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The thought floated up fever-soft and jagged, not quite words—just raw ache wearing Felicity’s name because that was the only place left to aim the pain.

"Ma'am?" Annie's voice again, sharper this time, the crease between her brows carving deeper. She needed the space Sage was taking up to either turn into a paying customer or empty out. “Ma’am, do you want to order something?”

The little bell above the door was still shivering on its hook, a thin metallic tremble that seemed to stretch forever, when another voice cut through from behind the counter. Older. Roughened by decades of grease and long nights.

“No work for runaways, kid. Go on home to your parents, honey. Trust me—whatever it is, it ain’t worth it.”

Sage turned.

The woman stood in the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on an old apron that had probably seen three presidents. She was small, the kind of compact build that came from a lifetime on her feet rather than heavy lifting—narrow shoulders, wiry arms, but there was a quiet steel in the way she planted herself, like a fence post driven deep. Dark brown hair streaked with silver was pulled into a tight bun that hadn’t changed style in forty years. Her face was weathered, lined deeply around steel-blue eyes that narrowed in flat, unimpressed assessment. She’d seen every flavor of trouble walk through that door, and right now she was looking at Sage’s fishnets, piercings, and black-on-black regalia like she’d already decided which category this one fell into.

Home. Parents.

The words dropped into Sage’s chest and lit like gas on a fire.

She blinked hard, the diner tilting again as fever dragged her sideways. Home. What the fuck even was a home? A trailer with a deadbolt on the outside of her bedroom door so her dad could let himself in whenever he wanted? Or that sterile little studio that still smelled like hospital soap and the last weeks of Felicity’s life — the one place that had almost felt safe before it got ripped away too?

Her throat burned. She bit down until she tasted copper, refusing to let the tears fall.

It’s a dead fucking Jeep on some nameless street in this nameless fucking town, that’s what it is.

She almost laughed.

What came out was a wet, airless choke — the sound of a body that had run clean out of ways to scream. Her fingers dug harder into the doorframe, nails biting into the painted wood, the only thing keeping her upright.

I could just walk back out. Right now. Back into the snow. Back into the cold. Find the razor. Find a bridge. Find an ending that doesn’t need anyone’s permission.

I can’t do this. I just can’t.

But the anger…

The old rage — that white-hot furnace she’d been feeding since she was twelve, the only thing that had ever truly belonged to her through six years of locked doors, ceiling tiles, and dissociating so hard the world went quiet — stirred in her ribs. A last stubborn ember in a dying stove, barely glowing, barely warm.

But still there.

If I give up, he wins.

Sage didn’t leave.

She scanned the diner for anything — a door, a distraction, a miracle — something that would let her keep breathing for one more minute.

And then she saw him.

Corner booth, all the way in the back where the amber light from the window glass turned everything gold. Alone.

Massive.

The word didn’t even come close. He filled the booth like a mountain filling a valley, not just sitting in it but defining it — everything around him shrinking into context for the sheer, impossible scale of his body. Shoulders that spanned the full width of the seatback. Arms as thick as her thighs resting on the table with deliberate calm.

Fuck, this guy is huge.

Sage took in his barrel chest straining the flannel across it. And his hands — God, those hands — wrapped around an oversized ceramic mug, each one big enough to cradle her whole skull, knuckles scarred, fingers thick and blunt and impossibly steady. He looked like a man who knew exactly what his strength could do and chose, every single day, to chain it.

She looked at his face and paused.

Dark hair shot through with threads of silver, cut short but slightly longer on top. A short stubble of salt-and-pepper beard that made his jaw look carved from the same granite as the mountains outside. Crow’s feet etched deep at the corners of steel-gray eyes. A thin scar running along the side of his neck, another faint one across his forehead — like he’d had an argument with a bear and won.

There was a stillness to him….not empty. Not cold. Just… rooted. He looked like he’d already seen every storm the world could throw and had decided none of them were worth raising his voice over.