Nicole seemed to understand that too. She just nodded and didn't push.
The kitchen was warm. Clover appeared from the common room and immediately put his enormous head on Emily's knee,and she dropped her hand to his fur without thinking, and something in her chest cracked open a little more. Not in a bad way. In the way of something that had been clenched finally letting go.
You're okay. You're here. You're safe.
She was doing the thing again, the thing that made her wonder about her own sanity sometimes. Quiet internal narration. There was a gentle voice in her head that sounded like no one she could name, that showed up when the world got to be too much. She'd done it since she was small. Talked herself through things. Narrated herself to steadiness. Her therapist said it was perfectly normal. Her friend Holly said it was her little voice. Whatever it was, it helped her. She spoke truth and calm when life was chaotic.
Warm mug. Dog on your knee. Nice lady across the table. You're okay.
Nicole small-talked to her about the Clubhouse and told her a bit about how she came to be there with her sister. She was dating Slash. She has a daughter who was with her sister tonight, as she and Slash were on a date when Rampage got the call.
“I’m so sorry I ruined your date!”
“Not at all,” Nicole dismissed. “It’s not the first nor the last time MC business will interrupt our dates. Besides, we were just watching a movie. No biggie. Really, you are more important than a movie.”
“What were you watching?”
“Beauty and the Beast! It’s my favorite. I dream of being Belle. My own castle with a huge library? Count me in.”
Was she? Could she be? Was Nicole a little too? Maybe it was wishful thinking. The girls continued with small talk and Emily found herself relaxing. Nicole reminded her of the girls in her book club. She felt very comfortable around her. Rampage came through the kitchen about twenty minutes later.
He came in the way he seemed to move everywhere, taking up the right amount of space and not an inch more. His eyes went to her first. Checked her over, quick and thorough before he spoke.
"Ate something?" he asked.
"I'm eating." She held up a piece of toast Nicole had produced. "See? Toast."
"Good. Although toast is hardly a meal. Do you like peanut butter?"
“I do.”
He spread peanut butter across the toast and cut up an apple and added it to the plate. “Still not a meal but better.” He poured himself coffee and leaned against the counter and didn't leave.
Emily concentrated on her toast.
Nicole disappeared quietly, with the particular tact of someone who understood when two people needed to exist in a room alone.
The silence wasn't bad. That was the strange thing. She'd expected it to be awkward with him standing there, her sitting here, the weight of everything that had happened pressing down on the room, but it wasn't. He didn't seem to feel the need to fill it, and being around someone who didn't need to fill the silence made her realize how rarely she'd encountered that.
"The car was tampered with," he said eventually. "Savage called. Preliminary look before they loaded it up."
Emily set down her toast. "What doestamperedwith mean, exactly?"
"Means someone made sure it would break down." He watched her. "This wasn't a coincidence."
She suspected it. But hearing it said plainly out loud was different.
"He knew my car," she said. "I drove it there the first time I came to scout out the gear before I got the U-Haul.”
“Baby, how many times have you been to Grand Ridge?”
“Um,” she felt like the answer would upset him.
“Truth, little girl.”
“Three.”
“And how many of those times did you tell someone you were coming?”
