Page 6 of Priest

3

Blue

Two weeks later, my apartment smells like cardboard and dust.

Harper sits cross-legged on the kitchen floor with a roll of packing tape balanced on her knee, sealing a box labeled KITCHEN – MAYBE in thick black marker. The place looks wrong, half-empty. Like it’s already decided I don’t belong here anymore.

Which, I guess, I haven’t.

The transfer came through yesterday. Approved. No fuss. The hospital two towns over didn’t ask questions. They never do when you phrase it right: personal reasons, fresh start, immediate availability. I’m good at sounding composed.

“You know he’s been looking for you,” Harper says casually, like she’s commenting on the weather.

I freeze with a stack of dish towels in my hands.

She doesn’t look at me. Just presses the tape down, smooths it with her palm. “I went back to the bar last weekend. To grab a drink with a few of the others from the hospital. It was not a good experience.”

My throat tightens. “And?”

“Priest was there,” she says. “And he is definitely losing his damn mind.”

I set the towels into the box and close the flaps a little too hard. “I’m three months pregnant, and he never wanted a baby with me. I knew the deal. I knew how closed off he was. He didn’t want a wife. He didn’t want an Old Lady. I wasn’t his forever, and I was okay with that because what we had worked for me. My schedule at the ER is insane, and he wasn’t some needy man trying to make me pick him over my career. But now he has a baby coming with someone else, and that’s what I never expected from him. He made me think he was different in that way. Closed off, yes. Emotionally impossible, absolutely. But faithful? I thought he’d at least be faithful. I was wary of her. I worried about what she represented and what they had in their past, but I never thought he would cheat. I thought maybe he would end it first. But he didn’t. He got her pregnant. He announced it to the club. He doesn’t need or want mine, and I don’t need him. Right now, I need to focus on my baby. Protecting what’s mine.”

I look down at my still-flat stomach and rub it. “And this is mine.”

Harper exhales slowly. “Okay. But this isn’t about what he deserves.”

I look up.

“It’s about what your silence is turning into,” she says. “You told a biker president you were done, then disappeared, blocked him, changed jobs, and started packing up your life. Blue, to a normal man, that might read as a breakup. To him? That reads like a missing person case.”

My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

“And before you tell me you don’t owe him anything, I know,” she adds, softer now. “You don’t owe him forgiveness. You don’t owe him a conversation you’re not ready to have. You sure as hell don’t owe him access to you.” She presses the tape down hard across the box. “But you do owe yourself peace. And right now, he is not going to stop. He’s questioning people at The Bar. He’s watching doors. He’s making your friends nervous because he thinks something happened to you.”

I cross my arms tighter. “I sent him a message.”

“You sent him a wound and then vanished,” she says. “I’m talking about a period at the end of the sentence.” She sighs, gentler now. “Send one text. One. Tell him you’re alive. Tell him you left by choice. Tell him not to look for you. Then block him again and keep moving.”

“I already said we were done.”

“You said it while he was standing there with no idea what you’d heard.” Harper gives me a pointed look. “That wasn’t clarity. That was a door slammed before he even knew there was a fight.”

I hate that she’s making sense.

“That man lives in a world where women disappear for reasons that are not voluntary,” she continues. “You know that. You’ve seen enough of his life to know that. If you leave a gap, he’s going to fill it with the worst possible answer.”

I look down at the box in front of me. “He cheated,” I say quietly.

“I know.”

“He got another woman pregnant.”

“I know what you heard.”

My head snaps up.

Harper lifts both hands. “I’m not defending him. I’m not saying go back. I’m saying stop letting the man turn your life into a search party.”