Chapter 17 — Weird
1132 Words
Marlowe
Nova laughed so hard at my recounting of Grant's exit that she nearly fell off the workbench, which felt like an overreaction right up until I remembered how close the whole thing had actually come to disaster.
"Wait." She wiped her eyes, still catching her breath. "Wait, wait. He looked right at you. Called you weird. And then said—" she dissolved into laughter again, "—said his cousin's *prettier* than you?"
"I'm aware of how funny it is. I lived it."
"I would have died. On the spot. Right there in the garage." She finally got herself under control, mostly, sagging back against the bench with a grin that hadn't fully faded. "Okay but seriously, that's the closest call yet, right? Like, actual blood family standing three feet away and drunk enough to say anything?"
"Closest so far." I didn't love saying it out loud, like naming the danger made it realer than it already was. "I don't know how many more of those I get before my luck runs out."
"Your luck's not running anything. You are. You handled that perfectly." She bumped my shoulder, easy and certain in the way she always was about things I couldn't quite believe yet myself. "Anyway. Speaking of people who won't leave well enough alone — Reid cornered me again this morning."
That got my full attention fast. "What did he want?"
"Same as always. Fishing." She rolled her eyes, entirely unbothered by the memory. "Asked all casual where you were from, who your people were, whether I'd ever met your family. Very smooth about it. Very *definitely not suspicious at all.*"
"What did you tell him?"
"Nothing." She said it simply, without drama, like the answer had never been in question. "I don't know anything real to tell him anyway, and even if I did — not his business. I told him you keep to yourself, which is true, and that's it."
I felt something loosen in my chest, small but real, the particular relief of being protected by someone who didn't even fully understand what she was protecting.
"Thank you," I said, and meant it more than the two words could really carry.
"Don't thank me. Just tell me eventually, whatever it is." She said it lightly, but there was something underneath it, patient and a little hopeful, that made my throat go tight. "When you're ready. Not before. I'm not Reid. I'm not going to go digging."
---
I found out how close that digging had actually gotten later that evening, entirely by accident, walking past the supply shed with an armful of parts and catching Reid's voice on the other side of the wall before I could announce myself.
"—not stupid, Bear. Something's off about him. The paperwork's off. The reactions are off. King's off, for God's sake, and he's never off about anything."
"You've got nothing." Bear's voice, low, unimpressed. "Suspicion isn't proof, kid. You want to accuse a fellow prospect of something, you'd better walk in here with more than a bad feeling."
"I'll get more."
"You'd better be careful how you go about getting it." Something sharper in Bear's tone now, a warning wrapped inside advice. "This club doesn't love men who go digging in other men's business without cause. Learn that quick, or learn it the hard way."
A pause. Then Reid, quieter, more certain than I wanted him to sound: "I'll find another way in. There's always another way in, if you're patient enough."
I stood frozen on the other side of that wall, parts biting into my arms, and understood with total clarity exactly what kind of danger I was actually dealing with. Not loud. Not reckless. Patient, methodical, willing to wait as long as it took — the kind of danger that didn't announce itself with a note under a boot heel, but with silence, and time, and the terrible certainty that eventually, silence and time won against anyone hiding something big enough to matter.
I didn't move until I heard both of them walk off in opposite directions. Then I set the parts down carefully, because my hands had started shaking too much to trust them with anything breakable, and gave myself exactly one minute to be afraid before I made myself stop.
One minute. That was all I could spare. Reid Kastellan was patient.
I was going to have to be faster.
---
### Alaric
Bear found me in my office that night and didn't bother sitting down before he started talking, which told me whatever he'd come to say, he wanted it said fast and out of the way.
"Kastellan's still digging."
"Figured he would be." I didn't look up from the paperwork I wasn't actually reading. "Told him to stop."
"Telling Reid Kastellan to stop is like telling a dog not to smell something interesting." Bear crossed his arms, watching me with the particular patience of a man who'd known me long enough to see straight through whatever I wasn't saying. "You want my advice?"
"Not really."
"Getting it anyway." He never did wait for permission, which was half of why I trusted him more than anyone else in this club. "Whatever you're protecting — and don't tell me it's nothing, King, I've known you twelve years — you're not going to protect it by hoping Reid gets bored. Men like him don't get bored. They get thorough."
*[He's right,]* Rook said, quiet, none of his usual banter in it. *[You know he's right.]*
*I know.*
*[So do something about it. Waiting's not a plan. Waiting's just fear wearing a patient face.]*
*And what exactly do you suggest, given that "something" involves telling my own club to break a law that's stood since before either of us was born?*
Rook didn't have an easy answer for that. Neither, apparently, did I.
"I'll handle Kastellan," I told Bear, which was true in the narrowest, least useful sense of the word.
"Handle him how?"
"However I need to."
Bear studied me a long moment, weighing something, and whatever he found in my face made him nod once, short, and let the subject drop — for tonight, at least, which was as much mercy as I could reasonably ask for.
*[He's not going to let this go forever,]* Rook said, once Bear had gone. *[Neither is Kastellan. You're running out of road, and you know it.]*
*I know that too.*
*[Then stop telling yourself you've got time you don't have.]*
I didn't answer him. I sat there a long while instead, staring at paperwork I still wasn't reading, doing the math on exactly how much longer I could keep buying silence before someone — Reid, the club, my own conscience — finally called in the debt.
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