I Set the Sheets on Fire, Then the Clubhouse novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Barn

I took him to the barn because the house was full of sleeping women.

Pearl kept a lantern and a first-aid tin on a nail inside the door.

Cade sat on a hay bale and held out his left hand without being asked.

I peeled the gauze.

The blister had torn open again, and fresh blood ran into the creases of his palm.

"Tell me," I said.

"Boone ordered it," he said.

"Ordered what?"

"The silence. Day one, I went to him. Three weeks ago, I told him Dario was bringing a woman into your apartment and I wasn't going to watch it."

I kept cleaning.

"He said the club comes first," Cade said. "He said it was a family matter and a VP's marriage isn't the road captain's business."

"And you said okay."

"I said no. I went back a week later and said no again. Both times he told me if I opened my mouth to you, I'd lose my patch."

"So you kept your patch."

"For three weeks I did."

His voice was level.

"Tonight I walked into church and told him I'd said it to you on the porch already, in every way but words," he said. "He asked for the patch and I put it on the table."

I set down the gauze.

It was the thing I had wanted all week, a man who'd paid, and it did not feel the way I thought.

"You want credit," I said.

"No."

"Because three weeks of coffee on my counter doesn't cost a leather patch."

"No, it doesn't," Cade said.

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