Page 16 of Mischief

Because they already know about her.

They know her name, her shop, where she sleeps, and who she sleeps with.

The only thing standing between Tindra and the exact horror this club was built on the ashes of is me, a lying prospect with a stolen name and two cracked ribs, who can't tell his brothers the truth without handing them a reason to kill him, and can't stay silent without handing my father a daughter to sell.

Marit or Tindra. Not both. Never both.

I get back on the bike.

I ride south into the heat that won't reach me, toward a locked door I'll finally be able to walk through, and I start building the lie I'll tell the only person I've never wanted to lie to.

CHAPTER THREE

Tindra

Four days is a long time to pour coffee for strangers and pretend your whole body isn't listening for a motorcycle.

I run the shop on caffeine and stubbornness, because the shop doesn't care that my chest is tight from the moment I wake up.

The morning rush doesn't care.

The new espresso machine that fogs up on humid days and the milk order that comes in short and Kayla, who's finally stopped fearing the group head, none of it cares that the man I love rode off in a direction he wouldn't name with a face like he was going to war.

So I work. Work is what I reach for instead of falling apart.

Better than sitting with my own head, which has been a bad place to be all week.

It's the middle of the day when I notice the man by the window.

He's not doing anything. That's what snags on me.

He's got a black coffee he's not drinking and a phone he's not looking at, and he's taking up a two-top by the window like he's waiting for someone who's never going to show.

Mid-forties, maybe.

Windbreaker too heavy for June.

He doesn't read, doesn't scroll, doesn't do any of the small human things people do when they're alone in a coffee shop.

He watches the room.

I catch his eyes twice, and both times they slide off me easy, unbothered, a man with nowhere to be.

The second time I clock that there's a woman two tables over doing the same nothing, a to-go cup gone cold in front of her, and when the man finally leaves she stays another ten minutes and then she leaves too.

Neither of them buys anything else, and both of them are gone by the time I think to wonder why my skin's crawling.

Probably nothing. New shop, curious foot traffic, everybody's a first-timer in the first weeks.

I tell myself that, the way I've been telling myself things since Bodul left.

I wipe down their table and I move on, and I don't mention it to anyone because there's nothing to mention.

Sophie catches me staring at the door around close.

"He'll be back when he's back," she says, stacking chairs, not looking at me. "Whatever it is. He's a big boy on a big bike."

"I know." I keep wiping down a counter that's already clean.