Chapter Six #2
Derby steps away from the doorway, and Sophie appears carrying a tray with coffee, two biscuits wrapped in a towel, a cup of milk, and a small plate of scrambled eggs.
She looks like she has already been awake for hours.
Her hair is pulled back, her face fresh, her boots quiet against the floor.
Somehow, in an old MC clubhouse at what has to be too early, she still looks like she knows exactly where she is supposed to stand.
“Good morning,” she says.
August perks up. “Breakfast.”
“I was told eggs are slippery, so I put them on a plate.”
He nods seriously. “Good.”
Derby mutters, “Everybody’s a comedian.”
Sophie looks at him. “You look terrible.”
“Good morning to you too, rich girl.”
“You slept in a chair.”
“I’ve slept in worse.”
“That isn’t the argument you think it is.”
He gives her a look.
She gives it right back.
I watch them, fascinated despite myself.
Derby is rough with her, teasing in a way that would have made me tense in Jeremy’s house.
Jeremy never liked women talking back unless he could turn the room against them afterward.
But Sophie doesn’t tense. Derby doesn’t punish her for the jab. No one is keeping score.
It’s banter.
Just banter.
I remember banter.
I used to be good at it, before every word became evidence.
Sophie sets the tray on the dresser and looks at me. Her gaze flicks over my face, my borrowed clothes, the bed, August, the door, Derby’s chair in the hallway. She reads the room like she read it last night.
“Did you sleep at all?” she asks.
“A little.”
“Good.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come downstairs. I should have…”
“No.” Sophie says it gently but firmly enough that I stop. “You should have slept beside your son. That is what you did.”
I nod because arguing feels rude and because she is right.
August climbs out of bed and heads for the food. I catch him before he grabs the plate with both hands.
“Bathroom first.”
“But eggs.”
“Bathroom.”
He groans like I’ve asked him to file taxes.
Sophie smiles. “There’s a toothbrush in the bathroom. I left a kid one, but it has glitter on it because it’s what Lottie found in a drawer downstairs.”
August looks horrified. “Glitter?”
Derby says, “Terrifying.”
“It’s blue glitter,” Sophie says.
August considers that. “Okay.”
I take him across the hall while Derby turns his back without making a production of it.
That small courtesy sits in my chest heavier than it should.
I help August brush his teeth with the blue glitter toothbrush, wash his face, and smooth his hair with water.
He stares at himself in the mirror, dinosaur tucked under one arm.
“Are we staying here?” he asks.
I pause.
I don’t know.
That is the honest answer.
The honest answer is too big for five.
“For now,” I say.
He frowns. “In jail?”
I look around the bathroom, at the old tile and the thick door. “It’s not a jail anymore.”
“It has bars.”
“Some places keep their old parts.”
“Like Blue Rex. His tail got chewed, but he’s still good.”
My eyes sting.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Like that.”
When we come back, Sophie is standing by the window and Derby is gone from the doorway.
Panic moves fast.
“Where did he go?” August asks before I can.
Sophie turns. “Downstairs to get coffee.”
“Oh.”
August tries to sound casual and fails.
Sophie notices. Her expression softens.
We eat in the room because I’m not ready to take August downstairs into a clubhouse full of bikers before he has eggs in his stomach and I have coffee in mine.
Sophie doesn’t push. She sits in the chair, legs crossed, and talks to August about dinosaurs like she has all the time in the world.
He tells her Blue Rex is a carnivore but only eats bad guys, cereal, and sometimes socks.
Sophie receives this information with the respect it apparently deserves.
I drink coffee and try not to cry into it.
It’s good coffee.
Strong. Hot. Sweetened the way I like it, though I don’t remember telling anyone that. Maybe all women on the run take sugar because bitterness is already covered.
A dog appears in the doorway. At first, all I see is a big golden head, one floppy ear, and a red bandana tied around a thick, shaggy neck.
His soft brown eyes move from Sophie to me, then settle on August like he has found the smallest person in the room and knows that makes him the most important.
August freezes with a bite of eggs halfway to his mouth.
The dog doesn’t bark or rush in. He just stands there, tail brushing the hallway wall in slow, lazy sweeps.
Sophie smiles. “Oh. That’s Mayor McCoy.”
I blink. “Mayor?”
“The official mayor of Hell,” she says, like that is a normal sentence. “He belongs to nobody and everybody. Mostly he belongs to whoever has bacon.”
August lowers his fork. “He’s a mayor.”
“He is,” Sophie says. “A very corrupt one.”
Mayor McCoy gives one soft huff, like he objects to the accusation.
August leans closer to me. “Dogs bite.”
My arm goes around him before I think about it.
