Striker Claims His Rebel

1. Chapter 1

June

“Tell me he didn’t do that.”

Eliana stops halfway through tying the black apron around her waist.

For one second, her expression is completely blank. Then her hand lifts toward her left eye, and that tiny, instinctive movement tells me more than anything she could say.

“Do what?”

I stare at her.

The bruise is impossible to miss. Purple has already begun to spread beneath her eye, darker toward the corner, with faint swelling along her cheekbone. She tried to hide it with makeup. I can see where concealer has settled into her skin.

“Eliana.”

“I walked into the bathroom door.”

“You walked into a door.”

“Yes.”

“With your face.”

She gives me the look she always gives me when she thinks I’m being difficult on purpose. Usually, I deserve it.

Tonight, I don’t.

“Can we please not do this, June?”

She turns toward the shelves behind the bar and reaches for the stack of clean glasses waiting to be put away.

I catch her wrist.

“Did Jamie hit you?”

Her eyes snap to mine. They’re dark brown, almost black in the dim lighting of the Red Den, and right now they hold something I recognize too damn well.

Fear.

Fear has a way of settling inside you until it becomes part of how you move through the world.

I know because I grew up with it too.

“He didn’t hit me,” she says.

“Then what happened?”

“I told you.”

“The door attacked you.”

“June.”

“Ellie.”

Her mouth presses into a thin line.

I release her wrist before this becomes another thing she has to pull away from.

Eliana and I have been sisters since I was thirteen and she was eleven.

Nobody signed anything. We don’t share parents, genetics, or a last name.

We were two unwanted girls dropped into the same foster home, sleeping in twin beds pushed against opposite walls of a room that had belonged to half a dozen girls before us.

That was enough.

I had already been through four homes by then. Eliana had been through three.

Neither of us unpacked properly for the first month.

You learn things when you grow up like that. Keep your important stuff somewhere you can grab quickly. Never get attached to a bedroom. Don’t believe adults who say forever until forever has lasted at least a few years.

And learn how to read the people responsible for you.

Especially when they drink.

Our foster mother looked perfectly normal when the caseworker visited. Nice clothes, clean kitchen, framed Bible verses in the hallway. She remembered birthdays. She baked at Christmas.

She also drank cheap vodka after dinner.

By fourteen, I could tell what kind of night we were going to have from the way she put her purse on the counter.

Eliana never got as good at reading her.

Maybe because I made sure she didn’t have to.

The pale lines cutting across my left forearm are from a broken beer bottle our foster mother swung during one of her worse nights. She’d been coming toward Eliana.

I stepped between them.

The bottle broke against the edge of the counter before it caught my arm, and Eliana spent the next hour sitting on the bathroom floor with me, pressing a towel against the cuts while I told her I was fine.

I wasn’t.

But she needed me to be.

Maybe that’s why looking at her now makes something inside me feel small and powerless again.

“You don’t have to protect him,” I say.

Her head jerks up. “I’m not protecting anyone.”

“Okay.”

“Jamie didn’t do it.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“No.”

She lets out a frustrated breath and starts putting glasses away harder than necessary. “Then why even ask?”

Because sometimes people need to know somebody noticed.

Because sometimes the first time you ask, they lie.

And the second.

And the tenth.

Because there were years when I wished somebody had looked at me and refused to believe the bullshit coming out of my mouth.

I don’t tell her any of that.

I slide behind the bar instead and reach for the bucket of lemon wedges.

“Fine. I’ll leave it alone.”

Her shoulders loosen a fraction.

“For tonight.”

They tense right back up.

“June.”

“What? That was generous.”

“You make everything worse.”

That lands.

She knows it does because regret flashes across her face immediately.

“June, I didn’t mean…”

The front door opens.

I glance toward it automatically.

Then I wish I hadn’t.

Jamie walks inside with two men I’ve seen around him before.

Eliana goes still beside me.

There it is again.

That tiny change.

Most people probably wouldn’t notice it. Jamie certainly doesn’t seem to.

I do.

I notice because when you spend years trying to predict whether someone is going to hurt you, you become very good at watching bodies.

Jamie spots her and starts toward us.

He has been with Eliana for six months. She moved in with him after the first month, which I hated then and hate even more now.

For the first few weeks, I thought he was merely annoying. He texted too much. Showed up when we were supposed to be having dinner alone. Wanted to know where she was all the time.

Then he started making little comments.

Her skirt was too short.

That guy at work looked at her too much.

Why did she need to go out when they could stay home?

Why was she always telling me everything?

Each little thing was easy to excuse. Together, they had started to look a whole lot like control.

Jamie reaches the bar.

“Hey, babe.”

Eliana gives him a quick smile.

He bends to kiss her.

She turns her head at the last second.

His mouth lands near her temple instead.

Right above the bruise.

I see his eyes flick toward it.

I’m done.

“Did you hit her?”

Eliana makes a quiet sound beside me.

Jamie looks at me. “Excuse me?”

I come around the bar.

“Her face. Did you do that?”

