Page 59 of Lady and the Butcher
Heat shot through me in a clean, traitorous line. I nodded. He let go of my wrist and opened the door.
On the way down, his phone vibrated. He glanced, declined the call, and slid it away. Thirty seconds later, it vibrated again, harder, the kind that saysnot a suggestion. He answered without looking at me, voice turning into the uninflected thing I’d heard once before.
“Yeah.” A pause. “No. Then you wait.” Another pause. “Because I said. And because the container doesn’t move without a receipt. You know that.” His mouth flattened. “Respect is not optional.” He listened, silent a long moment, then: “I’ll send a man.”
He hung up. The quiet between us changed pressure, then steadied. He didn’t explain. I didn’t ask. He looked at me like he was measuring whether I’d pry. I smiled, small and sharp. “Logistics?”
“Compliance,” he said, mouth tipping.
When we pulled up, The Nesting Place looked welcoming—fern in the window, chalkboard sign half-erased from yesterday’s closing announcement, the oval table where new parents learned to diaper.
A woman I didn’t know stood at the counter, dark hair in a low twist, crisp white shirt, soft sneakers. She had a clipboard and a competence that read from the door.
“Mei?” I asked.
“Yes, hi!” She beamed like she already loved the place. “I’m early. I like to get the lay of the land. Phones are forwarding. I set up the answering service with after-hours scripting—your voice, not some robot. Gianna Haynes will be here at noon to start curbside. And there’s a postpartum doula named Reese Flanagan arriving at two to cover a hospital discharge visit someone booked for you. I can go if you prefer, but?—”
“Reese is perfect,” I said, somewhere between laughing and crying. “Who are you?”
“Someone who likes order,” she said simply. “And babies. And women who build things without enough hands.”
Atticus stood a step behind me, hands in his pockets, a king who’d dropped off a cathedral and didn’t want credit. I looked back at him. He pretended to study a rack of muslin swaddles. The line of his mouth gave him away.
“Thank you,” I said softly, for him alone.
He nodded once, the gesture spare enough to make my throat go tight again. “You’ll text me when you need me.”
“What if I want you?” The question came out without a filter, and I watched it hit him like a warm wave.
“Then you’ll get me,” he said.
The door chimed. A woman I half-knew from the breastfeeding circle stepped in, surprised and grateful in the same instant, and Mei slid into motion like a dancer joining a piece she already knew the steps to. My shop breathed around us, familiar and new. I felt my chest widen to fit the morning.
Atticus touched my wrist as he passed—a brush that felt like a promise. “I’ll be close,” he said.
“Doing logistics,” I said dryly.
He smiled, bent, and put his mouth at my ear with that careful restraint that set my bones to humming. “And, tonight,” he murmured, “I’m collecting on last night’s interruption.”
“Bossy,” I whispered.
“Accurate,” he said, and left me in my kingdom, a milk fridge humming in the back and the harbor bright beyond the street, my life suddenly full of hands that were not mine—and one pair I had not expected, steady and sure, waiting where I could find them.
19
By late afternoon, the shop had the hum of a hive that knew its work. Phones rolled to the answering service without panic. Mei spoke to three customers at once without raising her voice. Gianna ran curbside orders like she had been born with a clipboard in her hand.
I should have felt light. I did and I didn’t.
My phone pulsed against the counter like a tiny heartbeat I couldn’t ignore.
Missed call from Mom. Three from Stephen. A text from Alana:what’s going on with you? you seem different.
Different. That was one way to say it.
I stood behind the register and watched my life move with new ease. A dad held up two swaddle prints and asked which one said “competent.” A grandmother bought the good lanolin even though she pretended she didn’t believe in it.
Atticus’s money had greased the right cogs. I could admit that. I could also feel the thin wire tug of worry about how far that rope ran back in his direction.
