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“That was bossy.”

“Yeah.”

A pause.

Then, almost smiling, “Good night, Bitter.”

I stare into the dark, listening to her breathe, listening to carnival music and distant bikes and the old building settling around us like a casket lid that hasn’t closed yet.

“Night, Sweet.”

I don’t sleep because of the couch, Razor, or even because my body still wants what she was smart enough not to give. I stay awake because somewhere across the room, Sweet sleeps in my bed after trusting me with her phone, her fear, and one clear no.

Tonight, I told CSI she wasn’t bait. I promised nobody would use her phone, her location, or Razor’s obsession without her say-so, and I meant every damn word.

For the first time in six years, a woman’s no feels less like rejection and more like a line drawn around something worth protecting.

I hate that.

I respect it.

And God help me, I want her worse because of it.

Chapter Six

Sweet

I wake up in Bitter Adams’s bed to the smell of coffee, gun oil, and something burning.

For three seconds, I have no idea where I am. The ceiling above me is wood plank and shadow, not the flat stained ceiling of room twelve at the motel. The blanket tucked around my hips is heavy and dark, not the thin flowered coverlet I slept under with a chair shoved beneath the doorknob. There is no highway noise outside the window, no motel ice machine humming, no footsteps passing too close to my door. Just muffled festival noise in the distance, a motorcycle rumbling somewhere below, and a man cussing in the kitchen like breakfast personally insulted him.

Then I remember Razor, the tracker, the red bandana in my drawer, Bitter’s apartment over the old garage, his hands braced on either side of me at the counter, his mouth on mine, and his voice telling me to say stop and he would stop. My body remembers that part first. My heart remembers the rest slower.

I sit up and smooth my hair out of my face, blinking into the half-light. Bitter’s bed smells like him, which is annoying because it makes me want to roll over and press my face into the pillow like a woman with no survival skills. Leather. Cedar. Smoke. Man. The scent is warm around me, and for one dangerous second, I let myself pretend I woke up here because I belonged here.

Something sizzles hard enough to sound like a warning shot.

“Son of a bitch,” Bitter mutters from the kitchen.

I smile before I can help it.

The couch is empty. The blanket he took from the closet is folded at one end with a deep crease where his body must have been for at least part of the night. Apparently he tried sleeping. Knowing Bitter, he probably lost the argument.

I climb out of bed and tug my sunflower shirt down over my shorts. The floor is cool under my bare feet, and my suitcase sits beside the bed, closed but not tucked away. My mother’s picture rests on the little crate he uses as a nightstand, standing upright.

I stop.

He touched it.

No, he righted it, and there is a difference. A small one maybe, but after Razor, I collect differences like proof that I am not crazy. Bitter did not hide it, move it away, ask who she was, or tell me I should stop carrying ghosts. He set my mama where I could see her when I woke up, and the ache that goes through me is soft enough to hurt worse.

I walk toward the kitchen.

Bitter stands at the stove in jeans, boots, and a black T-shirt that clings to his shoulders like it lost an argument. His cut hangs over the back of a chair. His hair is damp like he already showered, and his beard looks darker in the morning light. One hand holds a spatula. The other grips a coffee mug. There is a pistol on the counter within easy reach, his phone beside it with the camera feed open, and a plate of bacon that looks mostly edible.

He turns before I speak, his gaze dropping over me fast before coming back to my face like he is trying very hard to be a decent man and finds it irritating.

“Morning.”