"Weeks, on the club. Tonight's the first time they've been this close to the Anchor."
She processes. "What do you need me to do?"
"Stay close to Sal and Griz until I figure out what they want." I hold her gaze. "I have to go."
The steadiness fractures. Her jaw sets and her eyes harden and I watch the fury build behind them, controlled and precise, the anger of a woman who's heardI have to goso many times the words have lost their meaning.
"You have to go," she repeats.
"Holly—"
"You just told me someone is photographing my bar, and your solution is to leave." She leans forward, both palms flat on the rail. "Every time, Rex. Every single time, there's a reason. And every single time, I'm the one standing here watching you walk out."
She's right. I know she's right. But the logic in my head says if I stay, every photograph of me at the Anchor is a photograph of me next to Holly, and that's all the Bloodstone Clan needs.
"I'll fix this," I say.
"You'll run," she says. "That's what you do."
She turns back to the taps. I stand at the bar for another ten seconds with my mouth full of words I can't organise into anything that sounds like the truth, and then I walk out.
I hold it together through the walk to the garage, through packing a bag that takes four minutes because I've never owned enough to fill a duffel. Through strapping the bag to the back of my bike and kickstarting the engine in the cold.
Before I pull out, I send Knox one text. Two words.Protect her.
Knox doesn't reply. He'll know what it means, and he'll make sure Griz or Colt or one of the prospects keeps eyes on the Anchor until further notice.
By midnight, I'm on the coast highway heading north. Dark and the Pacific slamming the rocks below the guardrail and the roar of the enginedrowning out everything except the pull in my chest that hasn't stopped since the stockroom.
This time I'm not running from Holly. I'm not fleeing her apartment at three in the morning because the word scared me. I'm not riding north until the fuel runs out because commitment feels like a locked bedroom door in a foster home I didn't choose. I'm running becauseshe's in danger and I'm the reason, and every mile I put between us is a mile between her and the Bloodstone Clan.
I tell myself it's the right call. Garrett told himself the same thing when he cut Nina loose in December. I sat on his porch and watched him wreck the best thing that ever happened to him and told him he was an idiot. Now I'm doing the exact same thing.
I'm two hundred miles north and accelerating and I can still smell Holly on my skin.
Finn finds my apartment empty the next morning.
I know because my phone lights up at 7:14 a.m. on the nightstand of a motel in Astoria. His name on the screen. I let it ring.
He calls back at 7:16. Then 7:22. Then 7:31, and by that one I can picture him in the garage, standing in the doorway of my room, looking at the packed-out space and the empty drawer and the bare mattress and the single shelf with nothing on it.
The voicemail comes at 7:33. I don't play it.
At 7:41, Finn calls Knox. I know because Knox calls me at 7:43 and the caller ID reads PREZ and I stare at it until it stops ringing.
My phone buzzes once more. The brothers' group chat.
Finn:Rex packed out. Bike's gone.
Then Knox, thirty seconds later:I know.
I set the phone facedown on the nightstand and lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling and count the miles between me and Nightfall Cove, and every single one of them runs in the wrong direction.
Chapter 7
Holly
The six o'clock crowd fills the Anchor in its usual Wednesday order: Carl and Micky arguing about nothing in their booth, Frank at the far end with his pilsner, two dock workers splitting nachos under the new window glass. Sal had the pane replaced Monday. The neon catches it different now, cleaner, and I keep noticing, the red from the Scales & Ales sign throwing a sharper line across the bar top like a scar that healed tight.
