Chapter Six
Amelia
It’s like I wake with my hand on the lock.
For a few seconds, I don’t know where I am.
That is the worst part of running. Not the running itself.
Not the packing while your hands shake, not the driving before the tire gives out, not the way fear makes every headlight look familiar.
The worst part is waking up after you finally stop and realizing your body hasn’t believed in safe long enough to recognize it.
The room is dim.
A lamp glows low on the nightstand. The walls are brick painted a soft cream, but no paint in the world can hide the bones of this place.
The old jailhouse still feels like an old jailhouse if a person has enough fear in her to hear every creak as a warning.
The ceiling slopes a little near one corner.
The floorboards are old. Rain taps somewhere outside, softer now than last night, and under it, from far below, comes the low murmur of men.
Not loud.
Not rowdy.
But there.
Always there.
My fingers are curled around the little metal lock on the door, like I climbed out of bed in my sleep to check it. Maybe I did. Maybe I checked it five times and don’t remember. The lock’s still turned. The door’s still closed.
No one came in.
No one took August.
No one dragged me back outside and handed me to Jeremy while explaining it was best for everyone.
I breathe out, slow and shaky.
Back in bed, beside me, August sleeps sideways across the bed, one knee shoved into my thigh, his mouth open, his dinosaur tucked under his chin.
Sophie’s borrowed pajama shirt twists around his little body because at some point in the night, he crawled half on top of me and stole the blanket.
His hair sticks up in the back. There is dried salt on his cheeks from crying.
My poor baby.
I touch his forehead with the tips of my fingers.
He is warm, but not feverish. Just sleep-warm. Kid-warm. Alive and here and mine.
The ache in my chest gets so big I have to close my eyes.
I got him out.
Not all the way.
Not legally. Not cleanly. Not safely enough.
But I got him out of that house.
That has to count for something.
A floorboard creaks in the hall.
My whole body locks.
August stirs.
I hold my breath and listen.
Another creak. Then a low mutter, rough and male.
“Damn chair.”
Derby.
The fear changes shape.
It doesn’t vanish. I’m not that foolish.
But it stops clawing at the inside of my ribs and settles lower, confused by itself.
Derby is outside the door because he said he would be.
Because last night, after Jeremy showed up at the gate and smiled like a concerned husband while threatening me with every polite word he knew, Derby sat in that hallway.
All night, I think.
I don’t know how to feel about that.
Grateful, yes.
Suspicious, also yes.
Embarrassed in a way that makes me want to peel off my own skin, definitely yes.
Because I have no business wanting to open the door and look at him.
Not wanting like that.
Not in some soft, stupid, romantic way. I don’t have room for that. I have a child asleep beside me, a husband hunting me, twenty-seven dollars in cash, a questionable blood tie to a dead outlaw wrestler, and no idea what happens when the sun gets all the way up.
But there is a difference between wanting a man and wanting proof that someone stayed.
I want proof.
That is all.
I ease myself out from under August’s leg and stand. Sophie’s pajama pants hit me above the ankle, and the shirt hangs loose around my shoulders. I feel strange in someone else’s clothes. Too visible. Too cared for. I’m used to fabric being used against me.
That shirt is too tight.
That dress is too much.
Those jeans make you look desperate.
You wearing that for somebody?
Sophie’s clothes don’t accuse me of anything. They are soft. Clean. A little expensive, even as pajamas. They smell faintly like lavender detergent and smoke from downstairs, which should not be comforting but somehow is.
Still, I smooth the shirt before I move.
Ridiculous.
Automatic.
There is nothing glamorous about standing barefoot in borrowed pajamas in an old jailhouse with swollen eyes and fear under my skin. But I smooth the shirt anyway, because dignity is sometimes only a habit you refuse to surrender.
I cross the room carefully and crack the door.
Derby is asleep in a chair dragged against the opposite wall.
Or mostly asleep.
His bare head tips back, beard messy, one boot planted on the floor and the other stretched out in front of him. His leather cut is still on. His thick tattooed arms are folded across his chest, but one hand rests close to the knife at his belt. Even asleep, he looks like violence taking a break.
He also looks uncomfortable as hell.
The chair is too small for him. His shoulders are too broad. His long legs are angled awkwardly. There is a folded hoodie bunched behind his neck like he tried to make a pillow out of it.
He stayed.
The thought lands too hard.
I grip the edge of the door.
He stayed outside a locked door all night and did not make me owe him for it.
That isn’t a thing I know how to hold.
His eyes open.
Fast.
