Chapter 7 #2
She looked at me and saw herself, and instead of asking me to explain, she told me I wasn't alone.
The crack widens. My eyes sting. I blink it away and pick up the next glass.
Rookie is on the other side of the bar, clearing tables.
He catches my expression from across the room and his body changes.
Shoulders squaring, chin lifting, the subtle recalibration of a man who's picked up on something wrong and is trying to figure out if he should come closer or give me space.
He gives me space. He always does.
I don't know if I love him for it or if it's slowly killing me, this patience he has, this willingness to wait for me to come to him with whatever I'm hiding.
Because I am hiding. From him, from Tildie, from Ellie, from every person in this bar who's treated me with more kindness in six weeks than my own town has in six years.
They don't know who I am. They know Saylor Bell. They know the girl who pours clean drafts and shows up on time and almost-laughs at the right moments. They don't know Saylor Halstead.
And the people hunting for Halstead are getting closer every day.
* * *
It’s closing time, and the bar empties.
Tildie and Rookie handle the last of the cleanup. Ellie's in the back counting the register, reading glasses perched on her nose, pencil behind her ear.
I grab my jacket from behind the bar and pull my keys from the pocket.
"I'll walk you out." Rookie appears at my shoulder, rag in hand, like he was waiting for the cue.
"You don't have to." I say it every time. He ignores it every time.
We walk toward the door. Tildie calls from behind the bar, not looking up from the glasses she's stacking.
"Drive safe, Saylor. Roads are icy past the bridge."
I glance back. "Thanks, Tildie."
She gives me a nod. Small, warm. A different nod than Ellie's. Tildie's nod says I see you and I'm here, and the weight of it follows me through the door.
The parking lot is mostly empty.
My Honda sits under the far light, frost already forming on the windshield.
There’s a truck next to it. Rookie must’ve left his Harley at the club tonight.
"You sure you're okay?" He asks it while we walk, his breath visible in the cold air, hands in his jacket pockets. "You've been somewhere else tonight."
Tildie's words. Almost identical.
I wonder how visible the cracks are if two people spotted them in the same shift.
"Long week." I pull my keys out. "I'm tired."
He nods. Doesn't push. Leans down and presses his mouth to my forehead, a kiss so gentle it barely qualifies as contact. His lips are warm against my cold skin, and the tenderness of it makes my throat close.
"Text me when you're home." He steps back. "Please."
I zip my jacket. "I will."
He heads toward his truck. I watch him get inside and he starts the engine.
I turn toward my car and stop.
On the other side of the lot, a truck is parked under the far edge of the lot light.
Dark. Older model, with a white bag sitting at the top of the window. It’s made to look like a breakdown.
The frost on its windshield says it's been here a while, but there’s a man leaning against the driver's side door.
Heavyset. Short hair, cropped close. Baseball cap pulled low. One boot propped against the tire behind him.
Arms crossed over his chest, one boot propped against the tire behind him. Relaxed, casual, like he's been waiting without minding the wait.
He smiles when he sees me looking.
The smile is wide and easy and practiced. The smile of a man who knows how to use his face as a weapon and has been sharpening it for years.
"Saylor, right?" His voice carries across the cold air, friendly, conversational, pitched to sound harmless.
My legs stop working.
"Your daddy told me all about you."
The words hit me the way a hand would. Flat, open, right across the face.
My daddy. Not my father. Daddy. The familiar word, the intimate word, the word Dennis Halstead uses when he talks about the daughter he lost because he picked up a knife and made a choice.
This man is standing in a parking lot where I work, in the dark, in the cold, and he's using my father's language like a key he thinks will open me.
My keys are in my fist. The metal bites into my palm.
He unfolds his arms and takes a step forward.
One step. Small, measured, the step of a man who knows the difference between approaching and advancing and has chosen the version that doesn't look threatening on a security camera.
"I'm not here to scare you." He holds his palms up, the same mock-surrender gesture the man at the bar used when I told him not to touch me. "Dennis asked me to check on you. Make sure you're doing okay. That's all."
That's all.
A man who did time with my father drove to my workplace at midnight, waited in the cold for my shift to end, and that's all.
"I don't have anything to say to you." My voice comes out steady. The steadiness costs me everything I have left.
"You don't have to say anything." He takes another step.
The lot light catches his features clearly now. Broad nose, heavy brow, lines around his mouth carved deep by years of expressions I don't want to imagine.
"Dennis talks about you all the time. Your graduation. How smart you are. How proud he is."
Proud.
My father is proud of me from behind a concrete wall, and he sent this man—this stranger with a wave and a smile and the patience of a predator—to deliver the message.
"Stay away from me." I grip my keys tighter. "Stay away from my mother. Don't come back here."
His smile doesn't waver. Not even a flicker.
"I understand you're upset. But your daddy?—"
"My father stabbed a woman to death." The words leave my mouth before I can weigh them, sharp and hot and shaking. "And you did time with him. So whatever you think you know about me, whatever story he told you, I need you to hear this: I am not interested. Do not come back."
The smile dims. Not gone, but the wattage drops, and what's underneath is colder. Flatter.
Behind me, another engine fires.
Rookie. He hasn't left yet.
The man's gaze shifts past my shoulder. His expression changes again—reading the situation, looking at the truck, the man getting out of his truck with a cut on.
He steps back and lifts his palms higher.
"I'm going." He opens his truck door.
He pauses with one foot on the running board. "But Saylor? Dennis isn't going to stop reaching out."
His expression softens into something rehearsed. "He loves you. A father's love doesn't have walls."
He gets in his truck, ripping the white bag off.
His engine turns over and headlights snap on.
He pulls out of the lot slowly. No hurry. No urgency.
The truck rolls past me close enough to feel the heat of the engine, and he lifts two fingers off the steering wheel in a wave.
The same wave he gave my mother at the gas station.
I watch the taillights disappear onto the main road.
My legs give out. Not dramatically. I lean against my Honda and slide down until I'm sitting on the frozen asphalt with my back against the driver's side door and my keys cutting welts into my palm.
Rookie’s truck engine cuts.
His boots on the gravel, fast and heavy.
Rookie drops to a crouch in front of me. His face is tight, controlled, but his eyes are moving fast, scanning me, the parking lot, the road where the truck vanished.
"Saylor." His voice is low, urgent. "Who was that?"
I look at him. The man who borrows ridiculous pens and makes me laugh and kisses my forehead and has never once asked me to be anything other than what I show him.
The man who doesn't know my real name.
The crack Tildie opened widens into a fracture, and the truth sits on the edge of my tongue like a coin balanced on a rail.
I open my mouth.
Close it.
"I don't know." The lie tastes like ash. "I don't know who he was."
His jaw flexes. He doesn't believe me. I can see it in his face, in the way his fingers curl against his thighs, in the controlled stillness of a man deciding whether to push.
He doesn't push.
He stands, pulls me up with him, wraps both arms around me, and holds on. My face presses into his chest and I can hear his heartbeat going fast, faster than his calm voice suggested, and I realize he was scared too.
He was scared for me.
"I'm following you home." He says it into my hair. Not asking. Telling.
I nod against his chest because my voice isn't working and my legs aren't reliable and the only solid thing in this parking lot is the man holding me up.
He follows me home, watches from the curb until I'm inside, and texts me thirty seconds later.
Lock the door.
I lock it. Test the knob twice the way I always do.
Then I slide down the wall and sit on the floor and press my palms flat against the cold hardwood and wonder how much longer I can keep lying to the only person who's ever made me feel safe.