“I’m telling you,” Bricks says, pointing his mug at the map, “if you put Kip on that route, we’re going to lose the shipment, the truck, and probably Kip. And I’m not saying that last one is a tragedy, but Tally gets sentimental when prospects die stupid.”
Moth doesn’t look away from the board. “Kip has the fastest response time out of the last three trial crews.”
“Kip braked for a plastic bag.”
“It moved unexpectedly.”
“It was abag, Moth.”
“It crossed his lane of travel.”
Bricks turns toward me with the slow disbelief of a man looking for sanity in the wrong room. “You hear this shit?”
“I’ve been hearing it for twenty minutes,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “I’m starting to think the bag had a point.”
Moth’s stylus pauses. “The bag is not the operational concern.”
“It is if Kip files an incident report about it,” Bricks mutters. “Kid writes like he’s being paid by the word and threatened by punctuation.”
The argument should annoy me more than it does. A few months ago, it would have. Back then, everything in this office carried a sharper edge, the routes, the risks, the men waiting for my orders, the knowledge that Sol might walk through the door at any second and turn a working disagreement into a loyalty test.
Now the office feels different, though the board is more crowded than ever. Lines cut across territory we took from the Rogues. Notes run in three different hands. Moth’s precise marks. My heavier corrections. Oisín’s neat black script tucked into the margins, catching the overlaps no one else saw until he pointed them out with that quiet little crease between his brows.
Hell, he was the one who found that the Reapers haven’t actually touched our shit at all, just another sore point from the old Rogue club.
Oisín’s all over the operation now and not because he’s my husband and everyone is afraid to tell him no. He earned his place by being so good at the work that even Moth stopped pretending not to be impressed. Oisín sees routes the way some people hear music. He remembers which drivers get sloppy after midnight, which gas stations have cameras that point toward the wrong part of the lot, which towns have enough county patrol boredom to make a convoy look interesting. He remembers names too, which has turned out to be more dangerous than the maps.
Men like being remembered. Prospects who used to panic when I looked at them now hover near Oisín with files in hand, waiting for him to explain what they missed without making them feel like they should walk into traffic for the good of the club.
The members love him, which I should’ve expected and somehow didn’t.
Tally has all but adopted him, which is bullshit because she now takes his side in every argument even when he’s wrong.Especiallywhen he’s wrong. Last week he moved a fuel stop without telling me first, and when I pointed out that maybe the president of the club should know when a live route shifts, Tally told me he wouldn’t have had to move it if I’d listened the first time. Oisín stood behind her trying very hard not to smile. He failed. I let him get away with it because I’m apparently the kind of man who now lets my husband smile at my expense in front of witnesses.
Bricks calls that growth. Moth calls it destabilizing but useful. I call both of them annoying and move on.
“Spring Street stays out,” Moth says, drawing a clean line through the old stop. “Oisín was right about the sightline from the motel.”
Bricks makes a disgusted sound into his coffee. “Of course he was. Pretty little bastard’s always right lately.”
“He was right before. You noticed late.”
“See, that’s why people want to hit you.”
Moth finally turns his head. “People want to hit me because I correct them.”
“No, people want to hit you because you correct them like you’re doing charity work for the stupid.”
“That is often accurate.”
Bricks opens his mouth, probably to make the argument worse, but the office door opens before he can get there revealing Oisín in the doorway wearing my shirt.
Only my shirt.
It hangs loose on him, black fabric slipping off one shoulder, sleeves falling past his wrists where his fingers curl around the doorframe. His hair is wrecked from sleep, dark curls flattened on one side and wild on the other. There are no bruises left on his face unless a man knows exactly where to look and has spent too many nights memorizing what violence stole and time slowly returned.
The cuts on his arm have healed into thin pale scars and his ribs have healed, too. Harlan cleared him last week with a list of warnings Oisín listened to solemnly, then immediately began negotiating like medical advice was a trade agreement. I've been trying my best to let him heal but fuck, it's hard.
His eyes find mine, soft with sleep and warmed by something far more deliberate. “It’s bedtime,” he says.
