Chapter Sixteen #2
“Something like that.”
“Run by who?”
A smile moves through her voice.
“Queens of Anarchy MC.”
I stare at the wall.
“Queens,” I repeat.
Lottie watches me like she has been waiting for that word to land.
Hot Mama says, “Men had their shot. Some did fine. Most got distracted by pecker politics. We patched the women who stayed and made better rules.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to yet. All you need to know is this. Your husband can’t reach you here. Men don’t walk through our gates unless they’re invited, and we don’t invite ugly. Lawmen who look the wrong way learn we can look wrong right back.”
My heart pounds.
“No Jeremy?”
“No Jeremy.”
“No Pearly Gates?”
“Not unless they want their hymnals shoved sideways.”
A laugh breaks out of me.
It sounds half like a sob.
Hot Mama’s voice softens by one hard inch. “Bring your boy. He won’t be the only kid. We got bunkhouses, food, schoolwork, dirt, dogs, women who know how to hold a crying child without asking stupid questions, and enough guns to make the Lord reconsider judgment day.”
I can’t answer.
I look toward the hallway where August sleeps.
My baby.
My brave, scared, funny little boy who asked if Derby was fake and if Jeremy knew where he was. My son who should be worrying about cereal and dinosaur court, not church bulletins and porch packages.
“He’ll be safe?” I ask.
“With us? Yes.”
I press my lips together.
Safe.
The word is dangerous.
“Why would you help me?”
Silence again.
Then Hot Mama says, “Because Caroline should’ve come back before fear ate the map. Because Mike Welles left blood in more places than Kentucky. Because Lottie called. Because women like us don’t leave girls standing in burning houses and ask if they paid rent.”
Tears slide down my face.
I don’t wipe them.
“Derby is in jail,” I say.
“I heard.”
“Because of Jeremy.”
“No, baby. Derby’s in jail because Derby has fists and a temper. Jeremy just laid the bait.”
That sounds too much like the truth.
“I can’t leave him.”
“You can.”
“I don’t want to.”
“That’s different.”
I close my eyes.
Hot Mama’s voice lowers. “Want don’t always mean stay. Sometimes it means you run far enough he doesn’t have to turn himself into a weapon for you.”
That cuts so deep I can’t breathe.
Because that is the thought I have been choking on since the phone call came. Derby in cuffs. Derby’s bloody hands. Derby wanting Jeremy dead. Derby looking at August like the boy has become a promise he doesn’t know how to keep.
If I stay, Derby will keep going after Jeremy.
If Jeremy keeps coming, Derby will keep answering.
And one of them will end up dead.
Maybe both.
Or worse, August will keep watching men prove love by who bleeds first.
“Amelia,” Hot Mama says.
I open my eyes.
“Your mama ran without a road. I’m offering you one.”
My hand shakes around the phone.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You say yes or you say no. Both are yours.”
Mine.
The word hits almost as hard as Derby putting my truck keys in my hand.
Choice.
Again.
Why does freedom always show up looking like heartbreak?
I can’t say yes.
I can’t say no.
My throat won’t work.
Lottie steps forward and takes the phone gently from my hand.
“She heard you,” Lottie says into it. “Give me till morning.”
Morning.
My head snaps up.
Lottie listens for a second, then smiles faintly. “Yeah, yeah. Hot Mama don’t like ugly. I know.”
She ends the call.
The kitchen feels too small.
Too normal.
A burnt-pancake pan still sits near the stove. Coffee filters are in the cabinet. August’s cereal bowl is in the sink. Derby’s keys aren’t on the counter with the little dinosaur keychain I bought him hanging from the ring like a tiny piece of me he kept.
“Morning?” I whisper.
Lottie sets the phone down. “We leave at first light.”
My body goes cold. “We?”
“You, August, and me.”
“To Oregon.”
“To Lonerock.”
“Derby will get out.”
“Yep.”
“He’ll come back here.”
“Yep.”
“And I’ll be gone.”
“Yep.”
The bluntness makes me stand so fast the chair scrapes back. “No.”
Lottie doesn’t move. “Okay.”
“I can’t just leave.”
“Then don’t.”
“I can’t stay either.”
“There it is.”
I press my palms to my eyes. “This is insane.”
