26. Sage
TWENTY-SIX
SAGE
Brock:
How’s the neck healing, pet? Bet it itches. Bet you still wake in the night gasping for me.
[delete]
“Holy shit. I was starting to think I wouldn’t see you in here again.”
Jamie is in his favorite booth—laptop open, empty mug pushed to the side, a paperback facedown on the table. His whole face lights up when he sees me, that easy, uncomplicated grin that makes me feel like the most normal person on earth, and I didn’t realize how much I needed that until right now.
“I’m hard to get rid of,” I say. My voice is still rough. Not the shredded whisper it was two weeks ago. More like I’ve been chain-smoking for forty years and gargling gravel as a nightcap. Sexy in a phone-sex-operator way, if the phone-sex operator had recently been strangled half to death.
“Get over here.” He stands and pulls me into a hug before I can get my apron on. He smells like coffee and dryer sheets and normalcy. He holds on for a beat, and when he pulls back, his eyes do a quick sweep of my face.
“Welcome back to the office,” he says. “You look good.” He sounds like he means it.
“I look like a ghost who got into a bar fight, but thank you.”
He laughs. Sits back down. His eyes catch on my neck and stay there as he examines the pendant.
“That’s beautiful.” He nods at the choker. “Gift from one of your guys?”
I touch it without thinking. The velvet is soft under my fingertips, wide enough to cover the worst of the remaining damage—the pink, ropy line where the skin has healed fresh.
The cameo attached to it is antique, cream and blush against a black oval, a woman’s profile carved in relief.
It’s the kind of thing you’d find in a jewelry case at an estate sale, tucked between brooches and tarnished lockets.
Holden said he found it in a vintage store and knew it would be perfect on me.
Personally, I think he likes the idea of being around my throat even when he isn’t touching me.
“Holden,” I say.
“The cop?”
“Detective.”
Jamie picks up his mug, realizes it’s empty, and sets it back down. “Smart man. Covers the marks and makes a statement at the same time.”
You have no idea.
He doesn’t know the half of it. He doesn’t know that the choker was the final concession in a negotiation that took up our entire Sunday, half of Monday, and nearly ended with me throwing a plate at Knox’s head.
The guys didn’t want me leaving the house without one of them attached to my hip.
Full stop. Not for work, not for groceries, not to stand alone on the porch.
Five men, five variations of absolutely not, it’s too dangerous, we don’t know who’s out there, delivered in tones ranging from Knox’s quiet, immovable “No” to Milo’s twelve-minute PowerPoint presentation on why I needed twenty-four-seven protection, complete with risk-assessment charts.
There was even a slide entitled “Reasons Kitten Should Not Die” that was just a list of all the sexual acts we still had to try.
I’d sat through all of it. The video call with Odin, the debrief after, the kitchen-table argument that went in circles until I wanted to scream. They’d conceded on the operations, but apparently were fine with keeping me locked in Holden’s house like a princess in a tower.
The lack of logic was astounding.
In the end, after I argued loudly with visual aids of my own—which were just me gesturing at the four walls and yelling, “This is not a life!”—the compromise was part-time shifts at the diner, daylight hours only, with someone on watch at all times.
A car across the street. Milo monitoring the security cameras he’d secretly installed inside Gull’s.
Holden running background checks on every new face that walked through the door.
And me, wearing a velvet choker and an apron and pretending everything is fine, which is basically what I’ve been doing since I moved to this town.
As far as they’re concerned, I haven’t had any new texts from Brock’s number.
And as long as I keep deleting them before anyone sees them, that’s exactly what they’ll continue thinking.
As it is, they’re turning over every rock and getting nowhere.
Another message from the same spoofed number isn’t going to help them find whoever’s doing this.
I have five obsessive bodyguards. I am never alone for anyone to grab me.
Four days ago I stood in a bar and told those five men that keeping me out of the room didn’t make me safer, it just made me alone. Now I’m the one deciding what they get to know. My reasons are better, obviously. Everybody’s reasons are better.
“So,” Jamie says when I return to his table with the coffee pot to fill the empty mug. “How are you? And don’t say fine. I’ve known you long enough to know that fine is code for I’m drowning but I’ve gotten really good at treading water.”
I pour him a fresh coffee, watch the dark liquid reach the top of the white ceramic before I answer. “Better. Really. The guys have been great. Smothering, but great.”
“Define smothering.”
“Knox follows me to the bathroom.”
“Literally?”
“He stands outside the door. I can see his shadow under the gap.”
Jamie winces. “That’s . . . a lot.”
“It’s Knox. His love language is proximity and the silent elimination of all potential threats within a fifty-foot radius.” I let out a sigh. “Honestly, I’m just glad to be back. I missed this place. I missed the regulars. I missed seeing you every day.”
He gives me a small, quiet smile. “I missed you, too, bitch.”
I shove his shoulder, so he knows I don’t need him to go all sentimental on me. But the words give me a little hit of warmth, right behind my ribs.
“We were pretty scared, you know.” His voice drops so I’m the only one who can hear him.
“Yeah. Me too.”
“That day, when I came to see you in the hospital, I didn’t really know what to say.
You were hurt and you were scared and it wasn’t the time.
And the same goes for our coffee date—you were still healing and I knew you needed me to keep things light.
But now that you’re back into regular life, I need you to know that I .
. . I get it. Okay? More than you might think. ”
Something cold brushes the back of my neck. “You do?”
“I’ve been there.” He says it simply. “Not the same way. But I’ve been in that dark place where the walls close in and you think the only way out is—” He stops. Swallows. Wraps his hands around his coffee mug.
