Chapter 1-The Shape of Home
Rowan
The town looked smaller than I remembered.
It wasn’t, obviously. Same cracked Main Street, crumbling a little more under my tires. Same faded storefronts. The corner store where I used to buy a pack of gum before every week of classes. The same rusted water tower leaning against the morning sky like it had survived every bad decision this town had ever made.
But after two years away, everything felt different. Or maybe I was the one who’d changed.
I slowed at the red light near downtown, fingers tapping the steering wheel while exhaustion settled deeper into my bones. Eight hours of driving on top of three straight days of packing had pushed me well past functioning like a normal human being. My shoulders ached. My damn eyes burned. The coffee I’d bought a few hours ago had gone cold in the cup holder.
Somewhere around mile marker ninety, I had passed two burned-out trucks on the shoulder, charred down to their frames, police tape snapping in the wind. I’d told myself it was a wreck. Nobody burns a wreck that thoroughly, but I’d told myself the lie anyway.
The light turned green.
My new apartment sat ten minutes from downtown, in a lot with more cracked pavement than parking spaces. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was clean and quiet, and close enough to everything that finding a job wouldn’t mean another long commute. I parked, shut off the engine, and sat there in the silence.
Temporary. That was the word I’d been repeating since the first night I packed a box. This was temporary until I figured out what the hell came next.
God, I was tired.
The past two years had been nonstop. Classes. Research. Internship hours. Late nights buried in behavioral reports and case studies. Long interviews with offenders that left me wrung out for days afterward. Criminal psychology sounded exciting when people heard it out loud. Most of them had no goddamn idea what it actually was. You studied violence long enough and you started seeing the cracks in everyone. The masks. The warning signs. The little tells people thought they were hiding.
It made normal conversations exhausting sometimes. I loved it anyway.
The internship had been the kind of opportunity people built entire careers around. Competitive, brutal, and mine for two years. And now it was over, which made me a thirty-year-old woman back in her hometown, unemployed, sitting in a mediocre parking lot with half her life stuffed in the back of an SUV.
Not exactly the success story younger me had pictured.
I grabbed my keys and climbed out into the warm Texas morning. The air smelled like sun-baked asphalt and fresh-cut grass.
Home.
The manager had left my key in a lockbox. Ten minutes later I stepped into my new place for the first time. Small, but decent. Dark wood floors. An open kitchen with a movable island. Windows that threw soft light across the living room. A balcony just big enough for one chair if I squeezed it in right.
I dropped my duffel by the couch and turned in a slow circle.
Mine.
Unpacking took two hours because I moved like someone running on fumes. By the time I’d assembled the coffee maker and found clean sheets, I felt like I deserved a medal. I shoved the last flattened box beside the door and scrubbed both hands over my face.
My phone buzzed against the counter.
Mom: You alive, Rowan?
Barely, I thought. I typed back.
Me: Yes, Mom. Some of my things are unpacked.
Mom: Call Stella yet?
I couldn’t help smiling. Everyone in my life had collectively decided my social calendar needed an intervention.
I hadn’t seen Stella or Bree in person since Christmas, nearly two years ago. Life got in the way. Stella had Brandon and a new baby. Bree had Derick and whatever crisis she’d walked into that week. I’d had the internship.
They’d never stopped feeling like home, though.
College had thrown the three of us together in the strangest way. Stella had been quiet and careful then, like she expected the world to disappoint her any minute. Bree was the opposite. Loud, flirtatious, chaos in a ponytail. I spent half our first year keeping Bree from getting us arrested and the other half making sure Stella ate something besides instant ramen. Somehow it worked. We balanced each other out.
I hit Stella’s name before I could talk myself out of it. She answered on the second ring.
“Well, look who finally remembered the rest of us exist.”
Warmth spread through my chest. “Hi to you too.”
“Oh my God.” She laughed. “You’re actually here.”
“Physically? Yes. Mentally? Debatable.”
“I told you she’d say something sarcastic first,” a voice shouted in the background. Bree. I smiled automatically.
“Was that supposed to hurt my feelings?”
“Rowan!” Bree practically screeched. “You’re back!”