“June, stop,” Eliana says.

Jamie gives a humorless laugh. “She told you what happened?”

“You mean the bathroom door?”

His expression changes for half a second.

Enough.

“She fell,” he says.

“Into the door.”

“Yeah.”

Behind him, one of his friends looks away.

My pulse starts pounding.

I step closer.

“Stay away from her.”

Jamie’s eyebrows rise. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“June.” Eliana grabs my arm. “Stop it.”

Jamie looks between us before focusing on me again. “You always have to stick your fucking nose into everything, don’t you?”

“When it involves her? Yeah.”

“She’s my girlfriend.”

“She was my sister before she ever knew your name.”

“You’re not her fucking sister.”

I’m twenty-four years old. Old enough to know putting my hands on an angry man is a terrible idea.

I shove him anyway.

Both palms hit his chest hard enough to move him half a step.

“June!”

Eliana gets between us before Jamie can react.

His face has gone red.

I’m breathing too hard, anger flooding my veins so quickly I can barely hear anything over it.

Eliana turns on me.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

I stare at her.

She looks furious.

At me.

“Ellie…”

“It was an accident!”

“I’m trying to help you.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

The words hit harder than they should.

Jamie puts his hand on her shoulder.

I see her stiffen.

“Don’t touch her,” I snap.

His gaze finds mine over her head.

There’s something in it now.

Something cold.

“Maybe you ought to worry about yourself for once.”

A chill traces down my spine.

I refuse to let him see it.

“Maybe you ought to go fuck yourself.”

Eliana closes her eyes.

“June, please.”

That does what Jamie’s anger can’t.

I back off.

For her.

Only for her.

I return behind the bar and grab a glass, mostly because if I keep standing there, I might throw something.

Jamie says something low into Eliana’s ear.

She nods.

I don’t ask.

I don’t trust myself to.

For the next three hours, I work.

I pour beer. Mix drinks. Wipe sticky rings from the bar. Smile when customers deserve it and pretend not to hear them when they don’t.

Jamie and his friends take a booth near the back.

Every now and then I feel him looking at me.

I never give him the satisfaction of looking back.

By closing time, my feet ache and my temper has cooled into something heavier.

Eliana finished before me.

She said goodbye quietly and promised she would text.

I made her promise twice.

It’s after two when I finally walk out of the Red Den, pulling my jacket tighter around myself as the mountain air hits my skin.

The parking lot is mostly empty.

My Corolla sits beneath a dying light near the far edge because I arrived late and got the worst spot.

I dig through my purse for my keys as I walk.

Halfway there, I hear footsteps.

I turn.

Jamie is standing behind me.

My hand tightens around my keys.

His two friends step out from between a pair of trucks.

For one second, nobody speaks.

Then I look at Jamie.

“Where’s Eliana?”

“Home.”

“And why are you here?”

His jaw tightens. “You really don’t know when to shut the fuck up.”

I glance toward the Red Den.

The front door is already locked.

“Move.”

I start around him.

One of his friends grabs my upper arm.

I wrench away. “Get your fucking hands off me.”

Jamie steps into my path.

“You embarrassed me tonight.”

“You managed that yourself.”

His mouth twists. “You think you’re tough?”

“I think you’re pathetic.”

His friend catches my arm again, harder this time.

I twist, but Jamie grabs my other shoulder before I can get loose.

Pain bites into my skin.

“Let go.”

“You need to learn when to mind your own business.”

“Eliana is my business.”

“She’s mine.”

“She’s not your property.”

Something ugly flashes across his face.

I drive my knee toward him.

He jerks back with a curse, and for one glorious second his grip loosens.

Then the man behind me catches both my arms and drags me backward.

Fear hits hard and fast.

Three men.

Empty parking lot.

Locked bar.

Jamie advances again.

“Let me go!”

He reaches for me.

A voice slices through the night.

Deep. Calm. Close enough to make every man around me freeze.

“Let her go.”

I turn.

A man is walking toward us.

For one completely inappropriate second, my brain forgets how danger works.

He’s huge.

Tall enough to make Jamie look smaller just by entering the same space, broad through the shoulders, black leather cut open over a dark shirt. Tattoos cover his forearms, and dirty-sand hair falls over his forehead like he has better things to do than worry about it.

Then I see his eyes.

Green.

Sharp enough that my breath catches before I can stop it.

My pulse is already racing from fear, but something else slides underneath it now, hot and strange and entirely unwelcome.

Of all possible moments for my body to notice a man, apparently this is the one it chooses.

Wonderful.

His gaze moves over me once.

My face.

The hands gripping my arms.

Back to Jamie.

Something in his expression changes.

Barely.

But I feel it.

The air around him goes colder.

DAMNED SINNERS MC is stitched across his cut.

I know the name.

Everybody around Roseburn Falls does.

The man behind me loosens his grip.

Jamie doesn’t move.

Neither does the stranger.

His eyes stay fixed on the hands still touching me.

“Take your hands off her if you want to live.”