Sophie’s face softens, but she doesn’t make a big deal of it. “Some do. Mayor McCoy mostly begs, sheds, and attends community events he ain’t invited to.”
The dog sits down in the doorway, red bandana crooked, belly round enough to prove the bacon theory.
“He ain’t mean,” Derby says from the hall, coffee in one hand, his voice low and careful. “Just nosy.”
August looks from Derby to the dog. “Why is he mayor?”
Derby steps around Mayor McCoy and comes inside, giving the dog and August both space. “Because folks in Hell make questionable decisions.”
Sophie lifts her cup. “Democracy is complicated.”
Mayor McCoy’s tail thumps once.
August watches him for a long second. He doesn’t reach for him. He doesn’t smile yet.
But he picks his fork back up.
The dog flops stays in the doorway, patient as a saint and shameless as a politician.
When August is distracted with his eggs, Sophie looks at me.
There it is.
The shift.
Not unkind.
But business.
“We need to talk about today.”
She shoos Derby away.
“I’ll go enjoy my coffee.”
Sophie waits until he’s out of earshot.
My stomach tightens. “Jeremy?”
“Yes. And August.”
My hand moves to my son’s back. “What about him?”
Sophie’s face softens, but her eyes stay direct. “This clubhouse is no place for a five-year-old.”
The words hit like a slap because I already know they’re true.
Still, my pride flares.
“I didn’t have anywhere else to take him.”
“I know.”
“I would never have brought him here if I had another choice.”
“I know that too.”
My throat tightens. “Then why say it like that?”
“Because if I soften it, the men will pretend we can make this building child-friendly by hiding the guns higher and telling everyone not to cuss before breakfast.”
From the hall, Derby’s voice drifts in. “That ain’t realistic.”
I startle.
Sophie rolls her eyes. “You said you were off enjoying coffee.”
“I did.”
“Then why are you in the hall?”
“Because I came back.”
“Were you listening?”
“No.”
“You answered too quickly.”
Derby steps into view with a coffee mug in one hand and a face that says he has no intention of apologizing for existing near a conversation. “I heard enough to agree with the part where pretending this place is fine for the kid is stupid.”
August looks up from his plate. “I like jail.”
I close my eyes. “Don’t say that at school.”
“I don’t go to school here.”
Derby mutters, “Kid’s got us there.”
Sophie folds her hands in her lap. “Last night was emergency shelter. Today needs a better plan. August needs quiet. Space. A place where he isn’t sleeping above a bar full of outlaws, weapons, and whatever Royal considers normal conversation.”
“That could be anything,” Derby says.
“Exactly.”
I set my coffee down because my hands are shaking. “I can find a motel.”
“No,” Sophie and Derby say at the same time.
The room goes quiet.
They look at each other.
Sophie lifts one brow.
Derby looks annoyed. “What? A motel’s a terrible idea.”
I look between them. “I didn’t ask you to decide.”
“You’re right,” Sophie says. “You didn’t. But if Jeremy is already trying to build a story that you’re unstable, hiding you in a motel where he can corner you or photograph you looking desperate helps him.”
“I am desperate.”
“That doesn’t mean he gets to use it.”
Derby leans against the doorway. “Also motels got paper-thin walls, nosy managers, and locks a teenager with a gas station knife could beat.”
I stare at him.
He shrugs. “Hypothetically.”
“Of course.”
Sophie takes a breath. “You and August need somewhere controlled. Somewhere away from the clubhouse but still protected. Somewhere that makes the fake boyfriend story believable if Jeremy keeps watching.”
My stomach drops before she says it.
Derby stiffens too.
I see it.
“No,” he says.
Sophie turns her head slowly. “I haven’t said where.”
“You got your Sophie face on.”
“My face is lovely.”
“Your face is plotting.”
“Also true.”
“No.”
“Derby.”
“No.”
I look between them again, pulse quickening. “What is happening?”
Sophie’s eyes stay on Derby. “Your house.”
“No.”
“My house?” I ask stupidly.
Derby looks at me. “My house.”
“Oh.” Heat rushes up my neck. “No.”
“See?” Derby points at me. “She said no.”
Sophie ignores him and looks at me. “He has a house ten minutes from here. It’s outside town, off a side road, easy to guard, hard to approach without being seen. Two bedrooms.”
“One bedroom and a room full of parts,” Derby snaps.
“Then move the parts.”
“They’re organized.”
“They are in piles.”
“They are system piles.”
I can’t breathe right.
Derby’s house.
Not the clubhouse. Not a motel. Not some neutral space.
His house. The fake boyfriend’s house. The man who sat in the hall all night.
The man who called my underwear attempted murder and told my son he would get a dinosaur.
The man who said no touching unless I say and then looked away like the words cost him.
I stand. “I can’t stay at his house.”