Page 69
A beginning.
The food arrived like a declaration of war.
Mary Sue came through the kitchen door carrying two plates, moving through the lunch rush with no wasted motion or hesitation. She set the first one in front of Sage: a monster of a burger, hickory-smoked and charred at the edges, piled high with crisp lettuce, ripe tomato, onion, pickles, and a glistening house-made sauce that caused Sage’s mouth to flood instantly. Golden fries spilled over the side. A little cup of fresh fruit — strawberries, blueberries, melon — sat beside it like Mary Sue had taken one look at the girl and decided vitamins were non-negotiable.
"Eat up, baby girl," Mary Sue said.
She set the same in front of Cal, kissed his cheek and swept back into the controlled chaos of the lunch rush without breaking stride.
Sage stared at the burger.
Her stomach let out an embarrassing growl. She could feel her whole body leaning toward it, every cell zeroing in on that smoky, salty, perfect smell like it was salvation on a plate.
She reached for it.
Cal cleared his throat.
She stopped. Looked at him. He was sitting across the booth with his hands on the table, palms up, those scarred enormous hands open and waiting in the same position he'd held last night and this morning.
"What?" she said.
He just looked at her. Patient.
"Again?" The exasperation was real. "What, every meal? Is this gonna be a thing now?"
He waited. Hands open.
Something flickered behind her ribs — not the soft, new warmth Cal kept coaxing to life, but the older thing. The cold one. The thing that lived in the damp basement of her, chained to the pipes, fed on silence and shame.
If there’s a God, I’ve got nothing to say to Him.
The thought landed sharp, angry, and certain.
She let it come because fighting it only made the claws sink deeper. Clearly He had nothing to say to her either. Not when she was twelve, face buried in a pillow that smelled like sweat and fear, small hands fisting the sheets while her mouth shaped the same broken prayer every single night: please God please make him stop please — until the words wore smooth as dark endless planes of glass reflecting her own tears. The silence on the other end taught her the truth. It wasn’t God thinking it over. It was just… nothing.
She was this close to pulling away when she saw his eyes. Grey, kind, just as endless as those dark places. She hesitated and then shoved the pain down hard, the way she always did, jamming it back into the dark before it could crawl any farther up her throat.
Cal was still waiting.
Patient as a lava flow and just as quietly destructive — though he wouldn’t know it. Couldn’t. The kind of destruction he was working on her didn’t leave bruises on the outside. It slipped through the cracks in her walls like warm fingers, prying open doors she’d nailed shut years ago, all without force. Just open scarred palms and a kind of grace she hadn’t earned and damn sure hadn’t asked for.
She looked at his hands. At the thick white scars crossing his knuckles, at the broad, steady palms that had never grabbed, never taken. Hands that prayed before meals as if talking to God was the simplest thing in the world — as if the silence on the other end spoke back to him in a language she’d never been given.
She paused as she looked into his eyes.
Maybe it did.
"Finnne," she said resigned.
She put her hands in his. They disappeared — swallowed completely, her chapped fingers and bitten nails lost inside the warm, rough enormity of his grip. "But only because you're cute in a—" She scrunched her face, dropped her voice to a ridiculous baritone. "Oh, hey, look at me, I'm a bear, I can lift houses, rawwww.”
Something happened to his face.
Small. Fast. A hairline fracture in all that mountain-man composure. The corner of his mouth twitched upward, those steel-gray eyes crinkled at the edges, and then a sound slipped out of him she’d never heard before — short, low, involuntary.
A laugh.
Not a big one. Just a quick rush of breath through his nose and a sudden flash of something bright and alive behind those grey eyes — there and gone in a heartbeat, like lightning caught between pine branches.
