Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
It wasn’t the one that takes over—no teeth, no press against a wall. Just mouth to mouth, slow as a promise. She made a sound I felt all the way through my body and cupped the back of my neck, gentle like I was something worth touching carefully.
“Gabriel,” she whispered against my mouth. “I’m not going anywhere. Not unless you tell me to. I’m with you and that’s exactly where I want to be.”
“Yeah,” I managed, and tasted the word like I wanted to keep it. “Okay.”
We went back inside. I poured coffee—hers with too much sugar, mine black enough to strip paint. The chair was still wedged under the knob; it made me feel like I’d done something even though it wouldn’t slow a determined man more than a second.
Shanks texted:
Locksmith eta 40.
IvaLeigh watched me do all that without interrupting. Then she requested the one thing I had avoided talking about. “Tell me what’s next with GJ.”
I leaned back against the counter and let the club in. “Burn’s digging. We’ve got a thread on why he was set up. But I can’t rush it. One wrong move and I can’t get my son out of this.”
“Okay,” she muttered, studying me. “So we buy time. We keep him alive. We stack proof.” She counted on her fingers. “I can help—research, filing requests, sorting, whatever it takes.”
I shook my head before I could stop it. “No.”
She held my stare. “No?”
“Not yet,” I said. “The closer you get to this the more it may burn you. You already glow in rooms you shouldn’t be in. I’m not painting a target on your back because you can type faster than a prospect.”
She folded her arms. “I’m not glass.”
“I know,” I replied, gentle as I could make a word like that. “That’s what scares me.”
Her jaw worked, stubborn and beautiful. Then she sighed. “Compromise.”
“Name it.”
“You tell me what I can research,” she began. “I won’t ask for files. I won’t stick my nose in meetings. But give me the language. So when someone else pops up with a key, I don’t stare at you like I’m lost because I didn’t know your son had a room here and that you two were as close as you are..”
I almost smiled. “Deal.”
The locksmith came. Shanks came with him, leaning in the doorway with a go-bag and a smirk that died when he saw the chair under the knob. “Ex?”
“Yeah.”
He jerked his chin. “You want a code lock?”
“Key and code,” I said. “Two bolts. Window latches. Shed’s got a new padlock.”
He tossed me a small metal tag. “Fresh keys. Three. I keep one in the safe in case you do something stupid like lose it in a bar fight. Don’t do that.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” I laughed because he had.
His eyes slid to IvaLeigh, then to me again. He saw more than he said. “You good?”
“Work the list,” I commanded without sharing anything else.
“On it,” he said, and vanished with the locksmith’s curse following him down the steps.
When the new locks at home, I could exhale. I set keys on the hook and turned to find IvaLeigh at the sink washing two plates that didn’t need it. Busy hands. Busy head.
“She said I’ll never be faithful,” I repeated again because sometimes you have to say the thing twice to sand off its edge.
She set the plate down, dried her hands, and walked over until her toes touched mine. “You already answered that,” she continued. “Now answer this: are you going to let what she said make you keep me at arm’s length, or are you going to let it make you hold on tighter?”
I thought about the study at her parents’ house and the way a man can make threats sound like manners. I thought about GJ’s face through bus glass and Pop’s gavel and Hampton’s smirk and Walsh’s smile and the set of a woman’s mouth when she’s been left alone with rooms too big and promises too small.
“I’ll hold on,” I vowed. “If you promise to tell me when I squeeze too hard.”
She grinned. “I’ll bite your hand.”
“Fair.”
We spent the rest of the morning doing nothing in a way that felt like everything. I changed the bulb over the porch and she read me a paragraph from her paper, stopping to argue with herself halfway through. I told her she thinks like a lawyer and she said that was an insult. I laughed. The sound felt like a new thing that had been in me a long time and forgotten how to get out.
By noon, I had to go. Church wasn’t called, but there’s always something—the kind of errands you do when your life is built of engines and loyalty and the need to be seen by men who measure you in how steady you keep your word.