"I should get back to work," I say finally, and my voice sounds strange in my own ears.
"Yeah." He moves away from the door, giving me room to pass. "Take your time. I'll tell Nash you needed a minute."
I reach for the handle, then stop. Turn back to look at him.
"Thank you," I say. "For not making me feel like I'm broken."
"You're not broken, Gemma. You never were."
I slip out of the stockroom, leaving him standing alone in the dim light.
The bar is filling up with the early evening crowd, and Nash gives me a questioning look when I emerge from the hallway. I wave him off with what I hope is a convincing smile and retreat to the office, closing the door behind me.
My laptop sits open on the desk, the spreadsheet I was working on still pulled up even though the screen has gone dark. I stare at it without seeing, my mind somewhere else entirely.
The Forge. Right here in this building. A place where the things I want aren't weapons to be used against me. A place Will helped build.
The thought surfaces that Cole is Brotherhood too—has been for years. I shove it aside. That's a question for another day, and one I'm not sure I want answered.
The numbers on the screen blur and refocus, and I realize my hands are shaking again. Not from fear this time. From something I'm afraid to call hope.
I still don't know who I am. I still don't trust my own judgment. But for the first time since I left Seattle, I'm starting to believe those things might not be permanent.
The Forge holds answers to questions I'm only beginning to ask.
So does Will. And that's a different kind of terrifying.
7
WILL
The stockroom door closes behind her, and I stand there like an idiot, surrounded by cases of beer and boxes of cocktail napkins, trying to remember how to breathe.
I've had this conversation before. The careful explanation, the assurances about consent and safety, the delicate work of separating what we do at The Forge from the misconceptions and fear. I've walked a dozen women through it, maybe more, in the years since we opened our doors. Never felt anything but calm confidence in what I was saying.
I've never given it to someone still bleeding from the last man who used these words against her.
Time passes in a blur of tasks that don't require my full attention. I restock the top shelf. Check the draft lines. Go over the week's schedule with Nash, who keeps shooting me curious looks that I pretend not to notice. My hands move through familiar motions while my mind replays every word of that conversation, every shift in Gemma's expression, every moment where the air between us felt too thin to breathe.
She knows now. Not everything, but enough. Enough to understand what kind of man I am and what I've spent yearsbuilding in that back room. Enough to make her own choices about what that means.
The question is whether she'll run from it or toward it. And whether I'm strong enough to keep my distance if she chooses the latter.
Around seven, the dinner rush hits and I lose myself in the work. The Ironside fills with regulars and newcomers, the noise level rising to that comfortable roar that means money in the register and no trouble brewing. I pull drafts and pour whiskey and make small talk with people whose names I've known for years, and through it all I'm aware of Gemma in the back office, aware of her presence like a low-grade fever I can't shake.
She emerges around eight-thirty to help with the rush. Her eyes find mine across the bar, hold for a beat too long, and then she's moving, taking orders, making drinks, doing her job. Whatever happened in that stockroom, she's boxed it up and set it aside. For now.
The crowd thins after ten. Nash handles the stragglers while I retreat to the office to tackle the invoices that have been piling up. The numbers swim in front of my eyes, refusing to resolve into anything meaningful. I'm staring at the same line item for the third time when a knock comes at the door.
Gemma doesn't wait for me to answer. She steps inside, closes the door behind her, and leans against it the same way I did earlier. Something about the echo of it tightens my chest.
"I have questions."
"I figured you would."
She crosses her arms over her chest, protective or defiant, maybe both. "You gave me the headline version earlier. I want the full story. What is The Forge, exactly? How did it start? What happens there?"
The directness doesn't surprise me. Gemma has always gone straight for the throat, even before everything that happenedto her. The fact that she's asking at all tells me she's been turning this over in her mind for hours, working through the implications, building a mental framework she can use to make sense of what I told her.
