Page 17 of The Lies We Tell

He nods and tips his chin toward my plate. “Eat some more. You want to talk about what happened?”

“Not really.” I stab a pancake with a fork.

“Okay. Bottling it up won’t help. If you don’t trust me, you need to write it down. Every single detail. Every smell, every word spoken, every person you saw ... all of it. It’ll help you process it later, and you’ll always have the details to come back to if there is ever a reason for evidence in the long-term.”

Tears sting my eyes. “I can barely see past the end of breakfast right now. Long-term is an abstract concept.”

Saint leans forward and lays his hand on the table. It’s palm up, waiting for me to take it. I move towards it, my hand hovering in the air. Holding someone’s hand is something I’ve done a million times. It suddenly feels like an incredibly personal and powerful act. I look at him; he’s watching my hand.

Yet I can’t place it in his.

I pull it back and place it above my heart, my fingers itching my skin.

“Briar, look at me.”

I do as he says.

“You’ll get to the end of breakfast. And the end of lunch. And dinner. You’ll get through this day. And the next day. And soon enough, a year will have gone by, and you won’t be thinking about what happened every moment of every day. You won’t forget it. It’ll shape you and change you in ways, both good and bad, that you don’t understand right now. But one foot after the other, sweetheart. It’s all you can do.”

A tear spills over my lashes, and I sweep it away. “Thank you. For last night and for this.”

“Even though I make shit coffee?”

I sniff and laugh at the same time. It’s a funny sound. “Your pancakes make up for it.”

“Good. Now eat a few more. And we can stop by somewhere for better coffee than this when we are done.”

“Before we go, do you have a laptop I can use to request a replacement bank card and perhaps transfer you some cash before we go shopping? Without my phone to pay, I can’t access any funds.”

Saint pauses for a moment, the fork halfway to his mouth. “You can use my phone. With me right here. There’s shit you don’t need to be seeing on it.”

I almost forgot he was a member of an outlaw gang. He probably does all kinds of illegal shit. Would he want to punish me if—

“Don’t look at me like that, Briar. It’s club shit that doesn’t involve you. As for the cash, you can run a tab.”

After breakfast, I insist on cleaning up the dishes while Saint jumps in the shower. I gather the plates on the counter and turn on the tap to rinse them.

“Briar,” he yells. “Turn the fucking tap off.”

I quickly turn it off and bite back a grin. His tone is exasperated, not angry.

“Thank you,” he shouts.

I wait until the shower stops before turning the tap on again. And I’m wiping down the table when he steps into the room. His presence is commanding. He’s a man who knows he looks good in blue denim and a black T-shirt. “Sorry about the water thing.”

Saint shrugs. “Normally here alone. Didn’t know it would do that. Here.” He hands me his phone. “Not going to watch while you enter your password and shit. Have your card sent here unless you wanna go home.”

“I could move to a hotel,” I say. I have the funds. But my voice sounds shaky even to me.

“I’ll take you to a hotel if you like. But would it make you feel safer to stay here for a day or two, until you find your feet?”

I think about the answer to that. Would I feel safer? The traffickers lost me in New Jersey to two bikers. They know my name, where I live. They probably know everything about me. If I check into a hotel in my own name, it might pop up on a search if they have access to such things.

Shit. I won’t be safe. Here, I’m no one.

“I’ll try not to be a pain in the ass.”

Saint looks down at me. He must be close to six foot three or four. He’s definitely older, which irrationally makes me feel safer. Plus, the age looks good on him. He smells nice, but as soon as I think it, my stomach flips in a bad way. I scrunch my eyes closed to shake the memory of the way the other man smelled.