Chapter 11: Sawdust

Alexis's POV

June's phone buzzed on the Hollow's bar, and she held it up to my face.

It was a video, ten minutes long.

I watched the first minute standing at the bar with my hand over my mouth.

I watched Terrence hit Talon in the stomach.

Then I got in the Honda.

He was sitting on the tailgate of his truck in the shop yard when I pulled up.

A recipe tin sat on his knee.

His lip was split, and one eye was swelling shut.

"Don't," he said, before I'd closed the car door. "It looks worse than it is."

"You let him do that."

"I did."

"You went there on purpose."

"I went for your passport." He held out the tin. "And this."

I took it.

It was my mother's, red with a worn gold rim, with her handwriting on every card inside.

I hadn't touched it in five years.

My eyes blurred.

"Get inside," I said, and my voice shook with rage. "Get inside right now. I'm cleaning that."

He let me.

In the shop I sat him on the workbench under the bright light and found the first aid kit.

He held perfectly still while I cleaned the cut on his lip.

"You could have fought back," I said.

"Then he wins."

"You could have called me."

"Then you'd have come."

"Yes!"

"That's why I didn't," Talon said.

I pressed the gauze harder than I should have, and he winced and did not move his head.

"He said that if you file for divorce, he calls the note on the land."

My hand stopped.

"What note?"

"His father held it. Terrence holds it now."

"On the Ridge?"

"Yes. Dane owes it. If Terrence calls it, he has thirty days to pay it all or lose the land."

I put the gauze down.

The whole thing came into the shop with us and sat down.

The first Friday.

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