Page 25 of Rune’s Solace

Amateur shit.

I dragged my eyes off them and checked the street. Cars. Corners. Storefronts. Faces. Same woman with the dog I’d seen yesterday. Delivery truck making its second pass. Nothing wrong.

Thirty seconds later I was looking at her again.

Some watchdog.

The muffin came on the third day.

I saw Sawyer clock me from across the street. He’d been doing it since the first morning, both of them had, because there wasn’t much hiding a bike and six-plus feet of patched biker sitting on it for hours at a time, but this time the kid got a look on his face I didn’t like. Happy. Pleased with himself. Then he stood up from their table with a little white bag in his hand.

Amy said something. He grinned. She said something else, and the grin disappeared.

Kid came across the street anyway.

Right at me.

I ran the possibilities before he hit the curb because that’s what you do, and none of them came back threat. No tension in the shoulders, no hand buried in a pocket, no second man moving with him, nothing but a skinny nineteen-year-old carrying a bakery bag and enough confidence to walk straight up to a man twice his size who’d been glaring at him for days.

Which somehow made it worse.

“Morning,” he said, grinning up at me. “You’ve been out here a while. Every day, actually. I figure whatever this is, it’s a long shift.”

He held out the bag.

“Blueberry. They’re the good ones here.”

I looked at the bag. Looked at him. Did not look at Amy. “I’m alright.”

“Yeah, that’s not really how this works.” He shook the bag once. “Full disclosure, my girl specifically told me not to come over here, so this is already costing me, but I feed people. It’s not a choice. It’s a condition.”

My girl.

There it was.

Two little words and every bad instinct I owned sat up.

My eyes went past him before I could stop them, straight across the street to Amy sitting at that table watching us with one hand already halfway over her mouth.

His girl.

Fuck that.

Thought came fast and ugly, and I killed it just as fast. Wasn’t mine to fuck anything. I’d seen to that.

Sawyer was still talking. “You’ve been sitting out here since breakfast looking like Motorcycle Batman and I’m starting to feel responsible for you.” He pushed the bag closer. “Blueberry. Take it.”

I stared at him. Motorcycle fucking Batman. I almost respected it.

“Kid—”

“Take the muffin. Please. If I bring it back, she gets to be right, and she’s already unbearable with unverified confidence. I cannot give her evidence.”

Amy was still watching us, so I took the goddamn muffin.

What else was I going to do? Making a thing of it meant standing there arguing with him longer, and every extra second was another second I had to look at the hand that had been holding hers ten minutes ago and remember exactly where I’d wanted to put that hand.

“Thanks,” I said.