Page 8 of The Guarded Monster’s Truth

He shakes his head once.

I close my notebook. "Okay, fair enough. Thank you for your time."

He inclines his head and leaves.

The touches start on day two.

Every time Bruiser walks me somewhere on the compound—and he walks me everywhere—his hand finds the small of my back or my arm as we pass through. In the narrow hall his fingers wrap my elbow to guide me past a stack of lumber. When I trip on the raised threshold of the garage his palm catches my arm and holds it until I'm steady.

Each touch lasts a few seconds. Except my skin holds the warmth after his hand pulls away, and the warmth doesn't fade. It soaks in and stays. By the end of the week I've stopped noticing the touches. I've started noticing their absence, almost craving them.

Friday afternoon he walks me to the other minotaur's workshop on the compound's edge. A woman sits at the counter with a baby asleep in a sling against her chest, a mug of tea between her palms. A pendant rests against her collarbone: a piece of horn on a leather cord, polished smooth.

"Tea?" the woman asks with a warm smile. Her body stays behind the counter. The minotaur shifts without looking, his bulk between her and me.

"I'd love some. Thank you."

She pours and tells me her name is Nina and her husband is Garrett. I take the mug and stay where I am. I drink the tea and ask about the workshop: how long it's been here, what he makes. Nina answers, comfortable and easy. The minotaur's hands never leave the lathe.

The pendant catches light when Nina turns to check the baby. Horn. Minotaur horn. On a leather cord around the neck of a human woman married to a minotaur. I don't know what it means but I'll find out.

On the walk back, Bruiser's hand finds my back again through the doorway. I don't move away. His palm sits warm against my spine and stays there three steps longer than the doorframe requires.

Saturday morning the compound smells like sawdust and fresh paint. Banners go up on the fence posts. Someone strings lights across the yard between the garage and the main building. Founder's Day is next weekend and the whole place hums with it—brothers hauling tables, Sarah organizing a volunteer list in the common room, the prospect carrying a stack of folding chairs taller than he is.

The prospect stacks the chairs against the wall, wipes his hands on his jeans, and drops into the seat across from me. He starts talking before I press record. Young, broad through the shoulders, one knee going under the table before he finishes sitting down.

"So you're the journalist, right? Bruiser said I'm not supposed to—well, he didn't say I'm not supposed to, he said I should think about it, which, I thought about it, and I think talking to you is fine because the whole point of the piece is making us look good, right? And I look great. I'm Diesel, by the way."

I press record.

He gives me his road to the club. His first week as a prospect. What Knox means to him, and this part he delivers with a sincerity that makes me stop writing. He pulls out his phone to show me photos of a custom build he helped with, and then the gallery turns into a tour: compound barbecue, his motorcycle, a sunset from the coast road, a tattoo sketch.

"Compass rose." He angles the phone. "Kim—she runs Ink and Iron downtown—she keeps telling me to sleep on it. Three months now. At this point the design's more committed to me than I am to it."

"Kim a friend?"

His ears go red. "She's—yeah. She does good work."

I write: Diesel—prospect. Heart on his sleeve, phone in my face, zero filter. Kim at Ink and Iron. Noted.

A hand closes around the back of Diesel's chair and pulls.

Bruiser. He appeared behind us without a sound, which shouldn't work for a man his size but does. He lifts the chair—Diesel still in it—six inches off the ground and sets it down three feet from the table.

"Time's up."

"I was just showing her the—"

"Phone gallery. I saw. Time's up."

Diesel shoots me an apologetic look as Bruiser steers him toward the hallway. The prospect turns back at the door. "If you need more, I've got stories about the—"

"Out," Bruiser says.

The door closes.

That evening I spread a week of notes across the kitchen table and play the recordings back. Finn's polish, Rex's three sentences, Diesel's forty-five minutes, and the long stretches of Bruiser's silence filling the gaps between everyone else.