Page 73 of Lady and the Butcher

After, he carried me to the bed, laid me on my stomach, and traced lazy lines down my back with his knuckles.

“You’re quiet,” he said.

“I’m thinking.”

“About?”

I almost said Stephen. Almost said the way my brother’s skin had looked gray at the edges, the way his laugh had sounded borrowed. But I didn’t. Instead I said, “About how I keep wanting more when I told myself this was supposed to be one night.”

His chuckle was low, dangerous. “You think one night could have been enough?”

“I thought it had to be.”

“Then you thought wrong.”

I hadn’t been shopping for a man. I’d written a letter for a single night because that felt safe. Clean edges. No birthdays toremember. No toothbrush left by a sink I would have to explain to myself. I had wanted a door I could close in the morning and sweep behind. I had not wanted a life that kept showing up with coffee and plans.

He wasn’t my type, anyway. My type wore soft flannels and apologized for taking the last cinnamon roll. My type attended barbecues, flirted with my friends in a way that made no one nervous, and texted photos of their dog wearing bandanas. Right?

Atticus walked into rooms and made gravity look like it worked for him. He didn’t apologize. He looked like a man who would never remember a bake sale in his life, and yet he had ordered a milk fridge for my shop and reminded me to drink water.

I tried to picture the two of us molded into something domestic. Sunday mornings that didn’t smell like danger. Thanksgiving with my mother and a pie he had somehow won at a church auction. Him at a folding table at a neighborhood block party, pretending to care about cornhole while the streetlight hit the cleaver tattoo just right and sent three dads back to their grills.

I couldn’t see it. Not clearly.

He felt like tide and steel. I felt like porches and baby blankets and coffee in a thermos. We did not stack.

Still, I kept walking toward him. Not because I believed we fit, but because my body leaned the way a plant leans toward a window. It felt reckless. It felt holy. It felt like I was going to have to learn a new shape or break.

Friday bled into Saturday. The Nesting Place ran smoother than it ever had. Mei and Gianna made lists before I even thought of them. Reese covered a birth that would have pulled me across town. For the first time in years, I had hours that didn’t already belong to someone else.

Which meant those hours belonged to Atticus.

Saturday night, he showed me another side of his world.

We were in the loft, half dressed, my shirt hanging open, his hand spread low on my belly, when his phone buzzed sharp against the table. He glanced once, jaw tightening.

“Stay here,” he said, pulling on his jacket.

“No.”

His brows rose.

“If you’re going, I’m going.” The words came out steadier than I felt.

He studied me for a long beat. Then, with a slow nod: “Stay close.”

The car ride was different this time. No music. Just the hum of tires on wet pavement. His face carved in concentration, his hands steady on the wheel.

We pulled into a dockside yard. Shadows stretched long, broken by floodlights and stacks of containers. Men moved like ants, some carrying clipboards, others hauling crates.

I stayed close like I’d promised, my pulse in my throat.

A man in a leather jacket stepped forward. His eyes flicked to me, lingered, then back to Atticus.

Atticus’s hand closed over mine, tight, possessive. “Not yours to look at,” he said, quiet but lethal.

The man’s eyes dropped. Fast.