CHAPTER TWELVE The Debt Surfaces
Josie woke to gray morning light and an empty half of the bed still warm where Sawyer had been, the particular disorientation of surfacing from the best sleep she'd had in months into a room gone quiet and cool.
She lay there a moment, listening for him, before the low murmur of his voice downstairs pulled her fully awake, careful and clipped in a register she recognized immediately as trouble.
She found him at her kitchen table, fully dressed, phone in hand, staring at whatever was on the screen with an expression that hadn't been anywhere near his face when she'd fallen asleep against his chest hours before.
"Hey." She came to stand behind him, hands on his shoulders, feeling the tension coiled there before he even spoke. "You left the bed cold. That's a crime in this house."
He reached up and covered her hand with his, but the gesture felt distracted, his attention still fixed on whatever he was reading. "Reeve texted last night. I should have told you then. I didn't want to ruin what we had going."
Something cold moved through her, an old, unwelcome familiarity in the shape of the sentence. "Sawyer."
"I know." He turned in his chair to face her, guilt already written plain across his features before she'd said another word.
"I know exactly what that sounds like, and I know exactly what I promised you, and I'm telling you now instead of letting it sit any longer.
The people we owe. They made contact yesterday.
Not just with Reeve. With the club directly, and they've upped the terms."
Josie pulled a chair around and sat facing him, bracing herself. "Upped them how."
"They know the debt's under review. They know that means the club's vulnerable right now, mid transition, everybody distracted with internal business instead of watching outward.
" His jaw was tight, his hands restless on the table.
"They've named a new price. And they've named a new piece of leverage to make sure we pay it. "
"What leverage."
He met her eyes, and she watched something in him brace before he said it.
"You. Your shop. They know you and I have history, they've clearly been watching closer than any of us realized, and they've made it plain that if the club doesn't move fast enough, they're not opposed to sending a message somewhere it'll actually hurt me. "
The kitchen went very quiet, the warmth of the night before draining out of the room entirely, replaced by a cold, clarifying fear that settled low in Josie's stomach. "They're threatening my shop. Because of you."
"Because of us." He said it plainly, not flinching from the weight of it.
"I should have told you the second the message came in last night.
I told myself I was protecting one good night, letting you sleep instead of dragging you into this before I had more information.
That's the same excuse I used three years ago, Josie.
I heard myself think it and I still almost did it anyway. "
"But you didn't." She reached for his hand across the table, steadying herself as much as him. "You're telling me now. That's different, even if it took you a few hours longer than it should have."
"It shouldn't have taken any hours at all." His voice was rough with self-recrimination. "I promised you the second I broke that promise, I'd have already lost you for good. I meant that."
"You didn't lose me." She squeezed his hand, firm.
"You made a mistake in the middle of a genuinely terrifying situation, and you corrected it within a night instead of within three years.
I'm scared, Sawyer, and I'm angry that this is happening at all, but I'm not walking away over a few hours of hesitation when you clearly fought your own worst instinct and won. "
Relief moved visibly through him, though the fear underneath it didn't fully dissolve. "Reeve wants to meet this afternoon. Full club, emergency session, to figure out how to respond. I want you there."
"Me? At club business?"
"You're not an outsider in this anymore, Josie.
You're the leverage they've named. You have a right to be in the room when we decide how to handle that, whatever the old rules would normally say about who gets a seat at the table.
" Something fierce and protective moved across his face.
"I'm not doing this the old way. Not this time.
You're not going to hear about your own safety secondhand from Cole or Delia while the men decide it in a locked room. "
Josie felt something steady settle into place inside her chest, a different kind of trust than the one she'd been slowly rebuilding all week, this one rooted not in words but in the plain evidence of a changed pattern. "Then I'll be there," she said. "What time."
"Three o'clock." He stood, pulling her up with him, and wrapped his arms around her with a fierce, protective gentleness that spoke louder than any promise could have. "I'm going to fix this. All of it. I'm not losing you to the same danger that already cost us three years."
She held onto him in the gray morning light, the shop below them quiet and undisturbed, the whole warmth of the night before now edged with a fear neither of them could fully outrun, and felt, underneath the fear, something that hadn't been there three years ago: the certainty that whatever came next, she wouldn't be facing it in the dark, alone, wondering what the men who loved her had chosen not to tell her.
"Three o'clock," she repeated, and kissed him once, firm and sure, before letting him go to prepare for whatever the afternoon was about to demand of both of them.