Page 2 of Doc's Obsession
That was three weeks ago. The cash started to run out in nine days. My cards stopped working on day four, which was faster than I’d expected and told me everything about how quickly my parents could move when their property went missing. My phone lasted until day six, when I pulled the SIM card out in a gas station bathroom in Wyoming because I didn’t know what was on it and who could use it to find me.
I’d ended up in Forsaken, Montana, because my car needed gas and there was a sign for the town and it felt far enough from Denver that I could breathe for the first time since I’d left that bathroom floor.
Angel’s Rest was hiring. Cash, daily, no references required. The woman who ran the bar, Bree had taken one look at me and said, “Can you carry a tray?”
“Yes,” I’d said. Which was technically true. I could carry a tray. I just couldn’t carry one with anything on it.
“Good enough,” Bree had said. “Start tonight.”
I’d started that night. And every night since, I’d proved that my confidence in tray-carrying had been wildly misplaced. I couldn’t work the till, couldn’t pour a beer without half of it being foam, couldn’t remember which brother drank what, and couldn’t make it through a single shift without breaking something. The bar was loud, rough, full of men who moved through the world like they owned it, and I navigated it the way a tourist navigates a foreign city. Badly, but with enthusiasm.
And for reasons I genuinely couldn’t explain, they let me.
“Here.” Bree appeared beside me with a dustpan and a bar towel, already crouching. She swept up the glass while I mopped beer off the floor, both of us working fast. “You okay?”
“Fine. Mortified, but fine.”
“Don’t be. Razor broke a whole shelf of top-shelf bourbon his first week prospecting. Like, the actual shelf. Ripped it right off the wall.”
“That makes me feel marginally better.”
She grinned. “It should. That was six hundred dollars’ worth of whiskey. You’re still in the minor leagues.”
I managed a laugh. A real one, the kind that surprised me every time it happened because I wasn’t used to the sound of it yet. Not this version. Not the unscripted one that came up from somewhere unclenched.
Bree had that effect. She was warm without being careful about it, a woman who touched your arm when she talked to you and it didn’t feel like a strategy. She’d shown me how to close out a tab, how to read a room for who was getting too drunk, how to handle the brothers when they got rowdy. She’d given me shifts, patience, a constant supply of encouragement that didn’t feel earned but I held onto anyway.
She was watching me now with something sharper than her usual warmth.
“You eating tonight?” she asked. Casual. Like she was making conversation.
“I had something earlier.”
“Earlier when?”
“Earlier.” I didn’t look at her. “I’m fine, Bree.”
She let it go. That was the thing about Bree. She noticed everything and pushed nothing. It was so different from what I was used to that it made my throat tight every time.
I got the replacement drinks. Delivered them without incident, which felt like a victory worth celebrating. Took two more orders, got one of them right on the first try. The bar was filling up, the Friday-night crowd settling in. Locals at the counter, passing bikers and truckers and brothers from the Forsaken Angels, The club owned this place.
I was learning the rhythm. Slowly, badly, but learning. The muscle memory of a place that ran on cash, volume, and the gravitational pull of men who wore leather and patches and moved through the room like they were the architecture.
I’d never been anywhere like this. My whole life had been white tablecloths, wine pairings, rooms where people spoke in modulated tones about nothing that mattered. This was loud, rough, real. The floor was sticky. The men swore constantly, drank like it was competitive, laughed in a way that rattled the windows. And underneath all of it, a current that ran deeper than the noise. Something solid. Like the ground was more stable here than anywhere else I’d ever stood.
I felt him watching me before I turned around.
He was at the end of the bar. The same seat he’d been in every night this week, though I hadn’t put that together until right now. Quiet, settled, a beer in front of him that he drank slowly. He wasn’t part of the noise. The brothers around him were loud, animated, taking up space the way they all did, but he sat in the middle of it like a still point.
Doc. That was what they called him. I didn’t know his real name. I didn’t know any of their real names. They were all road names, patches and a shorthand that came from years of shared history I wasn’t part of.
He was older than me. All of them were, but I noticed it with him. Late thirties, maybe forty. Dark hair, cut short, the kind of face that had seen enough weather and years to look interesting rather than young. His hands were wrapped around his beer, steady, capable. Hands that looked like they knew what they were doing whether they were holding a glass or fixing something broken.
Every night this week, he’d been there. Watching the room. Watching the brothers. Watching me.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
The men in my mother’s world watched too, but it was different. Appraising. Calculating. Running numbers on what you were worth and whether the investment would pay off. Gregory Ashford had watched me the way you’d watch a stock ticker. Peter Whitfield had watched my body like he’d already bought it and was deciding when to collect.
