I'm sitting on a stool at a high table against the wall. My hands are on the table. I put them there before Maddox said what he said. I was drinking a beer Jax pushed at me. The beer is still there. My hands are still there. Nobody in the bar is moving, except Jax. Jax is on the chair where Maddox put him, moving his jaw like he’s deciding if it’s broken or not. Blood on his shirt.
Breathe in. Four.
Hold. Seven.
Out. Eight.
The trouble with the breathing is that it works for any normal thing, and this isn't a normal thing. There's no four-seven-eight version of Maddox Creed announcing ownership of you in a bar on a Thursday night.
Around me the team is starting to remember how to talk. I catch fragments. Grayson is standing in the middle of the floorwith his arms out as if he can hold back the rest of the room by gesture. Magnus is laughing. Magnus thinks this is funny. Magnus would think a house fire was funny if the house was on someone he disliked.
Maddoxwasat the end of the bar. Then Phoenix went to him. Then they went outside. The outside swallowed them. Now Maddox is gone and I'm still here and my hands are still on the table and the beer is still there.
If I stand up, everyone will look.
If I don't stand up, everyone will look.
I don't stand up.
Here's what I notice, because there's nothing to do with my body and noticing is what my body does when there's nothing else to do.
The bar is called Vigil. The letters are etched into the mirror behind the bottles. Somebody etched them who meant it. Every bottle has a price tag I can read if I squint. There's a woman two tables over who hasn't looked up from her phone through any of this. Green cardigan. I hate that I noticed the cardigan. I'm afraid of what kind of person I become later tonight if I'm still noticing cardigans.
My heart is going too fast.
My mouth tastes like the beer I had one sip of.
My hands are on the table.
There's a spot on my jeans just above the knee where I rubbed a thumb too hard during the part where Jax was flirting with me. The spot is slightly damp where my thumb sweat through the denim. I see it now and I put my other hand over it because I don't want any trace of me visible that was there when it happened.
My face is hot.
My face is so hot I can feel my own pulse in my ears. I can feel my own pulse in other places too. I'm not going to list thoseplaces. There's a line between observation and something worse than observation and I'm going to sit on the right side of that line tonight if I do nothing else.
The team is still not talking to me.
Grayson comes to the table.
“Hey, Laurent.”
I nod. I can't find a word yet.
“You good?”
I nod again. It's a lie, but it's the lie the situation calls for.
Grayson looks at me like I'm a dog he isn't sure he's allowed to pet. Sympathetic but unwilling to reach in. He scans past me to the door where Phoenix and Maddox went, then back to me.
“Sit tight, yeah?”
I nod a third time.
He walks away.
I sit tight.
And then Maddox is back.