Not sleepy. Not soft. One second, he is out. The next, he is looking straight at me like his body heard the hinge before his brain did.
I jump.
He sits up. “Easy.”
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t.”
“You were asleep.”
“Resting my eyes.”
“In a chair?”
“I’m talented.”
His voice is rougher in the morning. Deeper. Scraped with sleep and irritation. It shouldn’t make my stomach dip.
It does anyway.
I look down the hall because looking at him feels like standing too close to a fire with wet clothes on. “Did anything happen?”
He studies me for a second before answering. “No.”
“Jeremy didn’t come back?”
“No.”
“The police?”
“No.”
“August slept.”
“That ain’t a question.”
“I know.” My fingers tighten on the door. “I’m surprised.”
His face shifts, not enough to call it soft. Derby doesn’t seem built for soft. But something less sharp moves through his eyes.
“He woke once,” Derby says.
My heart stops. “What?”
“Maybe around four. Opened the door before I could decide whether I was hallucinating a tiny person in women’s pajamas.”
“Oh God.”
“He asked if I was still guarding.”
I press a hand to my mouth. “What did you say?”
“I said yes.”
“And?”
“He said okay and shut the door.”
I close my eyes.
That should not hurt.
It does.
My son shouldn’t be checking whether a strange biker is still guarding his door at four in the morning. He should be asleep in a room with dinosaur sheets and a night-light, not curled in a clubhouse because his mother ran out of options.
“I didn’t hear him,” I whisper.
“You were asleep.”
“I should’ve heard him.”
“You were exhausted.”
“I’m his mother.”
Derby leans forward, elbows on his knees. The movement makes leather creak. “You got him here.”
The words are simple.
Too simple.
They split something open.
I stare at him.
He looks uncomfortable again, like sincerity is a shirt that doesn’t fit. “That counts, Amelia.”
I hate him a little for saying it.
I hate him more because I need to hear it.
From behind me, August makes a small waking sound. I turn before I think, and Derby’s chair scrapes as he stands too. Not coming in. Just ready.
That distinction hits me.
I glance back at him. “He’s okay.”
Derby nods and stays in the hall.
I go to the bed. August is rubbing his eyes with both fists, hair wild, dinosaur tucked under one arm.
“Mama?”
“I’m here.”
“Is the bad guy gone?”
I swallow. “For now.”
He processes that with the grim seriousness of a child who understands too much. Then he looks toward the door. “Is Derby there?”
“Yes.”
Derby’s voice comes from the hall. “Unfortunately.”
August sits up. “You said you’d get a new dinosaur.”
I sigh. “August.”
“What? He said.”
“I said maybe,” Derby calls.
August looks at me. “Maybe means probably no unless grown-ups feel bad.”
Derby appears in the doorway, leaning one shoulder against the frame but not crossing into the room. “Kid, you’re alarmingly educated in adult lies.”
“Jeremy says maybe when he means stop asking.”
The room goes cold.
Derby’s face goes still.
I feel my own expression break before I can stop it.
August doesn’t know what he has said. Not really. He only knows the rule of maybe. He doesn’t know he’s just handed the room another piece of our life.
Derby’s voice is quieter when he speaks again. “I ain’t Jeremy.”
August looks at him.
Simple. Curious. Waiting.
Derby scratches his jaw. “If I mean no, I’ll say no. If I say maybe, I mean maybe. If I say yes, I mean yes. And if I say I’m getting a dinosaur, I’m apparently getting a damn dinosaur.”
August smiles.
Wide.
Sleepy.
Beautiful.
For one second, he looks five instead of old from fear.
My throat closes.
“Language,” I say because I need something normal to say before I cry.
Derby glances at me. “I said apparently.”
“You said damn.”
“Could’ve said worse.”
“He’s five.”
“He lives in Hell now. Might as well build vocabulary.”
“Derby.”
His mouth twitches. “Fine. I’ll try.”
August throws the blanket off and crawls toward the edge of the bed. “Do you have breakfast?”
“I personally don’t carry breakfast in my pockets.”
“Why?”
Derby opens his mouth.
Closes it.
Looks at me.
I lift one brow.
He looks back at August. “Because eggs are slippery.”
August laughs.
A real laugh.
Not a polite laugh. Not a nervous one. A little-boy laugh, bright and surprised, like something escaped him before he could decide whether laughter was safe.
Derby freezes.
I do too.
That laugh fills the room like morning light.
I want to bottle it. Hide it. Protect it from every man who ever taught my child to listen for anger before joy.
Footsteps sound down the hall before I can say anything.