“Maybe three.”
The bakery swells with rumor, gratitude, fear, and something worse: awe.
That is what scares me.
Halo used to fear Kauss because he looked like violence. Then it loved him because he became safety. Now people are beginning to mythologize him, and myths do not get to come home and sleep in your bed. Myths belong to streets, battles, whispers, and men who need something larger than truth to explain why they are still alive.
I do not want the Dragon.
I want Kauss.
I want the man who wore reading glasses to fix the display case and asked why beer was flying. I want the man who held me after Ron hit me and looked more broken by my fear than his own wounds. I want the man who told me he loved my angry little plants but could not quite say he loved me until the wrong night made the words bleed.
At noon, Darlene finds me in the storage room pretending to inventory flour while actually staring at the spare shirt Kauss left folded on a shelf.
“That shirt insult you?”
“No.”
“You planning to elope with it?”
“No.”
“Then stop looking at it like that.”
I press my fingers against my eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”
Darlene leans against the doorframe. “About him?”
“About any of it.”
“Fair.”
“I’m angry that he won’t talk to me. I’m angry that he thinks I can’t handle the truth. I’m angry that every time danger happens, he runs toward it like peace is a foreign language he refuses to learn.”
Darlene’s expression changes, the usual bite going softer around the edges. “Men damaged by war sometimes do that.”
“Run toward violence?”
“Yeah.” She folds her arms carefully because her shoulder still hurts from Ron’s attack. “Peace feels unnatural. Quiet gives ghosts room to speak. But trouble? Trouble gives orders. Trouble makes sense. You point yourself at a problem and become useful again.”
My throat tightens. “That sounds like Kauss.”
“It is Kauss.”
“I can’t love someone who chooses war every time peace scares him.”
“No,” she says quietly. “You can’t.”
The honesty knocks the breath out of me.
Darlene steps closer. “But you can love someone who is trying to learn the difference.”
“Is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not comforting.”
