Let Me Carry It
Nora
The envelope sits on the counter when I open up Thursday morning. No stamp. No name. My shop's address in block letters and Rose's name written underneath it.
I almost don't open it. Some instinct in me already knows.
Inside is a single photo. Rose, at the park two days ago, swinging on the same swing set she always uses, caught mid-laugh by someone who got close enough to take the shot without either of us noticing.
On the back, in the same block letters: PROPERTY OF BUTCH.
My hands shake so hard I drop my keys twice trying to lock the door again.
Not "I'm watching her." Not "I can get to her." Property of. Patch language—the same words stitched on the back of a cut. He isn't threatening my daughter. He's claiming her.
And the nerve of it lands almost as hard as the fear. Three years. Three years of mac and cheese dinners and begging the bank for one more month, and Butch's precious blood never sent so much as a birthday card. Nobody claimed us when claiming us meant work.
The man who did that—who showed up morning after morning, who scrubbed a slur off my wall, who treats my daughter like a human being—doesn't share a drop of blood with her.
He just keeps coming back.
Lucas can print whatever he wants on the back of a photograph. Rose already belongs to the man who earned her.
I call Fuse before I even think about it, and he's there in under ten minutes, takes one look at the photo and goes a kind of still I haven't seen from him before. Quiet. Controlled. Worse than if he'd yelled.
"This isn't a warning anymore."
"I know."
"This is Lucas telling you he can get close enough to touch her."
"I know, Fuse."
He paces the length of the counter once, twice, phone already out, already calling Ash, already setting wheels in motion I can't stop and don't fully understand.
I watch him take charge of my life in real time, some part of me rebelling against it even as another part wants to collapse into the relief of someone else handling this.
"I need you to disappear for a few days," he says. "You and Rose. Somewhere Lucas doesn't know about."
"And then what? I hide forever? She never goes back to that park?"
"Then we end this. Permanently."
"By doing what?"
He doesn't answer that, and the silence tells me everything I don't want to know.
"No." I back away from him, putting the counter between us. "I won't be the reason you do anything you can't undo."
"You're not the reason. He is."
"I let her swing on that same swing set every Tuesday for a year. Same time. Same bench I sit on. I gave him a schedule and never even noticed I was doing it."
The words come out fast, panic outrunning sense.
"I told myself normal was the thing I owed her. Instead I handed a man like Lucas a map. But no matter how awful he’s being right now, he’s still Rose’s uncle. Her blood. "
"Don't."
"I have to protect her. That means staying away from you. From all of this."
"Don't you dare say that to me."
His level tone cracks wide open, and he closes the distance between us before I can retreat any further.
"You think walking away keeps her safe? Lucas already knows where she swings. Already knows what park, what afternoon. Distance from me doesn't erase that. The only thing that changes anything is ending him."
"I can't lose anyone else."
"You're not losing me."
"You don't know that."
"I do." He takes my face in both hands, forcing me to look at him instead of past him.
"I've buried plenty of men who weren't careful. I'm careful. I'm not Butch, and I'm not dying in some parking lot two states away. I'm finishing this, and then I'm coming home to you and that kid, and that's the only version of this that exists. You understand me?"
I don't believe him. Not completely. Not the way I want to.
But I kiss him anyway, hard, fear and want tangled together so tight I can't tell where one ends and the other starts.
He kisses me back like I’m his oxygen, one hand fisting in my hair to angle my mouth exactly where he wants it, the other gripping my hip hard enough to bruise. I bite his bottom lip and he groans low in his throat, and something in him breaks loose after that.
He backs me into the counter, lifts me onto the edge of it, and I wrap my legs around him and drag him in by his belt because slow isn't a thing either of us has left in us right now.
"Tell me you're not going anywhere," I say against his mouth.
"I'm not going anywhere."
He shoves my jeans down, hooks his fingers under the edge of my panties and drags them aside instead of bothering to get them off. Then he reaches between us, tears a condom from the wallet in his back pocket, rips it open with his teeth, and rolls it on with hands that aren't steady.
When he pushes into me it isn't gentle, isn't slow. It's frantic, deep, a claim being staked in real time.
"Look at me," he demands. "Every part of you. Mine. Nobody touches what's mine."
"Yours," I gasp, because it's true, because saying it feels like the only solid thing left in a day that's tried to take the ground out from under me.
He drives into me hard, one hand braced on the counter beside my hip, the other still fisted in my hair, and every stroke feels like an argument neither of us is willing to lose.
I cling to his shoulders, nails biting into muscle, and he doesn't flinch, doesn't slow, takes everything I give him and gives it straight back twice as hard. The counter rattles the napkin holder onto the floor. Neither of us stops to notice.
"Fuse—"
"I've got you." His mouth drops to my throat, teeth grazing where my pulse is hammering. "Let it out. I've got you the whole way down."
I come apart around him fast, almost violent in how hard it hits, a sob and a moan tangled together so I can't tell which one I'm making.
He follows seconds later, my name breaking rough out of his chest, both of us shaking, holding on like letting go might undo something neither of us can afford to lose today.
For a long minute neither of us says a word.
When he finally pulls back, he doesn't smile. Just rests his forehead against mine, still buried inside me, breathing hard, eyes closed, one hand smoothing slow up and down my spine. Then he eases out, ties off the condom, and drops it in the trash without looking away from me.
"I can't do this alone anymore," I admit, voice barely above a whisper. "I don't want to."
"You don't have to."
My eyes scan his face. “When will this happen?”
He doesn’t break eye contact. “When Crew decides the time is right. He’s never let the brothers down before.”
"I'm scared, Fuse."
"I know, baby. Let me carry some of it."
I let him. For the first time in three years, I actually let someone else carry some of the weight, and it doesn't feel like weakness.
It feels like surviving.