I pulled the phone away from my ear. “You still don’t know how volume control works.”
“Nope. Never will.”
I could hear her grinning.
“How was the drive?” Stella asked.
“Long. Miserable. I think my spine fused to the damn seat.”
“You should’ve flown.”
“With what money?” I leaned against the counter. “The security deposit felt borderline criminal.”
“But you got the apartment.”
“It’s actually nice.”
“Fresh start,” Bree cut in. “Hot girl apartment. New job coming. We love this for you.”
“Please never say ‘hot girl apartment’ again.”
“No promises.”
That easy banter loosened something tight in my ribs. I’d missed this more than I’d let myself admit. It felt like old times, talking to people who already knew the answers to the questions I was too tired to ask.
“When did you get in?” Stella asked.
“Around noon.”
“And you’re just now calling us?”
“I was carrying boxes.”
“You could’ve called while carrying boxes.”
“She’s already making excuses,” Bree said gravely. “Stella, write it down.”
“I’ve been behind a wheel for eight hours.”
“Your point?”
“My point is that I despise both of you.”
“Love you more,” Bree sang.
I shook my head, smiling.
“So,” Stella said, in a tone that meant trouble. “We’re doing dinner tonight.”
I blinked. “That wasn’t a question.”
“It wasn’t.”
“I’m exhausted.”
“Which is exactly why you need food you didn’t microwave yourself.”
“I own some cookware.”
“Making coffee once doesn’t count as cooking.”
“She’s got you there,” Bree said.
Traitor. I wandered into the living room, stepping around an unopened box. “I kind of just want a shower and unconsciousness.”
“Rowan.”
The warning tone made me laugh. “I’m not hiding.”
“You absolutely are,” Bree said.
“I unpacked half my life today. That’s productive.”
“And now you’re rewarding yourself with dinner.”
I closed my eyes. A normal person would’ve said yes five minutes ago. But crowds and noise and talking sounded heavy, even with people I loved.
“I look awful,” I muttered.
“Impossible,” Bree said.
“I’ve been in leggings for fourteen hours.”
“So put on different leggings.”
I barked out a laugh. Then Stella’s voice dropped, soft and a little unsteady.
“Please. I miss you.”
That did it. Straight to the weak spot.
“You fight dirty.”
“I learned from the best.”
I sighed. “Fine.”
“Yes!” Bree yelled.
“But if either of you turns this into a huge social thing, I’m leaving.”
“No huge social thing,” Stella promised.
“Just us?”
A tiny pause. I narrowed my eyes at the wall.
“Stella.”
“What?”
“That was suspicious.”
“It’s dinner.”
“With suspicious hesitation.”
Bree burst into laughter. “Oh my God, tell her.”
“Okay,” Stella admitted. “Technically, Brandon might come.”
I rubbed my forehead. “You planned this before asking me.”
“Correct.”
“That feels manipulative.”
“It is manipulative,” Bree said proudly. “We know your ass.”
Unfortunately, they did.
“You like Brandon,” Stella said.
That was true. Brandon Harris was probably the least intimidating biker I’d ever talked to, which said more about him than it did about me, considering he looked like he could throw a man straight through drywall. The first time we met I’d braced for arrogance. Instead I’d gotten quiet and watchful and so obviously obsessed with Stella that I forgave him on the spot.
“Fine. Brandon’s fine.”
“Derick might come too,” Bree added.
“Absolutely not.”
“Rude.”
“I’m too tired for the alpha-male staring contests.”
“They don’t have staring contests,” Stella argued.
“I’ve watched Brandon and Derick hold entire conversations without blinking.”
“That’s club stuff.”
“That’s serial killer behavior.”
Bree cackled so loudly the phone crackled. I moved toward the bedroom to dig through boxes for clean clothes.
“When?”
“Seven.”
“That’s an hour.”
“You’ll prevail.”
“We’re picking you up,” Stella added.
“I have my own car.”
“And you’re tired.”
“I drove here alive.”
“Barely,” Bree said.
“Fine. But if I fall asleep in my food, I’m blaming both of you.”
