Page 190 of What We Become

Sage opens the envelope. Pulls out a card embossed in silver.

“What does it say?” Eli asks.

She scans it once, then gasps. “It says, ‘Happy birthday, Sage. Please enjoy the room, the cake, and ownership of Gull’s diner.’” Her eyes fly to mine. “Um, what? He’s giving me the diner for my birthday?”

“What. The. Fuck,” Milo spits. “That silver fox just out-OTT’d me!”

“Owner?” Sage says, staring at the card like the letters might rearrange themselves into something less insane. “As in . . . owner owner?”

“I’m going to kill him,” Milo says, offended in a way that is somehow genuinely touching. “Respectfully. Elegantly. With poison in a champagne flute. No. Whiskey. I know he drinks whiskey.”

Micah reaches across the table. “Can I see?”

Sage hands him the card without taking her eyes off it. Her pulse jumps above the collar. I can see it. So can Eli, whose fingers have gone still against the leather at her throat.

Micah reads. Blinks once. Then looks up at the rest of us. “He’s not joking.”

“Of course he’s not joking,” I say. “Odin doesn’t joke in embossed stationery.”

Sage turns to me. “Why would Odin buy me a diner?”

“Because he can,” I offer.

“And because apparently tonight is a contest no one warned me was being judged,” Milo mutters darkly.

Knox takes the card from Micah and studies it with the same attention he gives a weapon schematic. “There’s more on the back.”

Sage snatches it back and flips it over.

Her mouth parts.

“Well?” Eli asks gently.

“There’s an operating account number. And a note.” She swallows. “‘Payroll has been stabilized, outstanding vendor debt cleared, and your existing staff retained at current wages, with improvements to benefits pending your preferences.’” She looks up, dazed. “He bought the building. And the business. And he kept everyone.”

Nobody says anything.

I know Odin. I know what this is.

Not generosity, exactly. Not in the ordinary sense. Odin isn’t a man who throws gifts like confetti. He invests. He fortifies. He places people in situations that suit him. A building. A payroll. Vendors who’ll want her on the phone Monday morning. He hasn’t handed her a present. He’s handed her something she can’t walk away from. Loki had a word for that, in a meeting I sat in. Containment.

Eli plucks the card back out of her hand and tucks it inside his jacket. “How about we save dissecting Odin’s intent for another time? Right now, I’d rather focus on the birthday girl.”

Sage’s eyes are wet again, but she’s recovering. I watch her pull the composure back around herself.

“Well,” she says, and her voice is almost steady. “I guess I own a diner now.”

“You owned my heart first,” Milo says, clutching his chest. “But sure. Diner. Material assets. I see how it is.”

She laughs, and the sound lifts the entire group. Even Knox’s shoulders relax half an inch. Eli lifts his glass.

“To Sage,” he says. “Owner. Survivor. The center of us.”

We drink. Her fingers find the new collar.

“Okay,” she says. “Enough crying. I didn’t wear this dress to leak saltwater all over it.”

“Thank God,” Milo says. “I have plans that require you upright and coherent.”