wood. Mom argued with Hannah about whether aloe plants counted as decor or hazard. I bet Dad was starting to think his wife had been kidnapped and laughed a little. Mac passed through with a grease rag and a nod. I breathed. The spaced smelled like coffee and leather and life.
Night thickened. I was sitting in a rocking chair outside, a notebook open, trying to outline a process for intake that didn’t feel like triage scribbled on diner napkins, when headlights swung into the lot and blasted my bones with cold. Mara scooped up Lila and rushed inside.
The car door slammed. A man got out like a problem. I knew his face—everyone in two counties did. He sold pills behind a laundromat and thought women were inventory. He sauntered like the world owed him. He watched Mara disappear behind the closed door and his mouth curled.
“You think you can hide here?” he called, loud enough to rattle the walls. “You’re mine. You and the kid.”
Every part of me went ice and fire. I stood. My fingers found my phone without thinking. My tongue set itself to knife. I didn’t need it.
The door behind me opened with a whisper and then the yard was full of bodies and leather. Mac first—calm like a loaded gun laid gentle on a table. Diego at his shoulder, jaw ticking, hands loose and ready. Dalton with that lazy grin that never reached his eyes, like he was already bored of how this would go. August, old power wrapped in a battered flannel. And August’s best friend Silas—shadow first, smile second, the kind that said most people walked away from him because something in them understood they should.
The man’s swagger faltered. He covered it with a sneer. “She owes me. You gonna pay up for her time?”
“Walk,” Mac said, voice not much above a breath. It carried anyway. “Now.”
The man laughed, wrong and high. “Or what?”
Dalton took one step down the porch. The boards protested. “Or we make you.”
