Morning came gray through Clover's blinds, and Lainey had been awake for an hour already.
The couch was lumpy, the cat had claimed her feet, and her wrist wore a purple ring where Vernon's fingers had been.
Clover: You don't have to go back there today, you know. The couch doesn't charge rent.
Lainey: I have work tonight. And I have to go home first.
Clover: Shit, look at your wrist. It's gone all colors. You keep saying home like it's a real place.
Clover followed her all the way back to the grocery lot and waited until the engine turned over, like she didn't trust it.
Clover: Door's open. Any hour, any reason. I mean it, Lainey.
Lainey nodded, and something in her chest stretched toward that door before she could stop it, wanting it and resenting it in the same breath.
Her mother was on the front step with her purse in her lap, and Lainey's stomach dropped before she even parked.
Fuck. Not today.
Charlene: You're late, and I know exactly where you were. Open the door.
Charlene: I talked to Vernon this morning. He's sorry. He wants to make it right.
Charlene: So pack a bag. You're moving home, and you're giving him another chance.
She said it like a weather report. Not a question, not a favor, just the way things were going to be.
Lainey: No.
Charlene: Don't you dare say no to me.
Lainey: Then I'll say it twice. No. I'm not moving back, and I'm not touching that bastard again.
Charlene: That man bought your groceries when you had nothing. He drove you to work when your car wouldn't start.
Lainey: He put me against a wall in the grocery lot yesterday. Ask him about that.
Her mother's mouth pressed into a flat line, and she did not look surprised. That was the part that hurt.
Charlene: He told me. He said you've been flapping your mouth about the Alpha.
Charlene: Do you have any idea what that costs this family?
At the word Alpha her heart jumped, stupid and hot, and she hated her own body for it.
Charlene: Sit down.
It wasn't loud. It slid into her like a cold hand closing around her spine, and her knees simply gave.
The chair hit the backs of her legs. She was sitting before she could tell her body no.
Her arms went heavy and her tongue went thick, and the room pulled back like a picture hung on the wrong wall.
Shame came up from her stomach, hot and slow. Twenty-four years old, and she could not stand up off a kitchen chair.
Charlene: There. That's better.
Charlene: Friday you'll come home. You'll sit at my table and be civil to that man, and one day you'll thank me.
Charlene: You make everything so hard. Rafferty never made it hard.
The floor tilted. Lainey stared at a crack in the tile and did not let herself cry.
Sensation crept back into her fingers slowly, prickling and stubborn, until she could curl them around the chair arm.
Lainey: Don't you ever do that to me again. I swear to God.
Charlene: Do what? You were hysterical. I settled you.
The door clicked shut. Lainey sat with her hands on her knees, breathing like she'd climbed the ridge road on foot.
She had said no out loud, twice, and it hadn't done one damn thing.
She thought about a man in a black coat telling her stubborn wasn't weak, and her eyes stung for a whole different reason.
Her phone buzzed. Clover, a blurry picture of the ginger cat, and three words. Door stays open.
Lainey typed ok and held the phone in both hands like it was something warm.
Outside, the clouds were piling up black over the ridge, and her shift started in four hours.