Chapter 33
I know the second I wake up that I shouldn’t go.
Not because anyone says no. That would almost be easier.
No one forbids it. No one makes a scene. No one tells me I’m not allowed to step foot off the property like I’m a child asking for too much freedom.
If anything, that almost makes it worse.
Because after the fight with Joker and the ugly, aching aftermath of it, everybody has adjusted in this careful, measured way that makes me feel like I’m made of glass they’re trying not to crack any further.
No one is crowding me. No one is hovering so obviously that my body starts reacting before my mind can keep up.
They’re still watching. Still protecting. Still tightening things where they need to. But they’re trying to let me breathe while they do it. And somehow that makes the guilt sit even heavier in my chest.
Because Joker didn’t deserve what I said. He didn’t deserve the way my fear cut across him like a blade I couldn’t call back once I threw it.
He definitely didn’t deserve the way he looked at me after. That hurt, quiet, stripped-bare look has been living under my skin ever since.
And now here I am, lying in bed with Lexi sprawled sideways across the blankets and Bunny jammed under her arm, staring at the ceiling and trying not to think about the fact that I haven’t slept in his room in two nights.
Trying not to think about the fact that he hasn’t pushed.
Hasn’t cornered me. Hasn’t demanded we fix it on his timeline. Hasn’t forced his way back in because his pride was bruised and he wanted reassurance more than I needed space.
He just…stepped back.
And somehow that hurts worse than if he’d gotten angry.
Lexi rolls toward me with a sleepy little hum, warm and heavy and soft in the way only little kids can be before the world fully gets its claws into them.
I smooth her hair back from her face and stare at her for a long second.
She needs shorts. A couple lighter shirts. Maybe sandals that fit better because she’s somehow already halfway grown out of the pair Mac dug out of the women’s room for her last week.
Normal things. Tiny things. Ordinary kid things.
And after the last forty-eight hours of fear and guilt and tension hanging over everything like smoke, the idea of doing something as stupidly simple as buying my daughter summer clothes feels like oxygen.
That’s probably why I say yes when Mac offers. Probably why I ignore the instinctive unease that flickers low in my stomach when she mentions running to the little shopping center twenty minutes outside town where the kids’ consignment shop is.
Probably why I don’t listen closely enough to the voice in my head reminding me that normal is exactly what danger counts on.
“It’ll be quick,” Mac says, leaning against the kitchen counter while I pour Lexi juice and she drinks coffee like it’s medically necessary. “In and out. We’ve got two prospects riding with us, and Logan already cleared it with your grumpy boyfriend.”
My hand stills on the juice carton.
Then I look at her. “My what?”
Mac’s mouth twitches. “You heard me.”
I should correct her.
Should point out that Joker and I are in a weird, painful, unresolved place where I’m not entirely sure if I’m sleeping in his bed again tonight or next week or ever if I’ve managed to ruin this badly enough.
Instead, my chest just squeezes in that awful, traitorous way it always does when anyone says anything that sounds even remotely like mine and his in the same sentence.
“He’s not grumpy,” I mutter.
Mac laughs straight into her mug. “Oh, honey.”
That’s all she says. That somehow says way too much.
I don’t ask what he said when Logan cleared it. I don’t ask if he argued. I don’t ask if he’s still mad. I don’t ask if he sounded hurt.
I definitely don’t ask if he even noticed I barely looked at him this morning when he came into the kitchen and found Lexi already halfway into my lap with cereal milk on her chin and one sock missing.
I don’t ask because I’m not sure I could survive the answers.
So instead, an hour later, I’m buckling Lexi into the backseat of Mac’s SUV with Bunny under one arm and a snack cup in her hand while two prospects pull in behind us on their bikes.
One I know by name, Tanner, maybe twenty-two and trying too hard to look like he isn’t intimidated by literally everything. The other is older, broader, quieter, with a road face that says he’s already accepted this outing is beneath him but he’s not stupid enough to argue with orders.
Mac catches me glancing at them and shrugs. “Shadow picked them,” she says. “So if anything breathes wrong in our direction, they’ll at least be useful before they die.”
That should probably not make me laugh.
It does. Not because it’s funny.
Because the sound catches me off guard and feels so startlingly normal that for half a second I can almost pretend I’m just a woman running errands with another woman while our lives aren’t hanging together with duct tape and violence.
Lexi kicks her feet against the car seat and announces, “I want pink shorts.”