“No. Insane is waiting for Jeremy to file papers while Derby stacks assault charges like firewood and Legend tries to protect a sister he just found while his own almost-wife is bleeding at Paradise Falls because every family in this state has rot under the porch.”
I drop my hands.
Lottie keeps going.
“You think the men are going to stop? Derby gets out, he goes right back to watching Jeremy. Legend gives orders. Whiskey digs. Oaks breaks something. Royal starts talking like a funeral program and somebody disappears. They’ll call it handling things.
And maybe they will handle it. Maybe they’ll save you.
But it’ll be their hands on the wheel again. ”
Her eyes lock with mine.
“You done letting men decide where you stand, honey?”
My throat tightens.
“I don’t know where to stand.”
“Then get somewhere nobody is pulling you.”
“That’s running.”
“That’s surviving with better scenery.”
I almost laugh.
Almost.
“Derby will think I left him.”
“Maybe.”
“That will hurt him.”
“Probably.”
“Lottie.”
“What? You want me to lie and say he’ll understand right away? Derby is a raw nerve wearing boots. He’s going to lose his mind.”
I wrap my arms around myself. “Then how can I do that to him?”
“How can you stay and watch him kill a man for you?”
My stomach twists.
“Derby wouldn’t…”
“Yes, he would.”
The room goes silent.
There is no point pretending otherwise.
We both know it.
I think of Jeremy’s straight smile. His manicured hands. His polished voice. His ability to make every room believe I was the unstable one. I imagine Derby’s bloodied knuckles, Twila’s cuffs around his wrists. And the fact that his mom died when he stopped sleeping outside the door.
If Derby kills Jeremy, I lose him.
If Jeremy keeps living, he keeps reaching for August. If I stay, August keeps learning that the safest man is the one willing to hit hardest. If I leave, maybe I save them both.
That is the lie I need badly enough to use.
Lottie steps closer and turns her head, showing me the place behind her ear again even though her hair covers it now.
“The crown,” I say.
She nods.
“What does it mean?”
“It means a woman straightened me when I was too busy crawling through a man’s wreckage like I was the one who made it.”
The words sink in.
Slow.
Heavy.
She reaches out and touches my cheek with two fingers. Not motherly exactly. Not soft enough for that. More like blessing and warning at the same time.
“We can straighten your crown.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Every woman does. Some just got taught to carry it in their hands instead of on their head.”
I look toward the hallway again.
August is sleeping in a biker’s bed in a house that smells like cereal and rain and Derby.
He has started trusting Derby. Derby has started trusting himself with August. I have started wanting a future that looks like burnt pancakes and motorcycle rides and a man who gives me keys instead of taking them.
And that is exactly why I have to leave.
Before Derby becomes the man Jeremy uses against me.
Before August watches another man he cares about get dragged away in cuffs.
Before my wanting turns into one more reason someone bleeds.
“This is a secret,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
“After everything that happened with Sophie and Legend.”
“Yes.”
“That makes me a hypocrite.”
“No,” Lottie says. “It makes you a woman with no easy choices.”
I laugh, and this time it’s almost a sob. “That’s worse.”
“Most truth is.”
There’s a creak.
I jump so hard I nearly stumble.
But it’s only Janie, peeking in from the hall with worry on her face. “August is still asleep. He asked for you once, then rolled over.”
My heart aches. “Thank you.”
Janie looks between me and Lottie.
She knows something is happening.
Maybe not what.
Maybe enough.
“I’ll make sure his bag is ready,” she says quietly.
My eyes burn.
So this is already bigger than me.
Lottie nods once.
Janie disappears back down the hall.
I look at Lottie. “Who else knows?”
“Janie knows enough to pack socks and keep her mouth shut.”
“Legend?”
“No.”
“Derby?”
“No.”
“Whiskey?”
“No.”
“Sophie?”
Lottie’s mouth tightens. “No. She’s got her own problems.”
I sink into the chair.
My keys are still on the counter.
My truck keys.
“Derby gave me a way out,” I whisper. “And I’m using it to leave him.”
Lottie leans against the counter. “Maybe. Or maybe you’re using it because he meant it.”
I look up.
“He didn’t give you keys so you could only drive where his fear allowed,” she says. “He gave them because staying had to mean something. Leaving has to mean something too.”
The tears come then.
Quiet.
Steady.
Lottie doesn’t hug me.
