Chapter Twenty-Four #2
Nobody moves for a second.
Then he gets out.
Derby opens my door but steps back, letting me climb down on my own. That small bit of space matters more than it should.
Legend walks to the porch and waits.
I follow slowly.
“This yours?” I ask.
“It belongs to the club,” he says.
Then he turns and holds out the keys.
“Now it’s yours.”
I stare at him.
“What?”
“Yours to use. Yours to lock. Yours to leave. Yours to tell us to stay out of.”
Derby is very still behind me.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
Legend’s mouth tightens. “I’ve been told I handle family like territory.”
I glance at Derby.
He looks away, which means he agrees and probably said it or thought it loudly enough for Legend to hear.
Legend keeps going. “I don’t know how to be a brother to a woman who just walked into my life carrying Mike’s blood.”
I let out a shaky laugh.
“Yeah.” His eyes soften by one painful inch. “But I know how not to be Mike.”
The words hit both of us.
Me because Mike left.
Legend because Mike came back and stayed wrong. Left damage anyway.
“This ain’t a cage,” Legend says. “Yours fair and square. Or you leave. Or you move closer to town. Or you decide Kentucky can go to hell and take the long road back to Oregon. Your choice.”
My eyes burn.
“Why?”
He looks uncomfortable.
Good.
Men should have to squirm when being decent.
“Because my sister deserves it.”
My breath catches.
My sister.
He says it like a fact now.
I look at the keys in his hand.
Then at Derby.
His face is rough with emotion he refuses to name.
This hurts him.
I see it.
Moving out of his house hurts him.
It hurts me too.
Derby’s house had become cereal boxes and burned pancakes and cracked bedroom doors. It had become August sleeping safe and Derby pretending not to care that the dinosaur courthouse had taken over his living room. It had become the place I learned wanting did not have to cost me safety.
But I can’t go from Jeremy’s house to Derby’s bed to a life built only under another man’s roof, even if that man asks before he touches and gives keys instead of taking them.
I need a door that is mine. That locks. I take the keys from Legend. They are heavier than they should be.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
Legend nods once, like if I say more he might have to feel something in public and would rather be shot.
Derby clears his throat. “I checked the locks.”
I look at him.
“Of course you did.”
“Back door sticks a little. I’ll fix it.”
“Derby.”
“What?”
I lift the keys slightly. “My door.”
His jaw tightens.
Then he nods.
“Your door,” he says.
The words cost him. That is why they matter.
Legend steps past us and heads toward the truck. “I’ll give you two a minute.”
Derby watches him go. Then we stand on the little porch together, looking at the trailer door.
Neither of us speaks.
Finally, I say, “This hurts you.”
Derby’s laugh is quiet and rough. “Yeah.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
His eyes cut to mine.
I hold his gaze, because he deserves that after the note I left.
“I should’ve told you before I went to Oregon.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry I hurt you.”
He swallows.
His voice comes lower. “I’m sorry you thought you had to save me.”
The apology moves through me like a hand over a bruise.
“I need this,” I say. “Not because I don’t want your house. I did want it. That scared me too.”
His mouth curves faintly. “My house scared you?”
“You were in it.”
“Fair.”
“I need to know I can stand somewhere that is mine and still choose you.”
His eyes go dark. He steps closer but stops before touching.
“You choosing me?”
“I’m trying to.”
He looks down at the keys in my hand, then back at me. “Try harder.”
A laugh bursts out of me, half sob.
“Romantic.”
“I rode to Oregon. I’m low on poetry.”
I smile, and for one second, things are almost simple.
Then the crown behind my ear throbs.
Lottie’s words come back.
Women who get roads opened for them should remember who moved the trees.
My smile fades.
Derby sees it. “What did Lottie say?”
I look toward the road where the old jail clubhouse sits somewhere beyond trees and curves.
“A lot.”
“About Jeremy?”
“Yes.”
“Did she confess?”
“Not in words that would hold up anywhere.” I don’t know if that’s exactly true.
His face hardens.
I touch his arm.
Derby’s eyes close briefly.
“She threaten you?”
I think about it.
Then answer honestly.
“I think she reminded me.”
“Of what?”
“That freedom here has shadows.”
Derby’s jaw tightens. “Then we keep lights on.”
It isn’t that simple.
It can’t be.
But the way he says we makes my chest ache.
The front door of the trailer waits.
I unlock it myself.
That matters.
The inside smells like fresh paint, lemon cleaner, and closed windows. Small living room. Tiny kitchen. Two bedrooms, one large enough for me, one perfect for August. A bathroom with baby blue tile. Bare floors. Empty walls.
