“Yes.” I open my eyes. “Which is why I need to move the car tonight and decide whether to—”
“You’re not leaving,” Jack states.
I look at him.
“That’s not what I mean,” he says, and his voice has the tone it had on the pier when he held my face. “I mean we handle the car tonight and you don’t have to leave.”
“Jack,” I say.
“The town already—”
“I know what the town did.” The town that told a plainclothes officer a woman matching my description was last seen heading north two days ago. I know what that lie cost and what it means and I can’t… “I can’t ask the town tokeep doing that.”
“You didn’t ask,” Tristan points out.
“That’s worse.” My voice comes out rougher than I want it to. “That’s worse, because they did it without being asked, which means they’ll keep doing it without being asked, and when this catches up to me properly—and it will, I know how this works, you can’t run a frame this clean and not have the resources to pursue it—I don’t want any of you in the frame with me.”
The kitchen is quiet again.
Ryan stares at me for a considerable time. “That’s not your decision,” he says.
“It’s absolutely my decision.”
“You’re in our territory. You’re under pack—”
“I didn’t agree to that.”
“Lola—”
“I didn’t agree to it,” I repeat, my voice is level and I mean every word. “I walked into your town and I took a job and I…” I stop. I am not doing this. I am not going to sit in this kitchen and tell them what the last two weeks have been, because if I say it out loud it becomes something I’m leaving, and right now I need it to be something I’m protecting. “You’ve been good to me. All of you. The town has been good to me. I’m not going to be the reason any of that gets complicated.”
“It’s already complicated,” Jack states.
“More complicated,” I reply. “Legally complicated. The kind of complicated that ends with jail.”
Archer has been quiet. He speaks now, low and direct: “Where would you go?”
I don’t answer. Because I don’t know. That’s the truth of it. I have not run the next step. For the first time in two weeks I don’t have the next move mapped. The next move requires leaving Sweetwater Valley and leaving Sweetwater Valley is…
It’s not what I want.
I know this clearly, sitting in this kitchen, with the mug going cold in my hands and four men who stood between me and law enforcement tonight without being asked. I know what I want with a simplicity that would be funny if it weren’t so badly timed.
I want to stay. Ican’tstay.
Both things are true and they don’t resolve.
“I don’t know yet,” I say, which is the closest to honest I can get right now.
Ryan looks at me for a long time. “Tonight. The car moves tonight. Archer will take care of it. You sleep here. We make decisions in the morning.”
It’s not a request. It’s not quite a command. It’s the Ryan version, a plan offered, clearly, and the space to accept it or refuse it. Except that his eyes are sayingpleasein the quiet way he says everything.
I accept it.
Because I’m tired and the emergency power is running low and the morning feels manageable in a way the next five minutes don’t.
“Okay,” I agree.
