It keeps making a terrible kind of sense.
I look at August. “Do you want to stay at Derby’s house for a little while?”
He looks at Derby. “Do you have monsters?”
Derby’s face doesn’t change. “Not inside.”
August nods. “Okay.”
My heart squeezes.
Not inside.
Such a simple answer.
Such a dark one.
I look at Sophie. “Okay.”
She nods once, like she knows not to make a victory out of my surrender.
Derby goes still.
I turn to him. “But if this gets weird…”
“It’s already weird.”
“Weirder.”
“Then we deal with weirder.”
“If I want to leave…”
“You leave.”
“If August is uncomfortable…”
“We fix it or you leave.”
“If Jeremy shows up…”
His eyes go mean. “He won’t get to the porch.”
The way he says it should not comfort me.
It does.
I stand. “Then okay.”
There it is.
The decision.
Not a big dramatic thing. Just a tired woman in borrowed pajamas agreeing to move her child into a biker’s house because the clubhouse is too dangerous, the motel is too exposed, and the husband hunting her has made every normal option unsafe.
Derby watches me like he understands all of that and hates it.
“Pack what you need,” he says.