My hands had locked around the towels without my noticing.I could see them above the edge of the pile, fingers bent at odd angles, as if they belonged to someone else.
The second prospect said something else, lower, and the first one made a sound that was not quite agreement and not quite dismissal, and neither of them looked toward the door.They were outside, angled away, watching the yard.They had no reason to check the corridor.I had come around the corner quietly in my bare feet on concrete, and they had no idea I was there.
I backed up, one step, then two, then turned and walked back the way I’d come, past the bare concrete, past the point where it changed back to linoleum.I didn’t hurry, because hurrying made sound and sound invited attention.I’d spent the last several days inside a place that had started to feel like safety and now the word sat wrong in my mouth.
The kitchen was behind me.I didn’t go back to it.
I went out the other end of the corridor, through the back of the main building, and across the yard to Rogue’s cottage.The cold of the morning hit my bare feet on the gravel and I did not slow down for it.
Inside, the cottage held the quiet of the morning.The lamp from the night before was off.On the kitchen counter, two coffee mugs sat rinsed in the drying rack -- his and mine, side by side.I walked past them, set the dish towels on the edge of the couch, and went down the hall to the bedroom.
The bag was under the bed, where I’d put it three days ago when I’d run out of reasons to keep it on the chair.A canvas-bottomed duffel from the strip mall, and it slid out without resistance.I sat on the edge of the mattress, unzipped it, and realized my hands had started to tremble.I went to the dresser.
The top drawer held the things Rogue had bought at the strip mall -- the jeans, the two plain T-shirts, the underwear folded in the stack I had refolded twice already for no reason.I took the first T-shirt and folded it into thirds.I laid it in the bag.I folded the second the same way, with the same tight precision, and laid it alongside the first.The gray hoodie came last.I shook it once before folding it, and my hands were trembling enough that the motion wasn’t as steady as it should have been.
I pressed the hood flat.
Target.The word echoed in the quiet room.Rogue had meant it when he’d claimed me at that table, his hand flat on the wood.I had no doubt.But meaning it didn’t change the reality.It didn’t move the SUVs off the highway or silence the senator’s phone.It only meant he’d chosen a problem I never asked him to take on, and I could hear the cost being calculated in the corridor of his own clubhouse.
I pressed the hoodie flat with still-unsteady hands.It wouldn’t stay flat.I smoothed it once more, picked it up, looked at the open bag on the bed.
The cut was heavy on my shoulders.I was still wearing it, standing over a packed bag, and I hadn’t yet figured out what to do with that when I heard his boots on the porch steps.
Two steps.A pause on the second.His hand would be on the handle in three seconds.
I didn’t close the bag.
He came through the door and a moment later I saw him.He stopped.His gaze went to the bag on the bed, then the open dresser drawer, then to me.He took all of it in, and his face didn’t change.The stillness was worse than any anger would have been.
“I heard them,” I said.My voice came out flat and even, the way I had trained it to when Grant walked into a room.“The two Prospects.The side door.”I still had the gray hoodie in one hand.“They said this whole place becomes a target.They said your cut on me makes it louder, not quieter.That it’s personal now.”I watched his face.Nothing moved in it.“They were right.”
He crossed the room without hesitation, without the exaggerated caution that would have suggested he was handling me carefully.He took the hoodie out of my hands -- not rough, not gentle, just final -- and dropped it back into the open drawer, then shoved the drawer shut with the heel of his hand.He turned, put his back against the dresser, his arms at his sides, and looked at me from two feet away.
I made myself keep talking.
“I don’t belong here,” I said.“I was a girl in a wedding dress at a gas station.You did the right thing.I know that.But that’s not the same as… this.Both a federal and club problem.”My voice cracked on the word “club,” and I pushed on before I could stop.“There are things that follow you, things you can’t undo.I was somebody’s arrangement.I won’t be that for you.”
I reached for the strap of the bag, and I got two fingers on it before he moved -- stepping into the space between the door and the bed in one smooth motion that was not aggressive and was absolutely impassable.He didn’t touch me.He was just there, in the way, with the door behind him and the bag still on the bed behind me, and there was no way I could move around him.I didn’t try.
We stood there.“I’m making you a target,” I said.My chin was up.I’d stopped trying to keep it from trembling.“Every day I’m here is another day I’m waiting for something to happen to you because of me.”
“Wouldn’t be the first person to make us a target,” he said.Even.Flat.
“This is different.”
“Yeah.”A beat.Something moved in his jaw, once, a muscle settling.“It is.”
I wasn’t prepared for his agreement, and it knocked the next sentence out of me, leaving me struggling to find the thread of it again.
“Then you know I should go,” I said.
“No.”
I spread my hands.I didn’t know what I meant the gesture to say -- something about the bag, the drawer, the phone calls, the senator’s number in someone’s contacts list.Something about the compound and the men in it, and the two Prospects in the back corridor doing the math out loud that everyone had already been doing in their heads.“You don’t owe me anything,” I said.
I meant it to be the end of it -- the exit I was handing him, the door propped open.
One step, maybe two, and then his hand came up and his thumb pressed against my cheekbone and his fingers curved along my jaw -- not the way Grant’s had, not that same pressure and possession.Just his hand cupping my face, holding me there, and then he kissed me.