Empty.
Mine.
I walk through slowly, touching counters, doorframes, windowsills. Derby follows but doesn’t crowd. When we reach August’s room, there is already a little bed frame leaning against the wall and a box of new dinosaur sheets on top of it.
I look at Derby.
He lifts one shoulder. “Sophie sent those.”
“Sophie?”
“Yeah.”
My throat tightens.
Even hurt, even away from Legend, Sophie thought about my son.
I will have to thank her.
We spend the afternoon moving what little I have.
Not everything from Derby’s house. Not yet.
Just enough. Clothes. August’s backpack.
The dinosaur sheets. The groceries that belonged to us.
Blue Rex and Princess Chomp arrive in a box carried solemnly by August when Legend brings him over later.
August inspects the trailer, asks if Derby will sleep there, then asks if the trailer has monsters.
Derby answers before I can.
“No monsters inside.”
August nods like that settles county law.
Then he picks his room.
He loves it because it’s his.
That helps me breathe.
It hurts too.
Then the whole club shows up, carrying furniture.
By evening, the trailer looks less empty and more like the beginning of something.
A blanket on a couch. A small kitchen table and chairs.
Dishes in the cabinet. August’s dinosaurs lined along the windowsill.
My mother’s box tucked in my bedroom closet. The keys on a hook by the door.
My keys.
Derby leaves before dinner.
Not because he wants to.
Because I ask him to. Because I need the first meal in the trailer to be me and August. Because I need to tuck my son into a bed I control. Because I need to sit in the quiet afterward and not fill it with a man just because wanting him is easier than feeling everything else.
Derby takes it badly. Meaning he nods, grunts, and looks like someone asked him to leave a limb on the porch.
But he goes.
August and I eat grilled cheese that I don’t burn and tomato soup. He tells me his room needs a court. I tell him every room he enters becomes a court eventually. He accepts that as praise.
At bedtime, he asks again if Derby is coming back.
“Yes,” I say.
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Why not tonight?”
“Because this is our first night here.”
He thinks about that. “But Derby can come tomorrow?”
“If he wants.”
August gives me a look that is pure five-year-old judgment. “He wants.”
I laugh.
After August falls asleep, I sit on the couch with the windows open and listen to Kentucky night sounds. Crickets. Distant motorcycles. Wind in the trees. Somewhere far off, a dog barks. Maybe the Mayor.
The trailer feels strange.
Too quiet.
Too mine.
I touch the tattoo behind my ear.
The skin is still tender.
My crown.
My debt.
My warning.
My reminder.
I’m still sitting there when headlights sweep across the gravel.
My heart jumps before I can stop it.
Not fear.
That is new too.
I stand and go to the door, looking through the small window.
Derby is on the porch.
No bike this time. He must have parked farther back, or maybe I did not hear over my own heartbeat.
He is dressed in dark jeans and a black shirt, cut on, hair still damp from a shower, beard trimmed just enough to prove somebody, possibly him, tried.
In one hand he holds a small bunch of wildflowers that look like they were stolen from a ditch or threatened into arrangement. In the other, a brown paper bag.
I open the door.
He looks at me standing inside my own place.
His eyes move over my face, then the room behind me, then back.
“You invited?” I ask softly.
His mouth curves.
“Trying to be. But I’m not coming it. It’s your first night.”
Smiling, I nod. “What’s in the bag?”
“Coffee filters. Pancake mix. Dinosaur gummies.”
My throat tightens.
“And flowers?”
He looks down at them like they betrayed him. “They were on the side of the road.”
“You picked me ditch flowers?”
“They looked free.”
I laugh, and the sound settles into the little trailer like furniture.
Derby’s face changes.
Softens.
Only for me, maybe.
“Thought I’d ask you out,” he says.
My heart stumbles. “Out?”
“Date.”
The word sounds strange in his mouth.
Good strange.
“Not fake?” I ask.
“No.”
“Not protection?”
His eyes darken. “Always some protection.”
“Derby.”
He exhales. “Not strategy. Not for the town. Not because you need a guard.”
“Then why?”
He looks at the keys hanging by my door.
Then at me.
“Because you got your own place now, your own doors.” His voice drops, rough and quiet. “And I want to be the man you choose to open it for.”
Everything in me goes still.
Derby stands on my porch with ditch flowers, coffee filters, pancake mix, dinosaur gummies, and no claim except the one he is asking me to give.
I step back.
Opening the door wider.
“Come in,” I say.
“Tomorrow,” he says with a wink, and he’s gone.