“Oh.”
I’d told Amy to let him believe I did it to myself—knew that’s what everyone outside my tight circle thought happened. It had seemed so simple at the time, from a hospital bed, with five men between me and the world.
But I’ve spent weeks wrapped in a house full of people who know exactly what happened to me.
People who say attack and rope and Brock and Stephen out loud, who never once looked at me like I did this to myself.
I’d forgotten. I’d actually forgotten that out here, in the daylight, with the coffee and the regulars and the bell over the door, I’m a woman who tried to hang herself.
That’s the story now. That’s who I am in this town. And I agreed to it.
It’s one thing to choose the lie. It’s another to sit across from someone being kind to you about it.
And the worst part is it makes sense. It makes more sense than the truth. Woman with a history of trauma, new in town, complicated relationship, turns up in hospital with strangulation injuries and won’t explain what happened? The story writes itself.
“Jamie, it wasn’t—” I start, and then I stop.
Because what am I going to say? Actually, someone tried to murder me because I helped kill a man, and now it seems his secret boyfriend is texting me from the dead guy’s phone.
Even the soft version—someone attacked me—opens doors I can’t walk through.
Why was she attacked? Who would do that?
Did she report it? Why isn’t there an investigation?
I force a laugh, pinning my mouth into what I hope resembles a smile. “It wasn’t like that. Promise.”
Jamie studies me over his mug, like he’s grading my answer.
“I’m not judging. If you ever . . .” He lowers his voice.
“If it gets bad again . . . I know I said call me. But I’ve also got a list of therapists who won’t ask questions you don’t want to answer.
I mean that. Don’t sit in the dark alone. ”
“Thanks, Jamie.” My throat gets thick. “I’m feeling a lot better now. Promise.”
Jamie reaches across the table and squeezes my hand.
His palm is warm and dry and his grip is firm without being insistent.
“You don’t have to explain it to me. I’m not asking for the details.
I just wanted you to know that I see you, and that it doesn’t change anything.
You’re still Sage. You’re still my favorite person in this town.
” He grins. “Don’t tell your harem I said that. They’ll think I’m competition.”
I laugh. It comes out watery but real.
“Listen,” he says, leaning back and crossing his arms. “I know you’ve got a group of burly guys who are all up in your business.
And I’m sure that’s great—having people who care and want to protect you, and all that.
But sometimes what you need isn’t another person watching your every move.
Sometimes you just need to get out. Blow off some steam.
Do something stupid and pointless that doesn’t involve anyone doing broody googly eyes. Or trying to get in your pants.”
He points at himself. “That’s me. I’m your guy. Or gal, if that makes your harem of men feel better about you spending time with someone who has a pulse and a penis.”
“They’re aware you’re gay.”
“Then they already know I’m the safest penis in town.
Use me.” He spreads his arms like he’s offering himself as a sacrifice.
“Pedicures. Bad movies. Extremely overpriced smoothies from that place on the boardwalk that puts spirulina in everything. Whatever you need, whenever you need it, no questions asked, no surveillance required.”
“You’re going to regret that offer.”
“I’m already regretting it. But I’m committing anyway.” He lifts his mug. “To terrible life choices and excellent company.”
I don’t have a drink, so I just tap the coffee pot against his mug. “To terrible life choices.”
I’m halfway through my shift before I remember what normal feels like.
It’s clearing tables. It’s balancing a tray on one hand and refilling coffee with the other. It’s penciling in names on the waitlist with a squint and a smirk, it’s the rush of plates and the clatter of mugs and the constant, just-under-the-surface hum of conversation.
It’s that I’m here, with a smile and a throat only slightly inconvenient, and nobody in this building is dead or trying to kill me.
At least not yet.
The regulars are practically on a rotation: the old couple who only ever split one omelet and bicker about it for the full forty-five minutes they’re seated; the two twenty-something guys still hungover from whatever the hell they did last night, one ordering coffee like it’s life elixir and the other texting under the table.
The left banquette is occupied by the notorious Tuesday Mom Squad, who are all yoga pants and topknots and passive-aggressive requests for nonfat creamer.
In another life, I could have been one of them. Maybe not with a minivan or a husband who pours protein powder in his coffee—saw it once, still have unresolved issues about it—but I could have had the brunch, the gossip, the solid wall of female solidarity. The normal.
Milo says it’s still on the table, if I want it.
He says I could take any life I want, that nothing’s an all-or-nothing deal unless you make it one.
That I could have five men and a mortgage and a white-collar job and a secret extracurricular hobby, if that’s what I want.
He says people contain multitudes, and ours are just messier than most.
He’s probably right.
But as I weave through the tables, dodging a toddler’s flailing arm and balancing a stack of dirty plates, I know I don’t want it.
Not after everything—the beach, the rope, the texts.
Not after tasting what it’s like to fight back, to take control, to be part of something bigger and darker than brunch and small talk.
The knife Knox gave me is tucked into my boot, a constant weight against my ankle, reminding me that I’m not just a waitress anymore.
I’m a survivor. A killer. And maybe, if I push hard enough, a Hangman.
The bell over the door jingles, pulling me from my thoughts. A new customer walks in—tall, baseball cap pulled low, backpack slung over one shoulder. He scans the room, his eyes lingering on me a second too long before he heads to a corner booth.
My stomach twists. It’s probably nothing. Just a guy grabbing lunch.
I glance out the window. Knox’s truck is parked across the street, right where he said it would be. I breathe a little easier, paste on my server smile, and head over to take their order.