Page 85 of Deacon

There it was beneath everything else.

Fear.

He had turned it into logistics, geography, jobs, and an entire emergency department because sitting with what almost happened to her was harder than building something large enough to fight it.

Blue saw it too. She looked down at their son before lifting her eyes back to Priest. “Don’t build me an ER.”

His brow lowered. “Blue.”

“I said don’t build it for me.” Her voice softened without losing its edge. “Build it because the town needs it. Build it because it will help people. If we do this, it has to be real. Not just a grand gesture.”

Priest went quiet, then nodded once. “Alright.”

I settled farther into the chair. “You’re all insane.”

“Probably,” Evan said. “But maybe productively insane.”

Ink tipped his head. “That sounds like a campaign slogan.”

Laughter moved through the room again, softer now, less like escape and more like air finally finding its way back in. Blue held her son against her chest, Priest stood close enough to touch them both, and Evan looked disturbingly interested in the possibility of causing trouble inside an entirely new emergency department.

Nothing about our jobs was settled. Blue had barely survived the worst day of her life, and Priest had somehow transformed his terror into a potential civic project before any reasonable person could stop him.

But the room no longer felt like somewhere we had gathered just to recover from what happened.

It felt like the beginning of something none of us had planned.

23

Lila

Standing in my bedroom debating whether Sunday dinner deserved mascara, I still couldn’t quite believe Priest had turned one impossible idea into an actual plan.

The freestanding ER was nowhere near construction. Permits, funding meetings, and enough paperwork to bury a small town still stood between concept and opening day, but it had moved beyond talk. The Saints and Fallen Angels had already raised an astonishing amount of money, a board of trustees was forming, and a better-paying position waited in my email.

An apartment key sat on my dresser beside it. Blue was moving into Priest’s house on the Saints’ compound with baby Jackson. Evan and I had signed leases in the same Bay of Saints complex, close enough to the proposed site for an easy commute and far enough from Wicker Falls that maybe breathing would come easier there too. Jade’s enrollment paperwork for Bay of Saints High waited on my nightstand, and she was the part that still got me.

When Evan and I sat down with her to talk about moving, I had braced for a teenage hurricane. Instead, she listened and quietly admitted that getting away might be good. Away from school and everyone in town who thought they already knew who she was.

Her calm hurt more than anger would have. My sixteen-year-old had weighed leaving everything familiar with more grace than I had managed, and pride tangled with why she wanted to leave at all.

I left the mascara on the dresser. Sunday dinner at my father’s house deserved armor, not lashes.

Evan and Jade were surrounded by half-packed boxes when I joined them. Jade taped one shut while Evan sat cross-legged beside a roll of bubble wrap he seemed to resent personally.

“I just want it noted that you are incredibly impressive.”

I glanced at the boxes already lining the wall. “Of course I am. We move in a few days.”

His grin widened, because my impending breakdown was apparently part of the compliment. “That’s exactly my point. Organized. Efficient. Emotionally unstable, yes, but productive.”

Jade snorted and kept taping. Evan still had most of his own apartment to pack, which became less surprising when he started complaining about wardrobe boxes and the morally questionable number of jackets he owned. At least he had finally hired movers.

“They’re absurdly expensive,” he said. “Which means I trust them.”

That sounded exactly like him. “That does sound like you.”

“Thank you.” His satisfaction held for all of two seconds.