Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Diesel
Day three.
She's wearing my shirt.
Only the shirt—a black henley hanging to mid-thigh, sleeves shoved up past her elbows because they're twice as long as her arms. Her clothes are drip-drying in the bathroom.
I've been failing not to look at her all morning.
The collar gaps when she moves. Her legs are bare against the kitchen chair—miles of pale skin I shouldn't be noticing. She keeps tugging at the hem, and every time she does, the fabric shifts across her thighs and I have to find somewhere else to put my eyes.
She doesn't know what she's doing to me. She can't.
Wearing my shirt isn't about seduction. It's survival.
No washer, no dryer—I haven't gotten to that part of the renovation yet, and I'm not about to take her to the clubhouse to do laundry.
So she's washed her clothes in the sink before dawn while I lie on the couch pretending I can't hear every splash.
My head knows this.
My beast has other ideas.
I focus on the stove—sausage links popping in the cast iron, eggs (six of them, because orcs eat and I need something to do with my hands), and potatoes fried in bacon grease, the way Red taught me, golden and crisp at the edges.
She's at the table with her coffee, watching me cook. Three days locked in this cottage with nothing to do. I'm the most interesting thing in the room by default.
"You always make this much food?"
"Orcs eat a lot."
"I've noticed."
I plate the food and set hers in front of her—a normal portion, eggs and sausage and a scoop of potatoes. Mine is three times the size.
She picks at her eggs, pushing them around the plate more than actually eating, and I avoid watching the way the shirt slides off her shoulder when she reaches for her coffee, avoid noticing the collarbone it exposes or the edge of the bandage still taped to her skin.
"You always eat this little?"
She glances up. "Only when I'm worried about living to see tomorrow."
She means it as a joke. Her mouth quirks, waiting for me to laugh.
I don't.
My phone buzzes.
I check it without thinking. Crow. Car spotted on Route 9. Ran the plates—rental from Atlanta. Could be nothing.
I pocket the phone.
"What was that?"
"Nothing."
She holds my gaze longer than she should, then goes back to her coffee.
By ten, I'm going out of my mind. She tries the laptop again—I watch her stare at a blank screen for twenty minutes, fingers hovering over the keys, before she slams it shut hard enough to make me flinch.
"The words won't come," she says when she catches me looking. "Every time I try to write, I see his face. The way he smiled when he talked about killing people. Proud of it. He expected me to be impressed."
I know that look. I've seen it on camp guards handing out punishments and on the men who burned Red's garage and then shook the sheriff's hand the next morning.
Orcs kill when we have to. We don't brag about it after.
"Yeah," I say. "I know that kind of ugly."
She looks at me, waiting for more.
I don't give it to her.
"Write something else."
"I can't write about anything else." She runs her hands through her hair, and the shirt rides up her thighs. I look away. "It's all I can think about. That and—"
She stops.
"And?"
"Nothing." She crosses to the box of books I gave her, still sitting where she left it by the armchair, pulls one out—Rebecca—and puts it back. "Tell me something. Anything. I need to think about something other than my own head."
She's not asking because she wants to know. The silence is eating her alive and I'm the only thing in the room that talks back.
"What do you want to know?"
"Anything." She looks at the wall where the built-in shelves used to be—bare studs and empty space, wires hanging loose where I haven't finished the work. "Why'd you tear out the shelves?"
"Wasn't using them."
"So you just... ripped them out?"
"Big screen's going to fit perfect there." I shrug. "Once I finish the wiring."
She frowns. "An orc who watches TV."
"What do you have against TV?"
"Nothing. I just never have time for it." She shrugs. "What do you watch?"
"Sports. Old movies. Whatever's on."
"That's very normal of you."
"I have my moments."
She's pacing again, moving toward the window with her arms wrapped around herself, swimming in black fabric and looking smaller than she is.
"What's your real name?" she asks. "Diesel—that's a nickname, right? How'd you get it?"
Red's face flashes through my mind—his laugh, the garage, the way he calls me over to look at an engine and ruffles my hair when I get something right.
"Yes. It's a nickname."
"And?"
"And nothing."
"Come on." She turns to face me. "I told you about the worst night of my life. You won't even tell me how you got your name?"
She's been pacing for hours—can't write, can't read, trapped in this cottage with nowhere to go and nothing to do except ask me questions I don't want to answer.
I give her a crumb.
"A friend gave it to me." The words scrape out. "I'm good with engines."
