That is how I know she is worried.
Janie fusses. Sophie steadies. Becki threatens. Cider haunts. Lottie watches, calculates, and waits until the right place to put the knife.
I’m starting to understand that biker women aren’t decorations in the room. They are the rooms men survive in.
“Sit down before you wear a trench in Derby’s floor,” Lottie says.
I stop pacing. “I can’t.”
“You can. You just don’t want to.”
“Derby is in jail.”
“He’s been in jail before.”
That should not comfort me.
It doesn’t.
I stare at her. “That isn’t the point.”
“The point is Derby punched your husband outside a county building full of cameras because your husband is a smug sack of preacher-washed horse shit who sent a toy to a child he scares.”
My throat closes.
Lottie sets the mug in the dish rack with a sharp clink. “That about cover it?”
“He told me not to blame myself.”
“Good. Saves me breath.”
“But I do.” The words tear out of me. “I knew this would happen. I told him Jeremy wanted him out of control, and he went anyway. He got arrested anyway.”
“Derby’s a grown man with a temper and a road name, honey. You didn’t crawl inside his fist and steer.”
“He did it because of us.”
Lottie turns then.
Her face isn’t soft.
I’m glad for that.
Soft might break me.
“Yeah,” she says. “He did.”
The honesty punches harder than comfort would have.
I grab the back of a kitchen chair to steady myself. “Then how is it not my fault?”
“Because a man choosing to fight for you ain’t the same as you ordering him into the ring.”
“But if I wasn’t here…”
“If you weren’t here, Jeremy would still be a bastard. Derby would still be a man with gasoline in his blood. Legend would still be ten minutes from burning half the county over sister blood he ain’t even proved yet. Pearly Gates would still be missing girls in the walls and preaching over the screams.” Lottie dries her hands on a dish towel, then tosses it onto the counter. “You did not invent ugly by needing help.”
My eyes sting.