Chapter 5
and quiet for exactly this kind of situation.
Anchor watched Colleen move through the space like she was cataloging exits. Kitchen in the back, living room up front, narrow stairs leading to two bedrooms. Nothing fancy. Everything functional.
"It's not a prison," he said.
"Feels like one." She ran her fingers along the kitchen counter, frowning at the bare walls. "My apartment has plants. Art. Things that make it mine."
"Your apartment is also the first place Driscoll's people will look."
"I know." She turned, leaning against the counter with her arms crossed. Defensive. Stubborn. Beautiful in a way that made his chest ache. "Doesn't mean I have to like it."
Anchor set down the bag of takeout he'd grabbed on the way—Thai, because he'd noticed the menu pinned to her shop's bulletin board and figured she had a preference. Her eyes tracked the movement.
"You got me food?"
"You haven't eaten since this morning."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I was watching." He pulled containers from the bag, found plates in the cabinet like he owned the place. "Pad thai. Green curry. Spring rolls."
Colleen stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "You remembered my order."
"I remember everything about you."
The words hung between them. Too honest. Too much.
She should have run. Should have told him to back off, stop being so goddamn intense, remember that she was a client and he was a biker and this whole arrangement was about protection, not—
"Thank you," she said quietly.
Anchor handed her a plate.
They ate in the sparse kitchen, sitting across from each other at a table that had seen better decades. The silence wasn't uncomfortable—more like a pause between rounds, both of them catching their breath before the next exchange.
"Can I ask you something?" Colleen set down her fork, green curry half-finished.
"Depends on the question."
"The memorial piece." She gestured vaguely at his chest, where the fresh ink still burned under his shirt. "Your father's name. Why does it matter enough to carry forever?"
Anchor should have deflected. Should have given her some bullshit answer about family honor and moved on.
Instead, he told her the truth.
"Because someone should remember him as more than a failure."
Colleen's expression softened. Not pity—she was too sharp for pity. Understanding.
"What happened?"
"What always happens." Anchor pushed food around his plate, not hungry anymore. "My family worked the docks for three generations. Grandfather loaded ships. Father drove cranes. I started at eighteen, figured I'd do the same until I died."
"But?"
"Automation." The word tasted like ash. "Machines don't need health insurance. Don't take sick days. Don't ask for raises. Port started cutting jobs, and my father—" He stopped. Breathed. "He couldn't adapt. Didn't know how to be anything other than what he'd always been."
"So he drank."
"Yeah." Anchor met her eyes. "He drank. Lost his job, then his savings, then his dignity. By the end, he couldn't look at me without seeing everything he'd failed to give me."
"And your mother?"
"Lost the house six months after he died. Medical bills ate everything." His hands curled into fists on the table. "I send her money every month. She pretends it comes from somewhere else because she can't stand taking charity from her own son."
Colleen reached across the table and covered his fist with her hand. Small fingers, steady as always, the ink on her arms catching the kitchen light.
"My father drank too," she said. "Different reasons, same result. He taught me how to fight before he taught me how to love, and then he died before I figured out which one mattered more."
"Do you know now?"
"Some days." Her thumb traced across his knuckles. "I spent four years in Army hospitals learning that fighting keeps people alive. Then I came home and learned that love is what makes staying alive worth it."
Anchor turned his hand over, caught her fingers in his. Her pulse fluttered against his palm.
"Why tattoos?" he asked.
"Because my hands wouldn't stop shaking."
He waited. She'd tell him or she wouldn't.
"Field hospitals are chaos," she said finally. "Soldiers bleeding out faster than you can stitch them. Mortars falling close enough to shake the walls. You learn to work through fear because fear is constant—there's no version of that life where you're not terrified every single second."
"But you kept going."
"I kept going." She pulled her hand back, wrapped her arms around herself. "Until I didn't. Until I came home and the shaking started and I couldn't hold a coffee cup without spilling it everywhere."
"PTSD?"
"That's what the VA called it." Her mouth twisted. "I called it my hands remembering things my brain tried to forget. Every tremor was a soldier I couldn't save. Every spilled cup was blood on an operating table."
"What fixed it?"
"A tattoo machine." She smiled, faint and real. "I was getting work done, watching the artist's hands stay perfectly steady, and I thought—I want that. I want to be in control of something again. So I learned. Practiced until my hands remembered steadiness instead of trauma."
Anchor studied her. This woman who'd built herself back from pieces, who'd taken shaking hands and turned them into art, who refused to flinch when loan sharks threatened everything she'd created.
"You're extraordinary," he said.
Colleen laughed—sharp, surprised. "I'm stubborn. There's a difference."
"Not from where I'm sitting."
Her cheeks flushed. She looked away, then back, those green eyes catching his with something that felt like the beginning of surrender.
"You're not what I expected," she said. "When I figured out you were Sons."
"What did you expect?"
"Loud. Aggressive. The kind of guy who solves problems by hitting them until they stop moving."
"I solve problems by waiting until the right moment and then hitting them until they stop moving." He let his mouth curve. "There's a difference."
She laughed again, and the sound settled into his chest like warmth.
"Why the Sons?" she asked. "With your dock background, you could've gone union. Gone legitimate."
"The union couldn't protect my family when the work disappeared.
Made promises they didn't keep, collected dues from men they left to drown.
" Anchor shook his head. "The Sons don't make promises they can't keep.
Brotherhood means something here. When I needed somewhere to put the anger, they gave me a home. "
"And now you protect other people's families."
"Now I protect what matters." His eyes held hers. "People like you. Shop owners who refuse to bend. Communities that deserve better than being bled dry by predators."
Colleen was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was softer than he'd ever heard it.
"I've been alone since I got back from overseas. Built my shop, built my reputation, built a life that didn't need anyone else." She swallowed. "It's strange, having someone in my corner."
"Get used to it."
"Is that an order?"
"It's a promise."
The air between them thickened. Anchor could feel the pull—the gravity of her, dragging him toward something he hadn't planned and couldn't resist.
He should keep his distance. Professional. Protective. Nothing more.
But she was looking at him like he was something worth trusting, and that was more dangerous than any loan shark could ever be.
"It's late," he said, even though it wasn't. "You should get some sleep. Tomorrow we'll check on your shop, make sure Driscoll's people haven't tried anything else."
"Where will you be?"
"Downstairs. Couch."
Her eyebrows rose. "You're staying?"
"I told you." He stood, began clearing the takeout containers. "I don't leave your side until this is finished."
"That could be weeks."
"Then it's weeks."
Colleen watched him, something shifting behind her eyes. He couldn't read it—not yet—but it made his blood run hot.
"Goodnight, Anchor."
He wanted to touch her. Wanted to cross the kitchen and pull her against him and show her exactly what he'd been thinking since she'd put her hands on his skin.
Instead, he nodded.
"Goodnight, Colleen."
She headed for the stairs. Stopped at the bottom, one hand on the railing.
"For what it's worth," she said without turning around, "I'm glad you're here."
Then she was gone, footsteps creaking overhead, and Anchor was left alone with the remains of dinner and a want so sharp it could have cut glass.
Understanding built where there was only client and artist before.
He'd told her things he'd never told anyone. She'd told him things that explained everything.
This wasn't protection anymore.
This was the beginning of something he couldn't name and didn't want to stop.