Chapter Seven
Spencer
The main strip of town was three blocks of old brick storefronts, a post office, a bookstore with a hand-painted sign, and a hardware store that looked like it had been there since the earth cooled.
Crowbar walked beside me with Noodles on her leash, the puppy zigzagging between our legs like she was trying to braid us together.
Every few steps she’d lunge at a pigeon or a leaf or her own shadow, and Crowbar would correct the leash with a flick of his wrist so subtle it barely registered.
His hand found my back pocket somewhere between the post office and the traffic light. Just slid in, casual, like it had always lived there. His palm was warm through the fabric, fingers curled against the curve of my hip, and I felt the contact in every nerve ending south of my collarbone.
The morning sun cut between the buildings at a low angle, throwing long shadows across the sidewalk and warming the back of my neck.
My sling was navy blue and ugly and made me look like I’d lost a fight with a revolving door, but Crowbar hadn’t mentioned it once, and the people we passed on the sidewalk gave us enough of a wide berth that nobody bumped my arm.
That might have had less to do with the sling and more to do with the six-foot-something biker attached to my back pocket.
“There.” Crowbar nodded toward a shop on the corner. The sign read MAIN STREET MERCANTILE in faded gold lettering. It was the kind of store that sold candles, journals, and things nobody needed but everyone wanted.
“What’s in there?”
“Markers.”
“Does that mean I get to write POOKIE + INDOORS on a telephone pole?”
“No defacing public property.” He steered us through the door.
The interior smelled like lavender and old wood.
Shelves lined every wall, crammed with notebooks, art supplies, greeting cards, and an alarming number of ceramic animals.
A woman behind the counter looked up from her crossword, clocked Crowbar’s leather cut, and went back to her puzzle without blinking.
Crowbar released my pocket long enough to navigate the narrow aisle, Noodles’ nails clicking on the hardwood. He stopped in front of a spinning rack of art supplies and plucked a pack off the hook, holding it up for my inspection.
Glitter markers. A twelve-pack, every color of the rainbow plus gold and silver, the kind that left sparkly trails on everything they touched.
“For the sling,” he said.
I stared at the markers. Then at him. Then back at the markers.
“You want me to decorate my sling.”
“You’re gonna be wearing it for weeks. Make it yours.”
An ache blossomed. He wasn’t trying to fix the sling or fix me. He was handing me glitter markers and telling me to make the ugly thing mine. I was not going to cry in front of the craft lady.
“I’m going to draw so many stars on this thing,” I said, and my voice only wobbled a little. “And at least one portrait of Noodles.”
“Gunner.”
“Noodles. She’s getting a glitter portrait and a crown. Deal with it.” And he was getting a different kind of kiss later.
Crowbar bought the markers without letting me see the total. The woman at the register smiled at Noodles, who was trying to eat my shoe, and handed us the bag with a quiet “Have a good one” that felt like she meant it.
Back on the sidewalk, Crowbar’s hand returned to my pocket. I tore open the marker pack with my teeth, uncapped the gold one, and started drawing a wobbly star on the front of my sling while walking. The glitter caught the sunlight and threw tiny specks of light across my shirt.
“That looks like a starfish,” Crowbar said.
“It’s abstract. You wouldn’t understand. Art is subjective.”
“That’s what people say when it’s bad.”
“That’s what people say when they’re barbarians.” I added a second star, slightly less wobbly. “There. A Noodles constellation.”
He shook his head, but his thumb was tracing a slow circle against my hip through the fabric, and the motion was so distracting I nearly walked into a parking meter.
We passed Lamar’s Diner. The hardware store. A barbershop with a spinning pole that Noodles tried to attack. I drew a tiny dog face on the sling in purple glitter, complete with oversized ears, and held my arm up for Crowbar’s inspection.
“Masterpiece,” he said flatly.
“Your enthusiasm is overwhelming. I can barely contain myself.”
“It looks like a gremlin.”
“It looks like our daughter, and you will respect her likeness.”