She tilts her head. "A club friend?"
"No."
She waits, the writer in her hungry for more.
Silence.
My phone buzzes again.
Nova this time. Following up on the rental car. Driver checked into a motel in Madison. Probably nothing, but Ash is keeping eyes on it.
I slip it back in my pocket.
"Who keeps texting you?"
"Club business."
"Right." Her jaw tightens. "Club business."
She goes back to wearing a track in the floor. I go back to failing not to watch her—frustration written all over her face, flushed and fierce.
I need to get out of this room, but I can't, so I do the next best thing—grab my tools and start sanding the cabinet doors. They've needed it for months, and it's a good enough excuse to keep my hands busy and my eyes off her.
"You're seriously going to sand cabinets right now?"
"Doors are sticking."
"So you're just going to ignore me and sand things?"
I don't answer, just focus on the wood grain, the rhythm of the sandpaper, anything to stop looking at her—at the collar of my shirt sliding off her shoulder, at the soft skin underneath.
She makes a sound of frustration and keeps moving, back and forth, back and forth.
My phone buzzes a third time.
Crow. Rental car driver is a woman. Mid-fifties. Here for a funeral. False alarm.
I tuck it away.
"Let me guess." Her voice has gone sharp. "Club business."
"False alarm. The car was nothing."
She goes very still. "What car?"
Shit.
"There was a rental spotted on Route 9. Crow ran the plates." I set down the sandpaper, facing her. "It's nobody—a woman here for a funeral."
"A rental from where?"
"Atlanta."
Frustration shifts to something else on her face. Anger, maybe. Or fear dressed up as anger.
"A car from Atlanta was spotted near here, and you didn't think to mention it?"
"I just did."
"After it was cleared." She's not pacing anymore. She's standing in the middle of the room, fists clenched at her sides. "How many other things have you 'cleared' without telling me?"
I don't answer.
"That's what I thought." She's shaking now. "Every time your phone buzzes, it's about me. About my case. And you just—pocket it. Like I don't have a right to know."
"You don't need to panic over every false alarm."
"That's not your decision to make!"
"Actually, it is." I step toward her. "My job is to keep you alive. Part of that is keeping you calm. Stable. Not spiraling every time there's an update."
"I'm not spiraling—"
"You've been pacing for three hours." I take another step. "You can't write. You can't read. You won't eat unless I put food in front of you."
"That's not—"
"You're barely holding it together, Eden." I'm too close now. I know I'm too close. But I can't stop. "And you want me to add to that? Give you more to carry?"
"I want you to treat me like a person!" She doesn't back away, just tilts her chin up to hold my gaze. "Not a package you're babysitting until delivery. A person who has a right to know what's happening in her own life."
She's close. Too close. Close enough that if I reached out, I could touch the hair falling across her cheek, tuck it behind her ear.
I reach for her.
Not thinking. Not planning. Just my hand rising toward her face, toward that soft curve of her jaw—
She shoves me with both hands flat against my chest, pushing hard. I stumble back—not because she's strong enough to move me, but because I let her.
"What the hell are you doing?"
Her voice cracks. Her whole body is trembling.
"Eden—"
"No." She steps back. Then again. "You don't get to do that. You don't get to loom over me, tell me what I do and don't need to know, and then—"
"I wasn't going to—"
"Wasn't going to what? Touch me? You were already moving!"
She's right. I am.
"You're such an asshole." The word comes out cracked, broken in the middle.
"I thought—Maya said you were safe. Nova said you'd protect me.
But you're just like every other man who thinks he knows what's best for me.
Who makes decisions about my life without asking.
Who takes what he wants when he wants it. "
The comparison hits harder than her shove did.
"I was trying to protect you."
"From what? Information? Or from yourself?"
I don't have an answer to that.
"I'm going to get dressed." She's already moving toward the bathroom, bare feet slapping against the hardwood. "My clothes should be dry by now. And when I come out, you're going to tell me everything. Every text. Every update. Every single thing you've been keeping from me."
The bathroom door slams hard enough to rattle the frame.
I stand in the middle of the living room, hands at my sides, and try to remember how to breathe.
What the fuck was I thinking?
I wasn't. That's the problem. I see her in my shirt, see the fire in her eyes, and something in me wakes up that has no business waking up. Not here. Not now. Not with her.
She's right to be angry. Right to push me away. Right to call me an asshole.