The graze on my shoulder burned in the wind. I didn’t care. The woman behind me had her arms around me for the firsttime after all those months of peonies and small talk and careful distance. But the circumstances were wrong, the reason was wrong, and none of that changed the fact that every one of her fingers pressed through my shirt and I was aware of each one separately, like points on a map I’d been trying to read from too far away.
The compound gates stood open. Angel was on the porch, because Angel was always on the porch when it mattered. He looked at Macy climbing off the bike still with some glass in her hair. Looked at me, at the blood soaking through my shirt at the shoulder. His eyes went hard, but when he spoke, his voice was steady. Warm, even. The voice of a man who’d spent years making frightened people feel safe inside these walls.
“Come on in,” he said to her. “You’re safe here.” Then, to me, lower, “Church. Fifteen minutes.”
The lodge closed around us. Heavy timber, thick walls, the weight of a building that understood what protection meant. I brought her to the guest room at the end of the hall, the one with the lock on the inside and windows that faced the treeline.
She sat on the edge of the bed. Her hands pressed flat on her knees, holding herself in place through force. The cut on her arm had dried. Her eyes were clear, alert, the eyes of a woman who’d stopped shaking and started thinking.
“Your shoulder,” she said.
“Doc’ll patch it.”
“Priest.” She said my name and it landed differently than it had before. Heavier. Like she was trusting me with something just by saying it. “Thank you.”
I nodded. Stepped into the hallway. Closed the door.
Stood there.
The graze was throbbing now, the adrenaline burning off, the pain arriving in full. I leaned my back against the wall and looked at the blood on my shirt and I thought about her armsaround my waist on the ride here. How she’d pressed her face against my back and held on like I was the only fixed point she had left.
The feeling in my chest had been building for months. Small, steady, accumulating like snowmelt filling a river, so gradual you don’t notice the level rising until it’s over the banks. I’d ignored it, managed it, told myself it was just the flowers, just the shop, just a woman with a warm voice and a careful smile.
Standing in this hallway with a bullet graze on my shoulder and her heartbeat still echoing through my ribs, I couldn’t ignore it. The thing I’d been carrying had a name and it wasn’t small and it wasn’t going away.
I pushed off the wall and went to find Angel.
THREE
MIA
I lay awake for hours, turning from one side to the other, kicking the sheets off and pulling them back. Every time I closed my eyes the sound came back. Glass fracturing, the percussive crack of rounds punching through the shopfront, the split second of silence before Priest’s arms locked around me and pulled me down. I replayed the phone call. The voice. I replayed the handler’s voicemail greeting, the recorded message from the regional office, the hollow feeling of reaching for a system that had already let go of me.
Then I thought about my shop. The peonies I’d put in the cooler that morning, the bridal mockup I’d been building when the phone rang, the window display I’d spent an hour on last week. All of it shredded. I thought about Highway 12 and the routes I’d memorized and the life I could still build somewhere else if I ran hard enough, fast enough and gave up everything again.
I thought about Priest’s shoulder. The blood soaking through his shirt. How he’d said it was a graze like it was nothing, like catching a bullet for a woman in a flower shop was just another day.
Eventually the dark outside the window turned gray, then pale blue, and I gave up pretending sleep was an option.
There was a knock at my door. I sat up, pushed my hair back. “Yeah.”
The door opened. Priest, two mugs in his hands. He’d changed his shirt. The gauze on his left shoulder was bright white just about visible under his t-shirt, clean, recently dressed. He set a mug on the nightstand and leaned against the doorframe with the other.
I picked it up. He’d added cream. Too much, and no sugar, but the fact that he’d tried made my throat tight. He’d paid enough attention across all those Tuesday mornings to know I didn’t drink it black. He’d gotten the details wrong and the gesture exactly right.
“Thank you,” I said. Took a sip. It was terrible and I didn’t care.
“Angel wants to talk,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“Who’s Angel?”
“Our president. You met him last night on the porch. He runs the club.”
Last night was a blur of gates and timber and a man’s calm voice sayingcome on in, you’re safe here.I’d been shaking too hard to file the details properly. “And the other men? The ones who were here?”
“Ghost is our VP. Rook handles intel. They’ll be in the room. I’ll be there too.”
He said it simply. No pressure, no sales pitch. Just the facts, laid out with the steady patience of a man who’d wait as long as it took.