His stride hitched. Just barely, a half-step stutter that he corrected immediately, but I caught it. Our daughter. The words had slipped out, like they’d been waiting in line and finally reached the front.
I didn’t take them back.
We turned the corner onto Second Street, where a bookshop sat between a florist and a candy store.
Noodles was trotting ahead, ears bouncing, tail high, completely unbothered by the concept of leash tension.
Crowbar let her have the slack, his long stride eating up the sidewalk while I took two steps for every one of his.
I was adding a heart to the sling in red glitter, right inside the letter C I’d just drawn, when the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
Not a breeze. Not the sun shifting behind a cloud. Something older than that, something wired into the base of my skull from two and a half years of learning to read the air in a room before a hand connected with my face.
I was being watched.
My fingers tightened around the marker. I didn’t stop drawing, didn’t change my pace, didn’t look up. But my eyes moved, scanning the reflection in a shop window as we passed.
Across the street. Leaning against a grey sedan parked in front of the pawn shop. Arms crossed. Watching.
Ken.
My heart slammed so hard I felt it in my throat.
The marker slipped, leaving a jagged red line across the sling like a wound.
He was wearing the grey Henley again, the one I’d bought him.
His posture was calculated. The same way he’d held his hands up like he was harmless while he tried to detach my arm.
The same arm he’d broken a year prior.
He wasn’t approaching or calling out. Just standing there, watching me walk down the street with another man’s hand in my back pocket.
The expression on his face was the one I’d learned to fear most. Not anger. Anger was loud and fast and left marks that faded. This was the quiet version. The one that sat behind his eyes like a pilot light, small and blue and patient, waiting for enough gas to lift off.
I looked away and kept walking. Drew another star on my sling with a hand that trembled just enough to turn the points into jagged teeth.
Crowbar’s thumb was still tracing circles against my hip. He was saying something about the bookshop, about a mechanic’s manual he’d been looking for, and I held on to the sound of his voice like a rope thrown into dark water.
I didn’t tell him.
Because he would do something. I’d known the man less than a week, and I already understood that telling him Ken was fifty feet away would end with someone in an ambulance, and it wouldn’t be Crowbar.
And then there’d be cops. And questions.
Handcuffs. And a report that put Crowbar’s name next to words like assault and battery.
I’d watched enough people I cared about get destroyed by the fallout of my choices to know that this particular grenade needed to stay in my pocket.
So I swallowed the fear. Tucked it behind my sternum next to all the other things I carried. Drew another glitter star on my sling, laughed at something Crowbar said about Noodles trying to eat the leg of a bench, and pretended the tremor in my hand wasn’t there.
My arm throbbed.
A sharp, insistent pulse that radiated from the spot where Ken’s fingers had wrenched, as if the injury itself recognized its maker across the street and was sounding an alarm my mouth refused to voice.
I shifted closer to Crowbar, pressing my shoulder against his arm. He glanced down at me, those storm-cloud eyes searching my face for half a second before his hand tightened in my pocket, pulling me closer.
“Cold?” he asked.
“Little bit.” I wanted to curl into his arms and stay there forever. “The sling doesn’t exactly insulate.”
He shrugged off his leather cut one-armed and draped it over my shoulders without breaking stride. The weight of it settled around me like armor. It smelled like him. Motor oil and sandalwood and something underneath that was just Crowbar, solid and safe.
“Better?” he asked.
I pulled the cut tighter around myself and nodded, not trusting my voice. The leather was heavy on my shoulders, and under its cover, my heart was beating like crazy.
We kept walking. Noodles found a stick and carried it like a trophy.
Crowbar told me about a ’69 Mustang he was restoring in the third bay, the one with the rusted quarter panels.
The way he talked about it—patient, detailed, almost tender—made me think he approached broken things the same way.
With steady hands and no expectation that they explain how they got that way.
I added one more star to the sling. Silver this time. My hand had stopped shaking.
Behind us, I didn’t look back to see if Ken was still there. I already knew.