Chapter 6 #2
Jack finds me at the supply holding tent. Are these men everywhere?
“You’re working the stall,” he says, appearing beside me with the breathlessness of someone who has run here and is pretending they haven’t.
“Is that the only sentence anyone in this town knows?”
“It’s a recurring theme because you keep doing things nobody expected.” He falls into step with me, hands in his pockets, matching my pace effortlessly. “Tristan must be very pleased with himself.”
“Why?”
“Because you asked, he offered, and you said yes, which means you’re staying at least through the weekend, which means—”
“Which means I needed cash and it was available,” I say. “Don’t make it a thing.”
“It’s already a thing. You made it a thing by showing up.” He says this without cheek, just fact. “How are you finding it? The work, I mean.”
“Fine. Good.” I locate the items on the list and start collecting them. “Tristan knows what he’s doing.”
“Tristan was born knowing what he was doing.” Jack takes the heavier container from my arm without asking. I let him because it’s practical, not because I’m charmed by it. “Archer behaving himself?”
“Archer is… Archer.”
“That’s the most diplomatic thing anyone’s ever said about him.” He pauses. “He’s better than he looks.”
“He looks fine.”
“I mean, he seems harsh. He’s not, underneath it all. He’s just…” Jack searches for the word. “He cares a lot. About the pack, about the town. He doesn’t know how to do that quietly.”
I don’t say anything. I’m not sure what to do with that information, so I file it next to all the other information I’m collecting about these men and trying not to do anything with.
“You’re not going to ask anything else about them?” Jack observes.
“No.”
“But you’re curious.”
“I’m always curious. It doesn’t mean I act on it.”
“That sounds lonely,” he says, and there is no performance in it, no play. Just a clean, direct observation delivered without cruelty.
I stop walking.
He stops too, half a step ahead, and turns to look at me. His expression is different than it’s been all morning. The humor is still there but it’s further back, and what’s in the front is something genuine and a little careful.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“I know you’re fine.” He holds my gaze. “That’s not what I said.”
The moment sits there. Longer than it should.
I’m close enough to him that I can see the detail of his eyes, which are lighter than I’d registered, and close enough that his warmth reaches me.
There’s a pull in my chest that is not oxygen deprivation and not adrenaline and not any of the things I’m used to feeling in situations with stakes.
I take the container back from him.
“How is the search for answers going?” I ask.
“I’ve got some leads.”
“Good.”
“I know you want to get out of here as soon as possible.” Is that disappointment in his expression? Why do I care?
“I should get back,” I say.
“Okay.”
“Don’t follow me this time.”
“I’m going the same direction.”
“Jack.”
He raises both hands in surrender. “Back to the game alley. Scout’s honor.”
“Were you really a Scout?”
“Briefly. I was asked to leave.”
“Why am I not surprised?” I shift the container. “Go fix the ring toss.”
He grins—the trouble grin, the one I recognized immediately because I have the same one—and peels off toward game alley without further negotiation, which is the most cooperative he’s been all morning. I watch him go for approximately two seconds before I redirect my feet toward the food stall.
The afternoon is warm, bordering on hot.
The carnival ground is busy with setup energy, all purposeful movement and overlapping noise. The smells are layered and rich, and there is something that happens to me when I step back into the orbit of the stall that I have no tactical language for.
I feel the pack bond the way you feel a change in weather. Not a word. Not a thought. Just a shift in the air that tells you something is different than it was.
I don’t have a pack. I’ve never had a pack. I grew up without one and I told myself, consistently and with great conviction, that I didn’t need one and didn’t want one and the whole concept was a biological legacy that modern people could opt out of if they chose.
I chose to opt out. Omega be damned.
I have chosen.
I am choosing, right now, actively, in real time.
I put my canvas bag on the prep table and start unpacking it.
I do not look at Archer’s hands on the stall frame and I do not think about Tristan’s warmth at close quarters and I do not think about Jack’s expression when he said that sounds lonely.
I also do not think about Ryan in the corner of the café, watching everything, giving nothing, and the weight of his attention like a hand between my shoulder blades.
I think about Amber.
I think about evidence, and timing, and what she would have needed to put in place to make the framing stick, and who might have helped her, and what I’m going to do about it.
I think about the satisfaction of dismantling something piece by piece.
I think about the next move, and the move after that, and how staying in Sweetwater Valley through the weekend gives me time and cover and cash and nothing else.
Nothing else.
It’s temporary. I know what temporary is.
I’ve been temporary my entire adult life.
Temporary apartments, temporary jobs, temporary people who mattered and then stopped mattering because that’s what happens when you don’t put roots down.
I don’t put roots down because I’ve seen what happens to roots, how they trap you, how they make you into something that can’t move when it needs to.
I’m staying through the weekend.
I’m going to work Tristan’s stall and sleep at Doris Harrow’s and not think about four men who smell like things I don’t have words for. And on Monday, I’m going to get in my car and drive toward the next state.
That’s the plan.
Tristan passes behind me to get to the burner setup, close enough that his arm brushes my shoulder, and my whole nervous system registers it like a note struck on a string.
“Good work today,” he says quietly.
I glance at the prep table. “Thanks,” I say, and my voice comes out normal, which is the only victory I’m counting right now.
The afternoon moves around me. The carnival takes shape, stall by stall, string light by string light.
The Ferris wheel groans and rotates in a slow test turn, its empty cars swinging gently.
The smells build—fried things, sugar, river, pack—and I work through the heat of it, my hands busy, my brain occupied, my body doing things I haven’t given it permission to do.
This is temporary. The partial bond will be reversed. I’m here through the weekend and then I’m gone. I repeat this at intervals, the way you repeat something you’re trying to memorize, the way you say a word over and over until it stops sounding like itself.
By the time the afternoon light goes golden and long across the ground and Tristan calls it for the day and hands me my first installment in cash, I have said it so many times it should feel true.
But it doesn’t quite feel true.
I fold the money into my jacket pocket and walk back toward Doris Harrow’s. The carnival lights come on behind me—they must be testing them, all the globe lights and the string lights and the Ferris wheel lit up in colors—and the light catches me like something following me home.
I don’t look back.
I absolutely don’t believe myself anymore.
But I don’t look back.