CHAPTER NINETEEN What He Chose to Hide, Again
"I'm not hiding anything from you tonight," Sawyer said finally, breaking the silence that had stretched too long between them.
"I'm telling you plainly, right now, that I'm going to push Reeve for a harder response than the club's currently willing to consider.
That's not a secret. That's me telling you exactly what I'm about to go do. "
Some of the cold in Josie's chest eased, though not all of it. "That's different from three years ago. I need you to understand why I reacted the way I did just now."
"I understand." He took her hand, steady despite the tension still radiating off him.
"I'm not going to pretend I don't see how that sounded.
I'm asking you to trust that saying it out loud to you first, before I act on it, is the actual proof of how much I've changed, even if the instinct underneath it, wanting to protect you by handling something myself, hasn't fully gone anywhere. "
She studied him a long moment, exhaustion and fear and cautious relief all tangled together. "What are you going to push Reeve for."
"A harder line in tomorrow's negotiation.
No more structured patience, no more good faith payments while they escalate around us.
I want to bring in outside pressure, contacts of the club's who owe favors, people who can make continuing to threaten you cost them more than they'd gain from it.
" His jaw tightened. "It's aggressive. It carries its own risk.
But I'm done playing this defensively while you're the one paying the price for it. "
"That's not you handling it alone. That's you telling me the plan and letting me have an opinion about it." Josie felt something loosen slightly in her chest at the distinction, small but real. "So tell me. What's my opinion worth in this?"
"Everything," he said immediately. "If you tell me it's too risky, I don't push it. I find another way. This isn't me deciding unilaterally what's best for you again, Josie. I mean that."
She sat with it, turning the plan over against everything she knew about the danger they were facing, against the wreckage still surrounding them in the dim shop, against three years of a wound that had taught her exactly how dangerous well-intentioned silence could be.
"Do it," she said finally. "Push for the harder line.
I'd rather face real risk with the truth than fake safety built on you managing what I know. "
Relief moved visibly through him, and he pulled her close again, careful of the debris scattered around them, his mouth finding her temple in a gesture more grounding than romantic. "Thank you," he murmured. "For trusting me enough to hear that answer instead of assuming the worst."
They stayed like that a while longer amid the wreckage, and it was nearly one in the morning before Cole finally convinced them both to leave the shop in the hands of the overnight security detail and get some rest, Josie reluctantly agreeing to stay at Delia's for the remainder of the night rather than sleep above a shop with a boarded-up window and a spray-painted threat still drying on the back wall.
The next morning brought a harder kind of reckoning than either of them had anticipated.
Josie woke at Delia's to the sound of raised voices from the kitchen, Reeve's low, controlled anger cutting through Delia's small house with a weight that made her stomach tighten before she'd even fully surfaced from sleep.
She found Sawyer standing in the kitchen doorway, Reeve seated at the table with a grim, exhausted expression, both of them clearly mid-argument that had started before she'd woken.
"You went around me," Reeve was saying, voice tight with barely controlled fury. "You called Marcus Delgado directly last night without clearing it through me first. Do you understand what that does to my authority in this club, Sawyer, in the middle of your own disciplinary review, no less?"
"I understand it looks bad." Sawyer's voice was steady but carried its own edge of frustration. "I also understand that Josie's shop got hit last night while half this club stood around a bonfire, and I wasn't willing to wait for a formal process to catch up to the actual danger she's facing."
"That's not your call to make unilaterally.
Not anymore. That's exactly the pattern this whole review process exists to correct.
" Reeve's gaze flicked to Josie in the doorway, something almost apologetic in it even amid his anger.
"I'm sorry you're caught in the middle of this, Josie.
But he broke protocol. Again. During an active review, no less, which is going to matter a great deal when the club reconvenes to decide his standing. "
Josie felt the ground shift under her, old fear resurfacing sharp and immediate despite everything Sawyer had told her the night before. "You told me you were going to tell Reeve. Push him for the harder line. You didn't say anything about going around him."
"I called Marcus after Reeve initially said no," Sawyer admitted, and something in his tone told her this was the part he hadn't fully shared with her the night before.
"I should have told you that specific detail last night.
I didn't, because I was still deciding whether to actually make the call or not, and I didn't want to promise you something I wasn't certain I'd follow through on. "
"That's an omission, Sawyer." Josie's voice was quieter than she expected, more hurt than angry. "A small one, maybe. But it's the exact same shape as the thing that broke us the first time. You deciding what I needed to know and when I needed to know it."
"I know how it looks." His voice cracked slightly, the first real crack in his composure since the attack the night before.
"I'm not trying to defend it as something other than what it is.
I made a call in the heat of the moment, and I should have told you the full shape of it instead of the version that made me look better. "
Reeve stood, gathering his jacket with the particular finality of a man who'd said what he came to say.
"This is going to matter, Sawyer. Going around club protocol during an active review, whatever your reasons, whatever the outcome with Marcus turns out to be.
I need you to understand that clearly before we go any further today.
" He nodded once to Josie, gentler. "I truly am sorry about your shop. "
He left, the door closing behind him with a quiet, final click that seemed to echo through the small kitchen far louder than the volume warranted.
Josie stood in the doorway a long moment, watching Sawyer absorb the weight of what had just happened, watching the careful, hard-won trust of the last month crack under the accumulated pressure of one night's fear and one omission too many.
"I need to think," she said finally, quiet, exhausted. "I need some space to figure out what I actually feel about this, and I can't do that standing here watching you brace for my reaction."
"Josie." Her name, rough with something close to panic.
"I'm not leaving," she said, though the words felt less certain than she wanted them to sound. "I just need space. Today. I'll call you tonight."
She walked past him and out into the cold morning air, leaving him standing alone in Delia's kitchen, and didn't look back to see the particular devastation she suspected was written plain across his face, because she wasn't yet certain she could bear to see it without changing her mind about needing the space at all.