That's when my phone lights up.
The name on the screen stops my heart for exactly two seconds.
Derek.
My blood goes cold in the specific way it does when something you thought you outran catches up behind you. I turn the phone face-down on the table.
It lights up again.
"You okay?" Rosa asks.
I flip the phone over and show her the screen. Just the name. That's enough, Rosa knows pieces of my history, enough to understand what that name on a screen means.
Her expression changes immediately. "Go," she says. "Take it outside. I'll be here."
I push back from the table and head for the door.
The air hits me cold and sharp. The bar door swings shut behind me, cutting the noise to a dull pulse, and I step to the side of the building and answer before I can talk myself out of it.
"What do you want, Derek."
Not a question. I stopped asking him questions a long time ago. Questions gave him room to maneuver.
"Just checking in." His voice is the same as always—smooth, unhurried, like he's doing me a favor by calling. "Copper Ridge. That's where you landed?"
My stomach drops.
"How do you know that."
"You're not as hard to find as you think, Harper." A pause. The kind he uses like a tool. "I'm not angry. I just want to talk."
"There's nothing to talk about."
"I think there is." The smoothness shifts, just slightly, just enough. The version of Derek that existed beneath the polished surface, the one I learned too late. "You don't just get to disappear."
"Watch me," I say, and hang up.
My hand is shaking.
I press it against my thigh and breathe, in through the nose, out through the mouth, the way I teach patients to manage pain. This is manageable. It's a phone call. He's three states away and he doesn't know exactly—
He said Copper Ridge.
He knows exactly.
I close my eyes.
"Hey."
I spin around.
Ronan is standing five feet from me, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed like he's been there a while. He must have followed me out the second I stood up. I didn't hear him, the man moves like he was trained to, which he was, and right now I'm equal parts startled and grateful and not ready to admit to either.
"How long have you been standing there?" I ask.
"Long enough."
I straighten. Pull myself together with both hands, metaphorically speaking. "I'm fine."
