Page 23 of Obsession
Beneath that, in a much looser hand, someone else has added Demo banned from making bacon unsupervised, with a second note under it reading fire hazard in all caps.
I’m standing there staring at the board when a woman’s voice says, “He really is, too. Sweet kid, but give him a skillet and he turns breakfast into a federal incident.”
I turn too quickly, my body punishing me for it with a dull pull through my hips and thighs. The woman in the doorway notices. She’s much older, maybe even older than my father, dark hair crowded around her face.
Unlike the other members, she seems much more relaxed, a laundry basket against one hip, wearing an oversized Obsidian sweatshirt with sleeves shoved to her elbows.
“You’re Oisín,” she states. “I’m Tally.” She steps past me as if the kitchen belongs to her more than it belongs to the club, sets the basket on a chair, and reaches into the cabinet for two mugs. “Coffee’s in the pot unless Bricks got there first. If he did, it’ll taste like burnt tar and a bad childhood.”
I blink at her. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Pour coffee?” She glances over her shoulder. “I’ve been pouring coffee for killers, idiots, and men with untreated childhood wounds since before you were old enough to shave, sweetheart. You’re not going to be the one who makes it awkward.”
A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it, an almost painful thing from disuse. Tally smiles as if she heard exactly what it cost me and has the decency not to mention it. She fills both mugs, adds cream to one, then pauses with her hand on the sugar jar.
“You take it sweet, black, or somewhere in the middle?”
“Cream is fine. No sugar, thank you.”
“Polite,” she says, sliding the mug toward me. “That’ll scare them more than if you came in swinging.”
I wrap both hands around the cup even though it’s too hot. The warmth gives me something to hold that isn’t myself. “I think I’ve already scared them.”
“Honey, Saint walking in with you instead of Varina scared them. You could’ve stood there reciting street names and gotten the same looks.” She leans against the counter with her own mug and studies me openly, but there’s no hunger in it, no agenda I can feel pressing behind her eyes. “You sleep?”
I nearly choke on the coffee. “What?”
“I’m not asking for details.” Her brows rise. “I’ve got eyes, and this place has walls thin enough to ruin a woman’s peace if she lets it. I’m asking whether you slept.”
“A little.”
“That means no.” She sets her mug down and opens the refrigerator. “Did you eat after?”
I don’t answer fast enough.
Tally makes a sound in her throat that says more than an entire lecture would have. “Sit down.”
“I’m not really hungry.”
“Oisín.” She says my name with a firmness that doesn’t bruise. “Sit down before you fall down and make these men feel useful.”
For some reason, that works. I sit at the island while she pulls out eggs, butter, and a wrapped stack of tortillas. She doesn’t fuss over me, soften her voice into pity, or even ask whether I’m all right in the hollow way people do when they’d preferthe answer to be simple. She just cooks. It’s such an ordinary kindness that I don’t know where to put it.
Hostility has rules. Cruelty has patterns. Kindness without a hook feels like someone opening a door in a room I didn’t know had one.
“Saint around?” she asks, cracking eggs into a bowl.
“I don’t know.”
“You’ll get used to that.”
“To not knowing where he is?”
“To him disappearing and expecting the building to remember he still controls everything.” She whisks the eggs hard enough to make the bracelet on her wrist click against the bowl. “He had a warehouse issue before sunrise. Moth came through looking like someone had personally insulted the concept of logistics, so I’m guessing it wasn’t small.”
“Moth always looks like that.” I say ‘always’ but I only met him once. Yet, watching him during that entire meeting, I had a feeling that was a permanent emotion on his face.
Tally points the fork at me. “See? Observant. That’s why half the men out there are nervous.”
