"I'm not doing anything special."
"Yes, you are." She glances over her shoulder, and her eyes are clear now, present. "You're being careful with me. And I forgot that people could be like that."
She leaves before I can respond, and I'm left standing in the stockroom with her words echoing in my head and a feeling in my chest that has no business being there.
I stay for a few minutes after she's gone, letting the silence settle. The overhead bulb flickers once, casting strange shadows across the stacked boxes. I think about Sarah, about all the times she sat with someone in crisis and made it look effortless. She used to say the hardest part wasn't knowing what to say. It was knowing when to say nothing at all.
I never understood that until now.
I head back to the office and try to focus on the register count, but the columns won't stay straight. By the time Cole finds me, an hour has passed and the bar has emptied out. He drops into the chair across from my desk with the kind of sigh that says he's been holding something in all night.
"You got a minute?"
"For you? Always." I set aside the paperwork I've been pretending to focus on. "What's on your mind?"
"Gemma." He runs a hand through his hair. "I'm worried about her, Will. I know she's doing better, working here, keeping busy. But something's wrong. Something she's not telling me."
I wait, letting him talk. It's what he needs right now.
"She flinches when I move too fast. She checks the locks three times before she goes to bed. She doesn't eat enough, doesn't sleep enough, and every time I try to ask about the marriage she shuts down completely." He looks at me, something desperate in his eyes. "You've been watching her. Don't tell me you haven't. Have you noticed anything? Anything that might explain what happened to her?"
The question hangs between us, and I feel the weight of everything I suspect pressing down on me. The flinches. The panic attacks. The way she holds herself like she's waiting to be hit. I've seen it before, in women who came to the Forge looking for something healing and found it, and in women who came looking for the same thing and realized they needed therapy more than they needed rope.
Gemma's husband hurt her. I'm as sure of that as I've ever been sure of anything. But it's not my story to tell, and outing her trauma without her consent would be its own kind of violation.
"I've noticed she's struggling," I say carefully. "But I don't know any more than you do. She hasn't told me anything."
It's not quite a lie. She hasn't told me. I've just figured it out on my own.
Cole nods slowly, accepting this. "I want to help her. I just don't know how."
"Keep doing what you're doing. Give her space. Let her know you're there when she's ready to talk." I meet his eyes. "She'll come to you eventually. She just needs time."
"Yeah." He doesn't sound convinced, but he lets it go. "Thanks, Will. For looking out for her. I know it's not part of the job description."
"She's family. Your family is my family. Always has been."
He stands, and for a moment he looks like he wants to say something else. Instead, he just claps me on the shoulder and heads for the door.
"Brotherhood meeting Sunday," he says over his shoulder. "Shaw wants to talk about the new Forge applications. Said we've got three potential members who look promising."
"I'll be there."
"One of them's a therapist, apparently. Specializes in trauma. Shaw thinks she could be good for the community."
I nod, filing that away. The Forge has always been more than just a club. It's a place where people come to explore parts of themselves they can't show the rest of the world, and that requires trust, safety, and people who know how to hold space for the complicated emotions that surface. A trauma specialist could be valuable. Could be exactly what we need.
Could be exactly what someone like Gemma needs, if she ever decided to walk through those doors.
I push that thought away as soon as it forms. That's not my decision to make.
The door closes behind Cole. The office feels smaller without him in it, and too quiet.
I finish the paperwork, lock up, and ride home through streets slick with rain. The house is dark when I pull into the driveway. It's always dark. I stopped leaving lights on years ago, after I realized I was just pretending someone was home waiting for me.
Sarah used to leave every light in the house blazing. Said she wanted the place to feel alive, wanted me to see it glowing from the street and know I was coming home to something warm. After she died, I kept the habit for a while. Then one night I walked into all that empty brightness and felt more alone than I ever had in the dark, and that was the end of that.
Five years. Five years since the cancer took her, and most nights I don't think about her at all anymore. That used to make me feel guilty. Now it just feels like survival.
