Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
For a few seconds after Reid answered her, Holly couldn’t move.
The hallway felt too narrow, the apartment too quiet, the air too thin. Blue pressed against her leg, solid and warm, but even that didn’t steady her the way it usually did.
She kept seeing Hoyt standing at her counter that morning in his expensive coat and polished boots, impatient and faintly offended by the fact that coffee required time and human labor.
She’d never liked him. Most mornings, she’d dreaded the bell over the door followed by his voice, his order, his certainty that everyone in the room existed to absorb his mood.
Now he was dead.
Not just dead. Murdered, with a Sanctuary cup forced into his mouth.
Holly’s stomach rolled hard enough that she had to press one hand to it. “I can’t…”
Reid stood with his hand on her arm. He didn’t try to soften what she was feeling with words that would’ve sounded ridiculous. He didn’t tell her to breathe, which was good because she would have lost control of her emotions and said something she couldn’t take back.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She shook her head, not because she rejected the apology, but because there was nowhere for it to land. “He was just here this morning.”
Her voice sounded distant to her own ears. “I didn’t want him here most days, and this morning, when you made him act like a human being for thirty seconds, I was relieved. That’s awful.”
“No, it isn’t.”
She looked down at Blue because looking at Reid made everything worse.
Blue leaned harder against her, and she threaded her fingers into the fur at the top of his head.
“I used to see his car pull up and think, please not today. Please let him go somewhere else. Please let someone else deal with him. And now someone killed him, and they shoved my cup in his mouth, and I can’t stop thinking that I was glad when he left. ”
“Being relieved someone left your shop isn’t the same as wanting him dead.”
“I understand that.” Her voice was too thin. Her breathing too shallow. “It doesn’t help.”
“I know it doesn’t.”
The steadiness in his voice tugged at her, and she resented needing it. She resented that he could stand there and sound like the one solid thing in a night that had gone horrible around the edges. She wanted to be angry at him for that but couldn’t.
She rubbed her thumb over Blue’s ear. “Did Agent Dawson say where they found him?”
“At one of his development sites outside town.”
“Does his wife know?”
“She will shortly.”
Holly squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t know Mrs. Sullivan well. A name, a face from charity events, a woman who sometimes ordered tea and looked as if she’d trained herself not to take up much space.
“Did he suffer?”
Reid went quiet. “I don’t have that information.”
She opened her eyes. “Was it because of this morning?”
“We don’t know.”
“But you’re considering it.”
“I’m considering everything.”
Which meant yes, at least in part. Hoyt had come into Sanctuary. Customers had come and gone. Holly had steamed milk, wiped counters, smiled at people, and moved through the day with no idea that one of those moments might become evidence.
“So what?” she asked. “Someone is killing people now for being rude to me?”
“We don’t know that Hoyt’s behavior is why he was targeted.”
“But the cup.” She hated the way her voice caught on the word. “The cup makes it about Sanctuary, and Sanctuary is mine.”
Reid’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue. That frightened her more than a denial would have. A denial would’ve let her push back. His quiet acceptance told her he’d already reached the same awful place she had and was trying to map a way out without showing her how dark it looked.
Blue nudged her hand. Holly realized she’d stopped petting him.
“I need to sit down,” she said.
Reid moved immediately, reaching out with his other hand for her to take if she needed it.
She didn’t take it. Not at first. She made it three steps toward the living room before her knees felt unreliable and her pride became less important than staying upright.
She caught his wrist, and his hand turned under hers, warm and steady, fingers closing around hers without trapping them.
He walked her to the couch. The quilt he’d slept under was folded at one end, his laptop open on the coffee table with Hopper Shaw’s name and a county property record visible on the screen.
Seeing it made the whole day tilt again. Hopper outside the window. Hopper in the support group. Hopper watching the door. Hoyt dead.
Holly sat hard on the couch, and Blue jumped up beside her and climbed halfway into her lap. He settled against her, eyes on her face.
Reid brought her water. She took the glass, pretending fear wasn’t eating through her ribs. The water was cold and tasted faintly metallic from the tap. She drank three swallows, then held the glass in both hands.
“Should I close the shop?” she asked carefully.
Reid sat on the other side of her, leaving enough space that she could pretend she wasn’t aware of every inch between them. “That’s your choice.”
She stared at the water. “How am I supposed to open the doors and hand people coffee when someone might be watching them and choosing them as their next victim?”
“We’ll talk to Claire in the morning. She’ll have more information by then. Once you have the facts, you can decide.”
She gave a short, unsteady laugh. “You sound like a lawyer.” He just gave her a small smile, and she rubbed a hand over her face. “I don’t want to close.”
He gripped her hand and squeezed. “I understand that.”
She looked away before he could see tears gather again, but she didn’t pull out of his grip. “I can’t stand the thought of someone else dying after walking out of my shop.”
“You don’t have to open,” he said. “Or you open late. We review the cameras, call Maya, limit hours, make changes. You don’t have to decide the rest of your life tonight after finding out a man was murdered.”
“It feels like the decision is already being made for me.”
“Only if you let whoever did this take the choice from you.”
She tugged her hand away. “Choice.”
Reid went still beside her. The lamp still cast warm light across the rug.
Blue lay his head on her lap. The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen, and the street outside stayed quiet.
But the thing between them, the old thing, the wound they’d both been stepping around with too much care, lifted its head.
Holly set the glass on the coffee table because her hands weren’t steady enough to hold it anymore. “You’re very concerned with me having choices now.”
