August stirs.
I hold my breath and listen.
Another creak. Then a low mutter, rough and male.
“Damn chair.”
Derby.
The fear changes shape.
It doesn’t vanish. I’m not that foolish. But it stops clawing at the inside of my ribs and settles lower, confused by itself. Derby is outside the door because he said he would be. Because last night, after Jeremy showed up at the gate and smiled like a concerned husband while threatening me with every polite word he knew, Derby sat in that hallway.
All night, I think.
I don’t know how to feel about that.
Grateful, yes.
Suspicious, also yes.
Embarrassed in a way that makes me want to peel off my own skin, definitely yes.
Because I have no business wanting to open the door and look at him.
Not wanting like that.
Not in some soft, stupid, romantic way. I don’t have room for that. I have a child asleep beside me, a husband hunting me, twenty-seven dollars in cash, a questionable blood tie to a deadoutlaw wrestler, and no idea what happens when the sun gets all the way up.
But there is a difference between wanting a man and wanting proof that someone stayed.
I want proof.
That is all.
I ease myself out from under August’s leg and stand. Sophie’s pajama pants hit me above the ankle, and the shirt hangs loose around my shoulders. I feel strange in someone else’s clothes. Too visible. Too cared for. I’m used to fabric being used against me.
That shirt is too tight.
That dress is too much.
Those jeans make you look desperate.
You wearing that for somebody?
Sophie’s clothes don’t accuse me of anything. They are soft. Clean. A little expensive, even as pajamas. They smell faintly like lavender detergent and smoke from downstairs, which should not be comforting but somehow is.
Still, I smooth the shirt before I move.
Ridiculous.
Automatic.
There is nothing glamorous about standing barefoot in borrowed pajamas in an old jailhouse with swollen eyes and fear under my skin. But I smooth the shirt anyway, because dignity is sometimes only a habit you refuse to surrender.
I cross the room carefully and crack the door.
Derby is asleep in a chair dragged against the opposite wall.