Chapter Eight #2
"Good," he says. "That's the right call, and I mean that beyond just the practical value of her having the information.
A man who filters what a woman he wronged gets to hear, even when he's trying to protect her, is still choosing for her instead of trusting her to handle the truth herself.
You've done enough choosing for Rowan already. Let her decide what she can carry."
I nod, and I mean to say something back, but he's already turning toward the bay, the conversation apparently concluded to his satisfaction, and I'm left standing there with his words settling into place alongside everything else I'm carrying this morning.
I don't sit on it. I don't manage the timeline, don't decide what version of this Rowan can handle hearing and what version she can't. I get on the bike and I ride straight to Marked, and I find her at her station between clients, and I tell her everything, word for word, the same way Reina told it to me, no softening, no editing for her comfort or mine.
She listens without interrupting, arms crossed, jaw tight, and when I finish she's quiet a long moment before she speaks.
"She called you scared."
"Yeah."
"And your first instinct was to come straight here and tell me every word of it instead of sitting on it to figure out how it makes you look.
" Rowan studies me, something assessing in her expression that I can't fully read.
"Eight months ago you'd have found a way to manage that conversation before it ever reached me.
Decided what I needed to know and what I didn't."
"I know."
"I'm not saying it fixes anything. I'm saying I notice it.
" She turns back to her station, starts prepping for her next client, and I understand, the way I'm learning to understand her careful economy of words, that this is as close to acknowledgment as she's willing to give right now, and it's more than I expected walking in.
"Is she safe?" Rowan asks, not looking up from her station, and the question catches me off guard enough that I don't answer right away. "Reina. You said she's scared of her own brother. Is she somewhere safe right now?"
"She says she is. Staying with a friend, away from Amarillo's clubhouse."
Rowan nods slowly, still not looking at me, something complicated moving behind her careful expression. "I don't forgive her. I want to be clear about that. But I know what it is to be scared of someone who's supposed to be on your side, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone, even her."
I don't have a response ready for that, some old, easy assumption about how Rowan would feel about Reina quietly rearranging itself into something more complicated, more generous than I expected, and more than I think I would have managed in her position.
"Don't look so surprised," she says, catching my expression.
"I'm not a saint, Wyatt. I'm not going to invite the woman over for coffee.
But I've spent eight months learning that anger and clarity aren't the same thing, and it's possible to hold both, hate what somebody did and still see them clearly as a person instead of a monster.
Doesn't mean you're off the hook, by the way.
Just means I'm capable of more than one feeling at a time about this whole mess. "
"I never doubted that about you."
"Good. Then stop looking so shocked every time I prove it."
"What do we do with what she told you? Something bigger, in the next couple weeks, involving the shop by name. That's not a lot to work with."
"It's enough to take to Silas. Enough to tighten security further, watch harder, maybe get ahead of whatever he's planning instead of just reacting to it after the fact.
" I hesitate, then add the part I know she needs to hear even though it costs me something to say it plain.
"It's not enough to promise you nothing else happens.
I won't lie to you about that. I wish I could. "
"I'd rather have the truth I can't stand than a promise I can't trust." She says it simply, without drama, and something about the plain, unguarded honesty of it settles into my chest like a small, hard-won piece of ground.
"Go take it to Silas. And Wyatt." She looks up from her station, holds my eyes a moment longer than strictly necessary.
"Thank you for telling me straight. I know that's not nothing, coming from where you started. "
I ride back to the clubhouse with that sitting warm somewhere underneath all the fear and the anger and the grim math of what's still coming, and I let myself have it, just for the length of the ride, before I get back to the harder work of figuring out how to stop a man named Dax Cole from making good on whatever he's got planned.
Silas takes the update the same way he takes most bad news these days, quiet, methodical, already three steps ahead into what it means for the timeline.
"Two weeks isn't much runway," he says, once I've laid it all out.
"I want everything we've got on Dax Cole's movements cross-referenced against anything unusual coming through Clearview in that window.
If he's planning something with money or property changing hands, there's a paper trail somewhere, even a bad one, and I want us finding it before he finishes whatever he's building. "
"I want in on that search personally."
"I figured you would." Something almost like approval crosses his face, brief and hard-won. "One more thing. Denise mentioned Reina's in a rough spot. That your problem to solve?"
"No. Not directly, anyway."
"Good answer. Keep it that way. You've got exactly one relationship to repair right now, and it isn't with a woman six hundred miles away, whatever guilt you're carrying about how she ended up there.
" He says it without unkindness, just plain fact, the kind of clarity I've come to rely on from him this past week.
"Pass along anything useful she gives you.
Don't go making yourself responsible for fixing her life on top of everything else you're already trying to fix. "
"Every step through the club first," I say, half a question, half confirming I've got it right.
"Every step," he agrees, and I mean it too when I nod back, because the version of me that used to handle things alone, that used to decide what other people needed to know and when, is exactly the version of me that got us all into this mess in the first place, and I'm done being that man, one deliberate, accountable decision at a time.
Riding back into town that evening, post reclaimed outside Marked, I think about Reina's voice on the phone, scared in a way I'd never heard from her before, and I think about Preacher's words from church, about small omissions piling up until a woman's gone before you ever worked up the nerve to say the thing that mattered.
I don't know if I owe Reina anything beyond what I've already given her today, an honest ear and a promise to pass along what she told me.
I know I'm done pretending the ledger only has one name on it.
Whatever this becomes, however it ends, I intend to settle every account I can reach, not just the one that might actually earn me something back.