“Holly.”
“No, don’t Holly me.” She turned toward him, and the fear had somewhere to go at last, turning hot and sharp because anger was easier to handle now.
“You keep saying all the right things. You’re careful and steady.
You let me decide about the shop, about the couch, about the alarm, about everything you can make into a decision.
And part of me wants to be grateful because it’s nice, isn’t it? Being respected after the fact.”
He didn’t close down as she expected. She wanted him defensive. She wanted him to argue, to give her something simple to push against. Instead, he sat a few inches away, eyes tired but shoulders squared as if he’d known the blow was coming and had no intention of dodging it.
“I earned that,” he said.
“Yes, you did.”
“I can’t change the past.”
“Then what are you trying to do?”
“Not repeat it.”
The answer made her heart break a little more. The couch was too small. She had to move.
She stood, shifting Blue’s head off her lap. He whined and tracked her, but didn’t follow when she paced to the other side of the coffee table.
“You left,” she said. “I woke up, and you were gone. No conversation. No note that made anything better. No chance to say I understood or didn’t understand or hated you or wanted to go with you or wanted you to stay.
You decided for both of us, and now you’re here making sure I get choices because you finally figured out that choices matter. ”
He didn’t flinch, didn’t look away. “I figured it out a long time ago, but it was too late. In my defense, I thought I was being honorable.”
The quiet admission stole some of her momentum, and she hated that, too. “You weren’t.”
“No, I wasn’t.” He stood, but he didn’t move toward her. “I was scared, and I dressed it up as honor because that sounded better.”
Her throat burned. “Scared of what?”
“Wanting you.”
She looked at him because she couldn’t help it. The words filled the space between them, simple and devastating.
Reid’s hands hung loose at his sides, but there was nothing casual about him.
“I was leaving. You were Roni’s best friend.
You had a life here, and I was heading into one that didn’t belong to me yet.
I told myself walking away before morning would keep me from asking anything of you.
I told myself it would keep you from waiting on a man who didn’t know where he’d be or what he could promise. ”
She balled her fists, the coffee table between them as if he were on the stand and she were on the judge’s bench. “You didn’t let me decide if I wanted to wait, if I wanted one night to mean something, or if I wanted it to mean nothing. You took the decision and left me with the part that hurt.”
His throat moved. “I screwed up.”
Holly had carried the old anger for years, polishing it into something hard enough to survive.
She’d told herself he’d been careless, selfish, arrogant in that quiet Reid way where he made a decision and expected the world to understand it.
Hearing him admit he’d been wrong, hearing him give her the truth without defense, made the anger lose its clean edges.
But it didn’t disappear. It became messier.
Tears slipped down her face, and she swiped them away, furious with herself for crying over Hoyt and Sanctuary and Reid Fleming all tangled together.
“I don’t have room for this tonight. You’re on my couch, in my shop, my apartment, my morning routine.
” Blue whined. She motioned at him. “You’ve become my dog’s emotional support system. ”
Blue thumped his tail, acknowledging his role in the crisis.
Reid’s lips thinned. “I’m here because you’re in danger.”
“Is that all?”
“No.”
The honesty sparked through her, bright and dangerous. “Then what else?”
He stepped closer, rounding the end of the table.
“I’m here because Claire assigned me, but mostly because someone is using your shop to hurt people, and I can help stop him.
” His voice lowered. “And I’m here because when I walked into Sanctuary yesterday and saw you behind that counter, I knew leaving you was the biggest mistake of my life. ”
Her breath caught.
Reid heard it, stayed put as if awaiting her final judgment. The legal mind, the Navy discipline, the quiet man who noticed sugar canisters and exits—he was standing there, seeing too much, including the way she held herself together with both hands.
He’d noticed her back then, too. She’s been eighteen, fresh out of high school, and ready to take on a world that had been cruel to her. To carve a place for herself and others who needed kindness.
He’d seen enough to want her and left anyway.
“You don’t get to say things like that,” she whispered.
“That’s fair.”
Fair? Nothing about this was fair. “You don’t get to come back and be careful with me and make me feel safer in my own apartment after you were the reason I learned not to need that from anyone.”
“I’m not asking you to need me.”
“But I do.” The words tumbled out before she could stop them, raw and humiliating.
She took one step back, but there was nowhere to go.
“Right now, tonight, with Hoyt dead and my shop tied to another murder, I need you here. I need you standing between me and whatever this is, and I hate that because it feels too close to needing you the way I did before.”
Reid took another step but stopped an arm’s length away. “Needing help tonight doesn’t make the past smaller.”
“No, it makes it louder.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “Don’t say that like it solves everything. Don’t say it like I’m supposed to be okay now.”
“I’m not.”
“Don’t stand there looking like you’ll let me yell until I run out of air.”
“You can yell as long and as loud as you need to.”
A laugh broke out of her, wet and unwilling, more from frustration than humor. It turned into another tear before she could control it.
Reid lifted his hand, then stopped before touching her face, waiting. Letting her choose. Giving back, in the smallest possible way, the thing he had taken from her once.
That restraint snapped the last thread of her control.
Holly closed the distance herself.
She caught the front of his shirt in one fist and pulled him down, angry and aching and tired of every feeling in her body having nowhere to go. Reid’s breath brushed her cheek, and it made her want him with a force that felt like its own kind of grief.
“This doesn’t fix anything,” she whispered. And then she kissed him.