Chapter 39
Skye
Three weeks after Saint Brigid's burned, I stood in the middle of Harbor House with a roll of plans beneath one arm, a pencil caught behind my ear, and six people arguing about whether a bedroom door opening four inches farther into a hallway constituted a meaningful design decision.
It did, and that was the problem with working around men who had spent most of their adult lives measuring danger through weapons, sight lines, road access, and how quickly somebody could reach an exit.
They understood instinctively that space mattered when bullets were involved, yet the moment I started explaining that the placement of a door could determine whether a woman who had spent years being watched felt trapped every time she entered her own room, half of them developed the expression of people being forced to attend an advanced lecture in decorative cushions.
Sunshine understood immediately, which was why she stood beside me with her arms folded and looked far too pleased while I argued with a contractor who had spent the previous fifteen minutes insisting that moving the hinge side would cost more than leaving the opening exactly where it was.
"It isn't about four inches," I said for the third time. "It's about what the person inside sees when the door opens."
The contractor, a patient man named Carl who had clearly begun regretting agreeing to work with Thistle & Stone America somewhere around our second meeting, looked toward the bedroom again. "She sees the hallway."
"She sees anyone standing in the hallway before she has a clear path to the door."
Carl rubbed one hand over his jaw. I stepped into the room and demonstrated.
"If the bed stays here and the door opens inward on this side, whoever is in bed has somebody between them and the exit the second that person enters.
If we reverse the swing and shift the frame, she sees the doorway immediately, has a direct line out, and nobody approaching the room accidentally blocks it. "
Raze, who had been carrying lumber until he decided my argument was more entertaining, leaned against the hallway wall. "So four inches is tactical."
I pointed at him. "Do not make me agree with you."
"Too late."
Storm walked past carrying a box of hardware. "Someone record the date."
Carl sighed. Sunshine smiled. From farther down the corridor, Irish laughed.
I turned toward him. He stood near what would become the redesigned family room with Hawkeye beside him, both of them studying the revised wall layout I had drawn that morning.
Irish had been at Harbor House since seven despite insisting he was only there because Toxic wanted updated security recommendations.
That excuse had survived approximately twenty minutes before I caught him helping one of the carpenters remove the old shelving from a counseling room while pretending he had somehow ended up holding a pry bar by accident. He caught me looking.
"What?"
"Nothing." His eyebrows lifted. Apparently the entire Flaming Skulls family had now adopted my own argument against me. I narrowed my eyes and returned to Carl.
"Reverse the door." He looked toward Sunshine. She nodded.
"Reverse the door."
Carl muttered something about designers and change orders before walking away. Raze grinned. "You terrify him."
"Good."
"See? Old Lady energy."
I looked at him slowly. He disappeared down the hallway before I could find anything to throw.
The title had not improved in the three weeks since the clubhouse formally welcomed me into the family.
I still thought Old Lady sounded like something belonging to either a retirement home or a deeply questionable motorcycle-club history book, and Raze had discovered that using it whenever I was irritated increased his entertainment considerably.
The difference was that I no longer heard ownership when anyone said it.
The patch Toxic had given me remained folded safely in my luggage rather than sewn onto anything because I still had no intention of becoming a walking advertisement for my relationship, but I understood what the club meant by the gesture.
I belonged because I had chosen to belong, and every person in the clubhouse seemed to understand the distinction well enough that nobody tried turning my choice into a set of expectations.
Irish was especially careful about that.
Perhaps too careful sometimes. I found him ten minutes later measuring the family-room wall with Hawkeye.
"You're doing my job." Irish looked down at the tape measure.
"Helping."
"Suspicious."
Hawkeye stepped aside immediately. "I told him."
Irish stared at him. "Traitor." The prospect's expression barely moved.
"She scares Carl."
I laughed. Irish muttered something beneath his breath while Hawkeye returned to the measurements.
He worked the way he did almost everything else: quietly, without wasting movement, paying attention to details everyone else overlooked.
In Ireland, that patience had made him ideal for overwatch.
At Harbor House it meant he had spent the morning finding every place a shelf, cabinet, or door frame was half an inch out of square without once announcing that he was doing it. I looked toward the plan in his hand.
"That wall staying?"
"Your drawing says yes."
"Good answer." He handed me the sheet. His notes were precise. His notes were precise: measurements, outlet locations, window height, existing stud spacing, and no unnecessary comments.
"You ever work construction?"
"Some."
"Before the club?"
"Aye." Irish looked at him.
"You never told me that."
"You never asked." I smiled. Irish didn't.
"You let me spend two hours fixing that shelving." Hawkeye shrugged.
"It looked educational."
I laughed hard enough that my bruised shoulder, finally almost healed, complained faintly. Irish pointed at him. "You're spending too much time with Raze."
"Impossible."
"See? That's exactly what he'd say."
Hawkeye's mouth moved slightly. Then he looked toward me. "You still need the upstairs measurements sent to your partner?" The question caught my attention.
"Yes."
"I added the window depths too."
"Thank you." He nodded once and returned to work. Irish watched him go.
"He's getting funny."
"Terrifying development."
"Aye."
I tucked the measurements beneath my plans and glanced toward the clock.
Isla was calling in twenty minutes. That thought still carried a complicated mixture of relief and caution I hadn't entirely learned to manage.
Her recovery had not moved in a straight line because recovery apparently had no respect for anyone's preferred schedule.
Some days she worked for three hours and sounded so much like herself that I could almost forget Croft House had happened.
Other days she slept until afternoon, ignored every work message, or called me from England because she'd heard a door close in the corridor outside her room and needed someone to talk about anything except why the sound had frightened her.
She had returned to Edinburgh eleven days earlier, though not permanently in the sense I once would have demanded.
She spent nights at her own flat when she wanted and at a friend's when she didn't. She worked remotely.
She had not visited an active building site.
Nobody was asking her to. That included me.
I had become considerably better at saying What do you want? before What do you need? It was harder than it sounded. Sunshine found me in the unfinished counseling room shortly before the call and closed the door behind her. "Can I show you something?"
"Of course." She handed me a folder. Inside were three referral summaries for women transitioning from temporary accommodation into longer-term housing. I read the first. Then the second. By the third, the reason for the folder became obvious.
"These aren't Harbor House placements."
"No."
"They need apartments."
"Eventually."
I looked toward her. Sunshine leaned against the wall. "Safe apartments. They needed apartments rather than shelters or compounds, somewhere no one automatically knew why they were there." My mind started moving before she finished.
"Independent units."
"With support available."
"Scattered sites?"
"Maybe."
"Converted small buildings rather than one large residence."
"Exactly." I looked down at the summaries again. One woman had two children. Another was seventy-two. The third had spent almost eleven years moving between Order households and had never signed a lease in her own name. Something inside me tightened.
"What are you thinking?" Sunshine asked.
"Buildings with four to six units. Existing residential scale. No institutional entry desk. Residents control their own front doors. Shared support office somewhere nearby rather than inside every property." Sunshine smiled.
"You've had this idea before."
"Not exactly."
I looked toward the hallway. Harbor House mattered because some people needed a place between crisis and independence.
But not everyone needed the same bridge.
The Order had built an entire system around deciding what people required without asking them.
If we were serious about building the opposite, then the architecture had to allow different answers.
"Could the club acquire properties?" Sunshine's eyebrows rose.
"Probably."
"Legitimately."
"Obviously."
"I know how you people solve things." She laughed.
"I'll talk to Toxic."
"No." Her expression shifted.
"Why?"
"Not yet." I closed the folder.
"First we ask the people who would actually live there what they want." Sunshine smiled slowly.
"That's why I brought it to you."