Page 20

The thought hits me clear as day, and I don’t fight it. Not anymore. Especially not after this.

I let the guy go and stand, brushing asphalt dust off my knees. The first guy is still coughing, crawling toward the dumpster like he thinks he can hide there. I let him crawl. They’re both breathing. That’s more mercy than they deserve, and exactly as much as I can afford to give them with Fawn watching.

I turn back to her.

She hasn’t moved. She’s standing exactly where I found her, her arms wrapped around herself, and she’s looking at me with an expression I can’t read. It’s something more complicated than fear. Something that makes my chest tight in a way that has nothing to do with the fight.

“Thank you.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, but it carries in the empty parking lot like she’s shouting.

The words land like a gut punch. Is she thanking me? She shouldn’t be. This is all our fault.

“You don’t have to thank me.” I don’t explain why, because I’m too much of a coward.

She doesn’t reply, and silence stretches between us.

“You paid my rent,” she says after a while. A statement, flat and precise.

I nod.

“Why?”

The word is simple. One syllable. It shouldn’t be hard to answer.

I look at her…really look at her. The tired lines around her eyes. The way she holds herself like she’s waiting for the next blow. The tightness in her jaw that says she’s still standing despite everything, despite us, despite a world that keeps trying to knock her down.

“We want you,” I say.

The words come out rough, stripped of the teasing cadence I use with everyone else. No jokes. No deflection. Just the truth, ugly and plain, the kind of thing I usually dress up in humor so people don’t see how much it costs.

Fawn blinks. Once. Twice. Her arms tighten around herself, and I see her swallow, see the fear she’s trying to hide, see the exhaustion that runs deeper than one bad night at the diner.

“I want to go home,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m gonna follow you to make sure you get there safe.”

She opens her mouth to argue, and I can see the refusal, the stubborn independence that makes her so fucking frustrating and so impossible to look away from. But then her eyes cut to the men still groaning on the asphalt, to the gun I kicked under a parked car, and to the blood on my knuckles that isn’t mine.

She closes her mouth and nods.

The drive to her apartment takes twelve minutes. I follow two car lengths behind, close enough to see her taillights, far enough that she doesn’t feel hunted. She keeps checking her rearview mirror. I keep my eyes on the road ahead of her, watching for any car that doesn’t belong, any shadow that moves wrong.

Her building is worse than it was the last time I saw it. Three stories of crumbling brick, a front door with a broken buzzer, windows that look like they’ve never seen a decent lock. She parks in a space near the back and sits in her car for a long moment, hands still on the wheel, before she gets out.

I’m already at her car door.

She doesn’t flinch when she sees me. Just looks up at me with those exhausted brown eyes and says, “You can’t come in.”

“Yeah, I can,” I say. “Those guys had Moore ink. That means this isn’t done. That means you’re not safe here alone.”

“I’ve been alone my whole life.”

The words hit harder than they should, but I don’t let it show. “Not tonight.”

She stares at me for a long moment, and I can see her weighing everything—the cost of letting me in, the cost of keeping me out, the math she does, always choosing the option that hurts her least.

“If they come here, your sister might be in danger too.”

That reminder seals the deal. Finally, she turns and walks toward the building. She doesn’t look back to see if I’m following.