Page 5 of Priest

For a second, the words don’t register. Then they do, and anger surges hot enough to burn through the first edge of panic. The hell we are. My thumbs fly over the screen.

Priest: You don’t get to decide that.

Priest: Where are you?

Priest: Bluebell.

The last message doesn’t deliver.

Blocked.

I stare at the screen, breathing slow through my nose, forcing control back into my bones. She blocked me. That isn’t Bluebell making noise for attention. That isn’t drama. She doesn’t issue ultimatums and wait around to see who chases. She’s the type that walks when she’s done, and she hasn’t walked from me before because I haven’t given her a reason to.

The memory hits without warning, sharp enough to make the parking lot fade around the edges. The first time I saw her, she was sitting at The Bar with a group of girlfriends, drink untouched in front of her, laughing in a way that didn’t reach her eyes. Like she was performing happiness for the room because silence would’ve asked too much of her. Then her gaze caught mine across the noise, deep indigo and too honest for a place like that, full of a sorrow she was trying like hell to hide.

I didn’t know her name yet. Didn’t need to. Something in me had already given her one.

When her friends dragged her onto the dance floor, something in me snapped. I followed without thinking, sliding up behind her and settling my hands on her hips like they belonged there. She fit against me too easy, too perfect, like my body recognized hers before my head caught up.

I told her my rules that night. One night only. I’d take her back to the clubhouse, bring her back to The Bar in the morning, and drop her at her car. No expectations. No attachments. She agreed without hesitation, and the sex was the best I’ve ever had.

A week later, I saw her again. Same bar, same friends, balloons tied to chairs for some kind of engagement celebration. A guy slid up behind her, hands acting familiar, and I lost it. I stepped in, sent him on his way without asking, then told Bluebell the new rules. I call. She doesn’t. We meet at The Bar. She doesn’t stay overnight. When I say it ends, it ends.

She didn’t argue or push. She said she wasn’t interested in settling down anyway, that she had a job that kept her busy and needed her focus. She only wanted something on the side that helped her relax. I believed her.

Then I got tired one night and told her to stay, said I’d take her back in the morning. After that, I texted first, just once, just to check in while I was on a run. Once became more. More became all the time. Somewhere in there, the rules I broke quietly stopped being rules and started being excuses.

I grab my cut from the back of a chair in my office and shrug it on. Deacon catches my eye immediately.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“She left,” I say.

His brows knit. “Blue?”

I nod once.

“That don’t sound right.”

“No,” I agree. “It doesn’t.”

“Are you thinkin’ somethin’ happened to her?” he asks, immediately on alert.

“Nah, she texted. This one is on me, I think.” I sigh, dragging a hand through my hair.

I don’t stay for more questions. I don’t stay for Sadie’s worried looks or the way the room feels slightly off now, like something structural cracked while nobody was paying attention.

I ride hard, engine snarling beneath me, thoughts racing faster than the road. I tell myself I’ll go to her place, straighten this out, remind her who she’s dealing with, but then reality lands. I don’t know where she lives. I never asked.

I always brought her to me. We met at The Bar, left her car there, and came to the clubhouse on my bike. Safer that way. Cleaner. No attachments.

By the time I circle back, the anger has burned down into something colder. I pace my room, replaying the last month like a bad surveillance reel, Sadie showing up more, Bluebell going quiet, that look on her face lately, watchful and guarded. I missed it. I missed her pulling away because I assumed she wouldn’t, because I assumed she’d stay inside the space I gave her.

The thought curls something sharp and unfamiliar in my chest.

Mine.

I don’t sleep. By morning, the word temporary tastes like ash, and control feels like a lie I built carefully enough to live inside until it cracked.