Chapter 7 #2
He says it without thinking. He says my club like it is already true, like the patch is already on his cut, and I have to look down at my clipboard for a second, because if I do not look down at my clipboard I am going to do a thing that will become the third entry in my own Brennan Incidents file, which is kissed him in front of the contract AV engineer at the Ember Falls Rally, and I am not, in this moment, ready to file that.
I am still standing there when Diesel arrives.
I did not see him approach. He came up from the VIP tent the moment the lights went down, and he has been watching from a distance, with Razor at his shoulder, and he has watched the whole repair, and he is now standing ten feet away with his arms crossed, and he is looking at Callum with an expression I have never seen on his face before.
It is not surprise. It is something more like — recognition.
The way you look at a person you have known for a long time and have, just this second, understood.
Razor says, low, "The kid fixed it."
Diesel says, lower, "The kid's been fixing things since he got here. We just notice the things he breaks."
I hear it. I am supposed to hear it. Diesel is the kind of man who chooses his volume the way I choose my fonts, and what he wants me to hear, I hear.
He turns to me. He nods at me, the smallest nod, and he turns and walks back toward the VIP tent, and Razor follows him, and they leave Callum and me and Rivers standing on the gravel beside a generator that is, against all reasonable expectation, humming.
Callum looks at me.
"Boss."
"Yes."
"I have to get back to the south lot."
"Go."
"You okay?"
"I am — yes. Yes. Go."
He goes. He runs back across the gravel the way he ran in.
He does not look back. He does not need to.
I stand there for a moment with the headset crackling in my ear and a thousand details still demanding my attention, and I let myself watch his back as he runs, and I think — and this, this is the sentence I will remember verbatim, because this is the sentence that lives in my chest from this moment on — this man is not a jinx. He is a miracle with terrible timing.
I turn back to Rivers. I say, "Run a full diagnostic in the next thirty minutes. I want a written report by tonight. And, Rivers."
"Yes."
"Tell the AV company that the patch on this fix was made by a prospect named Callum Brennan, in writing, on the report, with his name spelled correctly."
"You bet, Ms. Abbasi."
"Thank you."
I walk away. I get back into the operations trailer.
I sit at the desk for one minute. Just one.
I let myself sit. I let myself rest both hands on the desk and breathe in for four counts and out for six, the way the meditation app I do not believe in but use anyway has trained me to.
I am not crying. I am not the kind of woman who cries during a working event.
I am, however, very close to crying, and I am very glad nobody is in this trailer with me right now, and I am very grateful for the small gold horseshoe under my collar, which I touch once with my thumb, the way I touch the chain at my wrist when I miss my grandmother, and which I have decided, somewhere between the kitchen counter and the generator pad, is a thing I am not taking off again.
The rally finishes Sunday night.
The rally finishes Sunday night with no further incidents, with attendance numbers higher than any year on record, with vendor sales that I do not yet have final figures on but which I can feel in the energy of the closing tent meeting, with the Stallions and the Vipers exchanging — I am not making this up — a polite, distant, two-finger salute across the parking lot at nine p.m. on Sunday night that may, or may not, be the smallest peace treaty in motorcycle club history.
The Chamber of Commerce hugs me. Ron Whitlock is so emotional that I am worried about his blood pressure.
The mayor stops by to shake my hand. Sienna brings me a sandwich because Sienna has noticed I have not eaten, and Sienna has not, in three years of running the Sunrise Grill, allowed somebody she loves to skip a meal.
Diesel finds me at ten o'clock. He is, by then, slightly drunk — celebratory drunk, controlled — and he stops me at the edge of the operations trailer, and he says, "Ms. Abbasi."
"Diesel."
"That was the best rally we have ever run. I want you to know that."
"Thank you."
"And."
"Yes."
"Church is on Tuesday. The vote is on Tuesday. I think you ought to come to the compound on Tuesday afternoon, around five o'clock."
I look at him. He looks at me. He is not smiling. Diesel does not smile. But there is something in his eyes, very small, very deliberate.
"I'll be there," I say.
"Good." He nods. He turns. He walks away.
I stand at the edge of the trailer in the dark.
The fairground is emptying out. The last of the tents are coming down.
The horseshoe is at my throat. Somewhere across the lot, Callum is breaking down equipment with the other prospects, and laughing, and belonging, and he is — for one more day, technically — still a prospect, and on Tuesday at five o'clock, if I am reading Diesel correctly, he is going to stop being one.
I touch the horseshoe.
I think: this is going to be the best Tuesday of his life.
I think: I am going to be there for it.
I walk back to the trailer. I sit at the desk. I open the master document. I find the unbudgeted tab — the one I started weeks ago and have not, until tonight, had the courage to fill in. I add a single entry.
It reads: him.
I save the file. I close the laptop.
I go to find him.