I’m grateful.
If she hugs me, I might fall apart and never get back up.
“What happens when he comes for me?” I ask.
“Then you decide if you want him there.”
“What if Hot Mama won’t let him in?”
Lottie smiles for the first time.
It isn’t sweet.
“It’ll be good for Derby to meet a woman who can tell him no with more guns than he’s got.”
Despite everything, a tiny laugh slips out.
Then I look toward the hallway again.
August.
My son.
My reason.
My excuse.
My heart.
“Will he really be safe there?”
Lottie’s face sobers. “Yes.”
“With women I don’t know?”
“With women who know exactly what it costs to run.”
That answers more than I want it to.
The afternoon stretches around us, full of waiting and bad news we don’t have yet. Lottie makes coffee. I don’t drink it. Janie keeps August busy when he wakes, telling him they need to pack because Lottie knows a place with other kids and maybe dogs.
August asks if Derby is coming.
I almost choke on the lie.
“Not yet,” I say.
August frowns. “Is he still in jail?”
“For now.”
“Did he hit Jeremy?”
I close my eyes.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The word shocks me so badly I open my eyes.
August looks at me with fierce little certainty. “Jeremy sent the dinosaur. Derby said surprise evidence gets checked. Jeremy cheated court.”
Lottie turns away fast, shoulders shaking.
I kneel in front of August and take his hands. “Baby, hitting isn’t how we solve things.”
“But Derby did.”
“Yes.”
“Is Derby bad?”
“No.”
“Then hitting Jeremy wasn’t bad.”
God help me.
This is exactly what I feared. My son learning violence as proof of love. My son sorting men into safe and unsafe by who hits whom. My son already building a moral world out of the wreckage adults keep handing him.
“That is why we’re going somewhere for a little while,” I say carefully. “Somewhere quiet. Somewhere safe. So nobody has to hit anybody for us.”
“Will Derby be mad?”
My voice breaks. “Maybe.”
“At me?”
“No.” I grab him gently by the shoulders. “Never at you.”
“At you?”
I don’t answer fast enough.
His face crumples.
I pull him into my arms. “Grown-up feelings are messy. But you are loved. Do you understand me? You are loved.”
He nods into my neck.
I don’t know if he believes me.
I hold him until he squirms.
Then evening comes.
Derby still doesn’t. But the call comes through Lottie first. Twila processed him. Whiskey worked something. Legend is furious, which is apparently useful. Derby is getting out.
My relief is so sharp I nearly double over.
Then dread follows.
Because he is coming home.
And I’m leaving in the morning.
Lottie watches my face. “You can change your mind.”
That is almost crueler than telling me I can’t.
“I know.”
“Good.”
I spend the next hour packing and unpacking the same small bag. Clothes for August. Clothes for me. My mother’s box. The bracelet. The photograph. The documents. Not much else. Lottie says to travel light. Hot Mama can provide the rest.
Hot Mama.
The name still sounds ridiculous.
The promise behind it doesn’t.
Janie sits with August while he watches cartoons in Derby’s bedroom. Lottie makes calls from the porch and lowers her voice whenever I step too close. Wildcat’s name comes up once. So does burner. So does no trackers. So does cash only.
I don’t ask.
I already know enough to understand this isn’t a trip.
It is an extraction.
Wildcat’s name comes up in a way that makes me think he knows how to make a phone disappear, not who is about to use it. That distinction feels important and useless at the same time.
The last light fades outside Derby’s windows.
My bag sits half-zipped beside the bed.
Derby’s house smells like coffee, rain, and him.
The dinosaur courthouse leans in the living room, waiting for a judge who doesn’t know he is about to be carried across the country before sunrise.
Lottie appears in the bedroom doorway. “He’s out.”
My heart stutters. “Derby?”
“Yeah.”
I close my eyes.
Thank God.
Then I open them and look at the bag.
Lottie’s voice softens by one dangerous inch. “Morning comes fast when you’re breaking your own heart.”
I press my hand to my mouth.
For one second, I think I will tell her no. I will stay. I will face Derby. I will face Jeremy. I will trust the men, the locks, the roads, the guns, the club, the love that has already made such a mess of me.
Then August laughs from the bedroom, and the sound is too young for this much fear.
I lower my hand.
“Then I better not sleep,” I whisper.