I look at the photo on the license. Same face. Same scars. Same eyes. But someone different underneath.
“There’s one more thing,” the processor says. She slides a small box across the table.
I open it.
Inside: a simple ring. Silver. Unadorned.
“What’s this?”
“Marshal Bennett requested it be included with your documents.” She checks her paperwork. “He said you’d know what it was for.”
Saul bought me a ring.
I close the box. Put it in my pocket. Feel the weight of it against my leg.
“Thank you,” I manage.
She nods. Stamps something. Slides more papers toward me.
“Welcome to your new life, Mr. Carter.”
The drive to Colorado takes fourteen hours.
I could have flown. Saul offered to arrange it. But I wanted the time. The space. The miles of highway between who I was and who I’m trying to become.
I think about the first time I saw her.
In the restaurant. Assessing if she was a threat. Then, I thought she was fragile. Breakable. Someone who needed protecting.
I was wrong. She’s the strongest person I’ve ever met. Strong enough to testify, to disappear, to rebuild herself from nothing. Strong enough to love three broken men and believe we’re worth it.
I think about the first time I kissed her. Against her apartment wall, angry and desperate, convinced I was making a mistake I couldn’t take back. She tasted like sugar cookies and something else I couldn’t name.
Later, I realized what it was.
Hope.
She tasted like hope.
I think about the last time I saw her. The promise I’d be back.
We found a way. And now I’m driving toward it with a ring in my pocket and a new name and no idea what I’m going to say when I see her.
The Blue Door is exactly how I remember it.
Small. Cozy. The kind of place that smells like butter and sugar and everything good in the world.
I park across the street. Sit there for ten minutes, trying to remember how to breathe.
I testified against the most dangerous man I’ve ever known. And can’t walk into a bakery?
I get out of the car.
The bell over the door chimes when I walk in. The sound is cheerful, welcoming, completely at odds with the terror clawing at my chest.
She’s behind the counter.
Flour on her apron, the teal one, Dario’s gift. Hair pulled back. Laughing at something a customer just said.
