Page 57 of Bram

I straightened the folders on my desk, then thought better and let them stay messy. The window to the parking lot caught my reflection: hair up, no makeup, white blouse that still carried a faint gray where blood had once seeped through at the ribs. I touched the scar, habit, then let my hand drop.

The door didn’t even creak. Bram just appeared in the frame, as if he’d been waiting for the air to change before making a move. He wore his cut—Jackson Brothers, the skull-and-guns patch sun-faded to something that looked almost ghostly. Jeans, T-shirt, boots he’d probably owned longer than some of his men. His face looked better than it had in the holding cell, but only just: bruise gone to yellow, a line of fresh scar tissue slicing up from the collarbone to his beard. There was a single blue band of tape on his left hand, the kind you bought at the drugstore and wrapped yourself.

He stepped into the office and stopped exactly two paces inside. He didn’t sit. He didn’t even look at the chair.

“Morning,” I said, and tried to keep my voice neutral.

“Julie.”

I thought he’d open with a joke, or maybe an insult, the way he did when he was nervous. But he didn’t. He looked at me like he was memorizing the details: how the pen fit in my hand, how my eyes tracked his, how I hadn’t changed a thing in the office since he last tried to intimidate me across this desk.

He said, “You want me to wait until you’re done?”

“Not unless you came for a confession.”

Bram’s mouth twitched at the corner, not quite a smile. He closed the door behind him. The latch barely clicked.

“I have a lot of paperwork,” I said, gesturing to the piles. “If you want, you can watch. It’s basically pornography for the terminally bored.”

“Not here for the paperwork.”

“You here to thank me for saving your life?”

“Not here for that either.”

He drifted a step closer, then stopped again, the way a man does in a church: never quite sure if he’s the congregation or the heretic.

“Okay,” I said. “Hit me.”

He looked at the wall, at my name on the diploma, then back at me. When he finally spoke, his voice was raw but steady.

“I have no idea how to do this,” he said. “Never tried it before. Don’t even know if you want to hear it.”

“Try me.”

He took a breath, long and deep, as if getting ready to lay down a verdict.

“I think about you all the fucking time,” he said. “I was thinking about you before the Slaughterhouse, before any of this. I tried not to. Thought it would fuck up the club, fuck up you, and it probably did. But every time I tried to kill it, it got worse.”

I leaned back in my chair. He kept talking.

“I’m not good at this. I know you know that. But I can’t just pretend like it’s business as usual anymore. I don’t want to. Not after what happened. Not after what we’ve done together.”

I felt a rush of heat go up my neck. I kept my face blank.

“You asking me to quit my job and run away with you?” I said. “Because I need at least a week to think it over.”

He almost laughed, but the sound caught in his throat.

“No,” he said. “I want you to keep your job. I want you to do it better than anyone ever has. I just… want to know if you want to try.”

“Try what?”

He shrugged, the motion awkward. “Whatever this is. I’m not asking you to lie about it. Just don’t shut the door.”

I let the silence hang. I looked at him over the folders. For a second, I saw the room as it must look from his side: the harsh lights, the carpet that was never fully clean, the smell of legal pads and sweat, and me, sitting in a suit with the sleeves rolled up, a single strip of old blood on my blouse, as if the badge wasn’t enough.

“I’m not your property,” I said.