They just sat with the truth, like men who’d learned pain doesn’t need a speech.
Mike nodded once. “Sometimes life breaks people.”
Keisha looked around at twenty-five men in leather jackets huddled in her little house, and felt something she didn’t expect.
Not fear.
Not anymore.
Something like… being seen.
When the storm finally eased, it was still dark out.
The men gathered their gear, moved quietly again, like ghosts who didn’t want to scare the living.
Mike held out an envelope.
Keisha stiffened. “I can’t—”
“It’s not charity,” Mike said. “It’s gratitude.”
He leaned in, voice low so the others couldn’t hear.
“You kept my brother from bleeding out on your couch. You fed us when you barely had heat for your own baby. You didn’t have to do that.”
Keisha’s eyes burned.
She took the envelope with numb fingers.
