Page 71 of Deacon

Jade studied the photograph again, Lila’s arms around his waist and happiness open across her face. Her mother had loved him, maybe still did, which only sharpened the questions. Where had he gone? Had he known she was pregnant? Did he even know Jade existed?

Her mother’s recent behavior suddenly carried more weight. The dream, the hospital, the way Lila guarded anything connected to Jade’s father. She still didn’t have enough pieces, but the empty space in her life finally had a shape.

Evan’s laugh from the kitchen pulled her back. Jade returned the photographs to the box, but slipped the motorcycle picture into her sweatshirt pocket before putting everything away. When she stepped into the hallway, Monday and the blocked messages were still waiting, but her world had shifted. Her father was no longer faceless.

For years, Wicker Falls had felt enormous because it contained everyone who seemed to know things about Jade before she knew them herself. School gossip became truth if enough people repeated it. Her mother’s silence became another empty space Jade learned to walk around.

Now she had proof that something existed beyond that silence.

A man.

A motorcycle.

A history her mother had hidden because it mattered enough to keep.

Jade walked back toward the living room while the smell of popcorn hung in the apartment and Evan complained from the kitchen about somebody putting something in the wrong cabinet. She curled into her corner of the couch before anyone paid much attention, one hand slipping into her sweatshirt pocket.

Her fingertips found the worn edge of the photograph.

Lila had loved the man in it.

And Jade was almost certain he was her father. The mystery she had carried her entire life finally had a face.

19

Deacon

The hospital room had started to feel like punishment for a man who hated sitting still. Everything was too white and too clean, with the wrong things quiet and everything else making noise when I wanted peace. The TV played some daytime garbage mostly so I didn’t have to listen to my own thoughts, and I kept turning the remote over in my hand without watching enough to know why the people on-screen were yelling at each other.

My ribs hurt if I breathed too deep, my shoulder complained whenever I moved wrong, and laughing remained a terrible fucking idea. Healing, apparently, involved discovering how many ordinary things could piss off an injured body.

Footsteps came down the hall, steady and familiar enough that I knew who they belonged to before the door opened. Priest walked in without knocking, because of course he did, and shut the door behind him. He looked tired. Priest never managed sloppy, but strain sat differently across his shoulders now, and the skin around his eyes looked tighter than it had before the ambush. His gaze swept over me once, quick and assessing, checking that I remained alive enough to irritate him.

I looked back at the television. “You keep walkin’ in here like this, I’m gonna start charging rent.”

A faint smile touched his mouth as he crossed the room. “Yeah? With what money?”

“My charm.”

He snorted, then laid a piece of black leather across my lap.

Everything else in the room fell away.

My cut.

For a moment, I only stared at it. The leather was worn in all the places I knew by touch, the Saints patch sitting exactly where it belonged, familiar enough to feel like another layer of skin. Something tightened behind my ribs that had nothing to do with the damage.

“You kept it,” I said.

Priest gave me a look like I’d asked the dumbest question of my life. “Of course I did.”

I ran my thumb across the patch. Somewhere between blood on the pavement, sirens, and getting shoved into an ambulance, he had made sure the hospital never cut through it or tossed it into some belongings bag like it was another ruined piece of clothing.

“They didn’t...” I started.

“No,” Priest said. “Not your cut.”

That was enough.