“Acceptable,” Stella said. Then her voice softened. “I’m really glad you’re back, Ro.”
Something tightened in my chest. “Yeah. Me too.”
After we hung up, the apartment felt quieter than before. Not lonely. Just still. A shower helped. Not enough to erase the fatigue, but enough to make me feel human again. I stood under the hot water longer than necessary, letting my brain finally slow down.
No deadlines. No evaluations. No professors expecting perfection.
Just a new place, a new town that was an old town, and a whole lot of uncertainty. Starting over always fucking felt like that.
By the time I finished getting ready, the sun was sinking behind the building. I kept it simple. Black jeans, boots, a fitted dark green top, my leather jacket. I dried my hair halfway and gave up. My phone buzzed while I was putting on mascara.
Bree: WE’RE HERE
Bree: And if you make us wait I’m coming to get you.
Threat acknowledged.
The evening air had cooled by the time I locked my door and went down the stairs. Stella’s SUV idled by the curb. Bree hung halfway out the passenger window like a golden retriever.
Behind them, across the lot, sat a black pickup with its engine running and two men inside. Not looking at me. Not looking at anything. Just watching the street the way you watch it when someone’s paying you to.
“Don’t mind them,” Stella said, climbing out before I reached the car. She pulled me into a hug so fast I barely had time to react. She was warm and smelled like baby lotion and coffee. “Brandon’s rule. Nobody goes anywhere without eyes.”
I hugged her back, tighter than I meant to. “That’s not alarming at all.”
“It’s a lot less alarming than it was a few months ago.”
I leaned back and looked at her. She looked happier than I remembered. Healthier. There’d always been something buried in Stella during college, something quiet and braced. Now there was a softness. Tired, yes. But lighter.
“You cut your hair,” she said.
“You noticed that before hello?”
“It looks so good. I’ve never seen it this short.”
“It’s a few inches.”
“I missed you.”
“I missed you too.”
“Okay,” Bree announced from the car. “This is emotional and disgusting. Group hug or we move the fuck on.”
I laughed and walked around the SUV. She launched herself at me the second I opened the door.
“You smell like expensive shampoo and bad decisions,” I told her.
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
She ignored me and squeezed tighter. Bree looked exactly the same somehow. Blond hair, bright eyes, enough energy for three people.
“You got hotter,” she informed me as we climbed in.
“Oh, good. Starting strong.”
“Criminal psychology apparently works for you.”
“I spent two years sleep-deprived and reading violent offender profiles.”
“Mysterious and sexy,” Bree decided.
“Concerning and unhealthy,” Stella corrected, starting the car.
I leaned my head against the seat. Traffic crawled through downtown while Stella filled me in on everything I’d missed and Bree interrupted constantly. Stella had adopted another plant, now named Princess Prickle. Ray, the club’s resident uncle, had threatened violence over a red velvet cake. And Brandon had become unbearably protective since the baby, which Stella said with an eye roll and a smile she couldn’t hide.
“And the club?” I asked.
“The usual club stuff,” Bree said, a little too lightly.
I caught Stella’s eyes in the rearview mirror. She looked away first.
“You nervous about finding a job?” she asked after a while.
“A little.”
It was honest. I didn’t want to think about it.
“You earned that internship,” Stella said.
“I know.”
“And you have experience most people would kill for,” Bree added.
“Morbid wording.”
“You studied criminals. You’ll be fine.”
I watched the streetlights slide past the window. “I think I got so used to moving forward that stopping feels strange.”
“You’re not stopping,” Stella said softly. “You’re transitioning.”
“That sounded aggressively therapeutic.”
“Thank you. Brandon says I’m emotionally intelligent.”
“Brandon says lots of things while staring at you like you invented oxygen.”
Bree pretended to gag. Stella flipped her off without taking her eyes off the road.
I smiled and looked out the window. The town felt different, yes. But the two women in the front seat hadn’t changed at all, and out of everything I’d come home to, they were the part I loved most.
In the side mirror, the black pickup eased away from the curb and followed us at a steady, careful distance.
I told myself I didn’t notice the shit.