Mac glances over her shoulder. “You can’t wear pink shorts every day, bug.”
“Yes, I can.”
“You make a strong case.”
I smile despite myself as I climb into the passenger seat. The ride is uneventful. Almost painfully so. Which, of course, is how these things always go right before they become catastrophic.
The prospects stay close. Mac takes the less obvious route in and loops once around the lot before parking. The shopping center itself is small enough not to feel overwhelming but busy enough to make me instantly aware of every body moving around us anyway.
That old instinct wakes up the second I step out of the SUV.
I can feel it. That low-level, skin-tight alertness. Not enough to stop me. Enough to make me count exits without meaning to.
Mac clocks it immediately. She doesn’t say anything. Just nudges my shoulder lightly once before we head inside.
That small kindness almost undoes me.
The first fifteen minutes are…fine.
Normal, even.
Lexi insists on touching every rack she can reach and holds up increasingly absurd outfits with the kind of absolute conviction only toddlers can muster.
Mac helps me dig through summer clothes while making dry commentary about tiny denim shorts being “a hate crime against children.”
I actually laugh again. Twice. Maybe more. Long enough that my shoulders drop an inch. Long enough that I stop scanning every reflective surface and security mirror and half-visible movement near the door.
Long enough to make a mistake.
That’s all it takes.
One stupid, tiny, human moment.
Lexi is beside me. Then she’s not.
I don’t even realize it immediately. Not at first.
Because I’m holding two little tank tops in one hand and trying to decide if the yellow one will wash her out when Mac says, “Did you want these sandals too?”
And I turn to answer. Then turn back. And the space beside my leg is empty.
The world doesn’t stop. That would almost be kinder. It just narrows all at once into one violent, blinding point of panic.
“Lexi?” My voice comes out too sharp. Too fast.
Mac’s head snaps up instantly.
I turn once. Then again. Like she might just appear if I move fast enough.
She doesn’t.
The little aisle between girls’ tops and toddler pajamas is suddenly too empty, too open, too full of strangers moving around me like none of them understand that my whole fucking life just disappeared between one breath and the next.
“Lexi!” That one’s louder.
Heads turn.
Mac’s expression changes instantly.
No hesitation. No confusion. No wasted motion.
She drops the sandals and moves. “I’ll take the front,” she says sharply. “You take the back and do not leave this store.”
My body is already moving before she finishes. Panic burns hot and white straight through my bloodstream, every cell in me screaming the same horrible thing over and over again.
He found us.
No.
Not her.
Not my baby.
Please God, not my baby.
I shove past a rack hard enough to make hangers rattle and nearly collide with an older woman holding a shopping basket.
“Little girl,” I snap, breathless and wild. “Dark hair, pink shoes, bunny, have you seen her?”
She startles and points vaguely toward the back.
“I think she—”
I’m already moving.
The stockroom hallway. The bathroom doors. The little toy bin near the clearance rack.
Nothing.
No Lexi.
My breathing turns ragged. My vision tunnels. Everything in me is coming apart so fast I can barely feel my own hands.
“Lexi!” I scream this time, full panic ripping the sound straight out of me.
And then…a tiny voice. “Mama?”
The sound hits so hard my knees almost give out on the spot. I spin so fast it hurts.
She’s standing near the little reading corner by the back wall with Bunny in one hand and a stuffed unicorn in the other, looking confused and a little alarmed by the sheer volume of my reaction.
She wasn’t taken. She just wandered.
I’m across the room in two seconds flat. I drop to my knees hard enough to feel it and grab her so fast I almost knock the breath out of her.
“Don’t do that,” I gasp, voice breaking around the words. “Don’t ever…Lexi, baby, don’t ever do that to me.”
She stiffens in my arms for half a second, startled. Then she wraps her little arms around my neck. “I found a horsey,” she says, small and uncertain.
And that’s it.
That’s what cracks the first piece of me. Not because she did anything wrong. Because she’s little. Because she’s innocent. Because she should be allowed to wander six feet away from me in a stupid children’s store without my whole body reacting like I’m one blink away from losing her forever.
I pull back enough to cup her face with both hands and force my breathing down into something that won’t scare her more.
“You stay where Mommy can see you, okay?” I say, voice shaking so badly I’m not sure how understandable I am. “Always. You don’t walk away without telling me. Ever.”
Her eyes get big. “Okay.”