Page 23 of Lady and the Butcher
It wasn’t the answer I asked for. It was, somehow, exactly the one I needed. The name slid into my bones like something that had been waiting for it.
He tipped his head—a nod that wasn’t quite permission and wasn’t quite a promise—and stepped back. “Goodnight, Simone.”
My name in his mouth did not come out like anyone else said it. It came out like mine.
“Goodnight,” I managed.
I turned and walked toward the gate before my face could confess anything else. I didn’t look back.
I didn’t have to.
I could feel him—heat, gravity, storm—lingering where the brick met the grass, waiting for a tomorrow he hadn’t defined and I wasn’t sure I could survive.
My phone stayed quiet in my hand all the way to the car, screen black as the space between the oaks. I slid into the driver’s seat, pressed my palms flat against the steering wheel, and let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding since the moment he’d saidLady.
“Okay,” I told the dark. “Okay.”
The engine turned over. The lights came on. I drove into the Charleston night, and tried not to wish for a knock on my door that would split my life into before and after.
8
By the time I got home, I was wired in that way where my pulse wouldn’t slow and my mind refused to let anything drop into place.
The drive had been too short to settle me, the quiet of my house too loud once I stepped inside. I stood just inside the door, one hand still on the knob, scanning the space like maybe I’d catch him here—leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets, waiting.
That was ridiculous.
Atticus wasn’t the kind of man who waited for anything. If he wanted to be here, he would be. If he wanted me, he would take me. The thought shouldn’t have sent a streak of heat down my spine, but it did.
I kicked off my sandals in the entryway and set my clutch down on the console table, noticing my hands were unsteady. The kitchen light spilled across the floor in a warm yellow square, the only real light in the place. I moved toward it automatically, like something in me was drawn to where it felt safer, only to realize safety was a lie.
I poured myself a glass of water, took one sip, then abandoned it on the counter. My phone sat beside it, face-up, black screen reflecting my own unsettled expression. No new messages. Of course, not.
The Alpha Mail man—if Atticus was him—hadn’t promised me anything. No details. No schedule. And yet there he’d been tonight, apparently, at Stephen’s birthday party, sliding into the periphery of my life as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Atticus hadn’t approached me with recognition in his eyes, not exactly, but there’d been something else there—an intimacy that didn’t need words. He’d looked at me like he knew every secret I’d ever tried to bury.
The problem was, my official guy hadn’t texted again. He hadn’t called. The rules of the Alpha Mail game—what little I knew of them—had been unspoken but somehow clear: he would control the timing. Which meant either Atticus wasn’t my Alpha Mail man at all, or he’d decided to change the rules. I didn’t know which possibility was more dangerous.
I tried to shake it off by moving around the kitchen, but my mind kept circling the same memories. The overheard conversation weeks ago at The Nesting Place, when two women in the baby wrap section had whispered in voices pitched low with mischief, trading phrases that made me slow my stocking and linger nearby. “Letter-writing fantasy service,” one of them had said, and the other had giggled in response. “You choose your trouble. They deliver.”
I’d gone home that night with the name Alpha Mail lodged in my brain. The women at the shop hadn’t just whispered about it—they’d given me a way in. An unadvertised url, spoken like a secret. A barebones webpage with no branding, no promises—just a single text box and the prompt: Tell us what you want.
I didn’t do it right away. I’d told myself it was ridiculous. Reckless. The kind of thing that might end with my picture on the evening news and my mother clutching her pearls. But I’d kept circling back to it. Like a moth to a dangerous flame.
And then, I’d finally typed the letter. Every word of it deliberate. Brutal. Unapologetic. I’d hit send before I could lose my nerve.
Nothing had happened. No ping to confirm receipt. No shadowy reply in my inbox. Just silence. Until the text came. Short. To the point. Two nights.
No name. No number I could call back. No explanation of who or when.
I’d been waiting ever since.
And now … maybe I’d just met him.
I was so confused.
I sank onto the sofa, curling my legs under me, the coffee table still cluttered from the moon circle—half-burned candles, my sage bundle, a faint trace of Alana’s ceremonial smoke. That version of me—the playful, grounded, slightly irreverent doula who joked through contractions—felt far away. The new version of me was restless, reckless.
