Page 44 of Priest

“Family needs to remain in the waiting area,” the nurse says. “You can’t go back there unless a physician brings you.”

Sadie’s jaw tightens. “I’m with him.”

“Then he can come get you.”

The nurse says it calmly, like the answer is settled. Sadie’s pulse jumps with the urge to call out, to force Priest to turn and acknowledge her in front of everyone, but that would look desperate. Worse, it would look strange. The club is already watching too much tonight.

So she steps back.

She returns to her seat with her spine straight and her expression arranged into something mild. Inside, her thoughts claw at the closed doors. Where did he take her? What is he saying? How close is she standing? Blue always had that infuriating way of looking at him like she could challenge him and survive it. Sadie remembers it now with fresh dislike, sharper because Priest had followed her like he remembered it too.

Minutes drag.

When Priest finally comes back through the doors, something about him has changed. His stride is still hard, his jaw still set, but his eyes have that distant, struck look men get when something lands too deep for blood to show. Sadie is on her feet before she can stop herself, moving toward him with the softest voice she can manage.

“Priest, sugar?”

The word slips out too sweet, too old. A foolish reach back toward who she used to be with him, toward a time when pet names and pretty smiles had gotten her what she wanted. She knows it the second his head turns.

The look on his face knocks the breath out of her.

“Everything okay with Deacon?” she asks quickly, shifting to concern because concern is safer. “Is he still stable?”

“Yeah,” he says. “He’s good. As long as he makes it through the night.”

Relief flashes through her, real enough to loosen her shoulders for half a second. Then his expression hardens again.

“And I told you to stop calling me that.”

Her stomach drops.

“I ain’t no one’s sugar,” he adds, voice cutting colder. “Least of all yours.”

The room feels it. Brothers straighten. Conversations stall. Sadie keeps her smile in place while humiliation burns under her skin. It was a slip. A stupid one. She had tried too hard to pull his attention back, to sound like the girl he once let close, and he had cut her down in front of everyone for it.

“I didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” she says, lifting one hand in a small, harmless gesture while she tries to pull the moment back under control. “It’s just a general endearment. Something I’d call anyone who was upset.”

From the far wall, Ghost’s voice slides out dry and low. “Never called me Sugar.”

For a second, Sadie feels the room shift in a way she hates. Ghost is tucked near the corner, hood up under his cut, eyes down like he never said a damn thing, but everyone hears him. Worse than that, Priest hears him. His head turns, and despite the blood on him, despite Deacon lying somewhere behind hospital doors, the corner of his mouth pulls.

“Lucky you,” Priest says.

Ghost gives the smallest shrug. “Blessed, apparently.”

A rough sound breaks from someone near the chairs. Not a full laugh, but close enough to loosen the waiting room by a notch. Sadie stands there with heat crawling up her throat, watching Ghost do with five quiet words what she has been trying to do all night. He eases something in Priest. Gives him room to breathe. Makes the edge in him shift instead of sharpen.

It should be nothing. Just Ghost being Ghost, quiet and strange and too sharp when he decides to open his mouth.

But it lands under Sadie’s skin anyway.

Because Priest smirks at him. Because the room lets Ghost have it. Because Sadie’s touch, her worry, her softness, all of it had only made Priest pull farther away, and Ghost mutters one little comment from the corner and gets the version of Priest she has been reaching for since the ambulance bay doors opened.

She keeps her smile in place, but it feels thin now. Brittle.

Then Priest turns away from her entirely.

“Listen up, assholes.”