Darlene grunts. “Finally, a man with sense.”
“I did not say I would not return.”
Both women look at me.
The room changes.
Evie’s hand tightens on the counter edge. “Kauss.”
“I promised I would not kill them.”
“That is not the same as promising not to go.”
“No.”
Darlene’s expression hardens. “What are you planning?”
I pull my hood up. “They need to understand.”
Evie steps toward me. “Kauss, please.”
I stop at the door and look back.
She is standing in the wreckage, bruised from one attack and shaken by another, still worried for me. Not for Ron. Not for the gang. For me. It is the kind of mercy that feels like pain because I do not know where to put it.
“I will not kill them,” I say again.
Her voice drops. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
It is not enough. I can see that. It is all I can give without lying.
Inside my mind, another promise forms, silent and colder.
I never said I would not beat the living shit out of them.
Darlene’s eyes narrow as if she hears the thought anyway. “Kauss.”
I open the rear door. Rain and night air rush in, carrying Halo’s rot, salt, and neon.
“They will not bother her again,” I say.
Then I step into the dark before Evie can ask for the one mercy I do not have left in me tonight.
CHAPTER 9
EVIE
Morning comes into Sweet Tooth through plywood, cracked glass, and stubbornness.
The bakery does not smell right. That is the first thing I notice when I come downstairs after barely sleeping. The air should be warm with yeast, coffee, butter, cinnamon, and the bright sting of citrus zest. Instead, the familiar sweetness is tangled with the bitter stink of electrical scorching from the broken display case, damp wood from the boarded window, cheap cleanser, and the faint coppery tang that fear leaves behind even after everyone insists they are fine. Rainwater has seeped beneath the temporary panel Renn nailed over the window, and the floor near the front wall glistens in a thin, accusing sheet.
I stand in the kitchen doorway with my hand wrapped in fresh gauze, my ribs aching, my face still tender from last week’s attack, and my heart somewhere down around my knees.
Sweet Tooth looks bruised.
Not destroyed. Not dead. The ovens still stand. The counter is still there. The mural is mostly intact except for the muddy smear across my grandmother’s painted version of Halo. The tables that survived are upright again. Darlene and I cleared theworst glass last night, though tiny glittering fragments still hide in corners no broom can fully reach. The room is wounded, but it is ours.
