Peanut lifts her chin and nudges me again, stubborn and sweet and determined.
I swallow hard. “Ok. Ok. I’m breathing. You win.” Peanut bumps my chin again and darts out of my arms, scrambling toward the table.
I follow, finding Nadia by the merch tables, stacking T-shirts. “Tell me I’m making up problems.”
She looks at my face, then at Tiny, then back. “I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you you’re not alone in them.”
“I don’t want to be the woman who picks a fight because she’s scared.”
“Then don’t pick a fight. Ask a question.”
“He didn’t answer the first one.”
“Ask again. In a place where he can’t look away.” Nadia’s right. I hate that she’s right. I hug her tightly, and she hugs back.
When I look up, Tiny’s already watching me from across the lot. Not the guarded scan. The other look. The one he saves for exactly three people and a cat.
He crosses the distance in ten long strides, stops just close enough that only I can hear. “Are we okay?”
“We could be,” I say, and it comes out thinner than I mean.
His eyes search mine. “Tell me what you need.”
“Truth,” I whisper. “All of it.”
He nods once. “Tonight.”
I want to saynow,but Red waves him over. Capone lifts two fingers, meaning club business, and the moment closes like a door. Tiny squeezes my hand before he goes. It should help, but it doesn’t.
Nadia bumps me with her hip. “He said tonight.”
“I’ve heard that word before,” I mutter.
“Then hold him to it,” Nadia demands.
I exhale. “Yeah.”
At sunset, the last of the chairs clatter into the van. Bones spins Nina in a ridiculous victory dance while she squeals. Dagger thanks Ms. Emerson for “making him legitimate,” and she replies, dryly, “Temporarily.” He looks thrilled by the sentence structure alone.
Jez announces the raffle winners and somehow also sells three more tickets after the drawing. Trigger argues with Red about whether a speaker can be both “vintage” and “broken.” Capone stands at the top of the steps, counting.
When Tiny looks toward the gate like he hears something the rest of us don’t, the old ache knocks again. The part of me that wants to trust him is finally finding its footing. The part that doesn’t has always known how to run.
We load the last crate. As the lot empties, heat bleeds out of the asphalt. Peanut appears out of nowhere, rubs her face against my ankle, claiming me like she always does. I scoop her up and press my mouth to her fur.
“For me,” I say into the quiet, the promise I made in the mirror. “Not for him.”
Across the yard, Tiny’s head tips like he caught the whisper. He gives me that small, private smile and taps his chest once,here, and for a breath, the doubt loosens.
I want to believe him. Tonight decides if that thread holds or snaps.
12
TINY
The first thing I learned as a kid was that when someone you care about flinches from you, you don’t get to pretend you didn’t see it. And Syvannah flinched. Not big. Not obvious. Just the smallest jerk backward when my fingers brushed her arm after Church that afternoon. Anyone else would’ve missed it. I didn’t.
Now it’s hours later, close to two a.m., and I’m hiding in the garage like a coward. All the spectators for the dance recital that the Royal Dancers put on have left, and the brothers are spread thin across the compound. Capone running recon plans, Trigger muttering calculations over his ledger, and Dagger sharpening a blade with the patience of a saint with murder in his heart. Blayze, Law Dog, Torch, Derange, Aftermath, and Red are all at their homes spread across the compound, getting in much needed family time. The prospects, along with Bones and Pretty Playboy, are in the clubhouse either nursing a beer or getting laid.