Not mine.
Hell.
I don’t even know what word fits anymore.
Legend’s sister. August’s mother. Jeremy’s wife in the eyes of the law. My fake girlfriend. My real everything after one night that apparently turned me into an idiot with a pulse.
Legend keeps talking. “I’m pissed Lottie went around me. I’m pissed Amelia left without telling me. I’m pissed my family keeps getting bigger through disasters. But I know Hot Mama. Well enough to know this means she wants something from me. Not well enough to trust her with my wallet or my back, but enough to know she doesn’t hand women to men they ran from.”
“I ain’t the man she ran from.”
“No,” Legend says. “You are the man she ran to and then ran from because she thought loving you would put blood on your hands.”
The words hit so hard I turn away.
Nobody should say loving you in this room.
Nobody should make it sound like that.
Like a thing already known.
I shove the note back in my pocket. “Route.”
Wildcat starts printing from a machine in the corner because apparently he predicted this part. Whiskey hands me a burner phone.
I stare at it. “What’s this?”
“Phone that will work. With numbers you need. Mine. Legend’s. Oaks. Holler. A contact that may or may not answer if Hot Mama allows it.”
“Hot Mama gets a vote on my calls now?”
“Hot Mama gets a vote on everything inside her gates,” Holler says. “That’s sort of her charm.”
I don’t want charm.
I want Amelia.
I want August.
I want to look that woman in the face and ask why she thought breaking both of us was protection.
I want to hold her until she stops being scared of my hands.
I want to tell her I would rather learn restraint for the rest of my life than wake up to a cold bed and her phone on the counter ever again.
I want Jeremy Vale dead.
That one still sits there, honest as sin.
But for the first time since the package, it ain’t the loudest thing in me.
That scares me too.
Legend follows me outside while Wildcat brings the printed route. The sky is gray and low, wind cutting across the yard. Widowmaker waits near the porch, black and impatient. I check her out of habit. Tires. Bags. Fuel. Straps. She is ready because she is always ready.
I am not.
Too bad.