Chapter 6 #2
Not much. Just a shift of weight, a settling of my shoulders. But enough that I press against him—spine to chest, my body fitting into the curve of his—and I feel him inhale. Sharp. Surprised.
For a second, nothing. Neither of us breathes.
Then his arms tighten on the counter. Drawing in. His body settles against mine, and the warmth becomes heat, becomes the solid wall of him curved around me, and I forget about the garlic, forget about the tenderloin, forget about everything except the weight of him at my back.
We stand there, his breath in my hair, my pulse loud in my ears.
I turn.
It takes maneuvering in the small space—an awkward shuffle, my hip bumping the counter, his arms shifting to give me room while staying near—but then I'm facing him. My back against the counter's edge. His arms still braced on either side of me, palms flat on the butcher block.
He's near enough that I see the amber ring around his pupils, darker at the edges. The small scar above his left eyebrow, silver against green skin, curved into a crescent. The way his jaw is tight, his whole body held still.
Ravgor.
His real name sits on my tongue. I wonder what would happen if I said it—if he'd flinch, if he'd soften, if it would crack something open between us that we couldn't close again.
I don't say it.
Not yet.
"Eden." His voice is rough.
"Yeah?"
"What do you want?"
He's not moving or leaning in, just looking at me, waiting. Letting me decide. Giving me the choice he took from me yesterday, in the living room, when he reached for me without asking.
My hand rises toward his jaw.
He doesn't move or breathe, and those amber eyes drop to my hand, track its path upward, then find my face again.
My fingertips brush the edge of his jaw—
The sound comes from outside.
Car engine. Tires on gravel.
His head snaps toward the window, and it hits him—something's wrong. His phone didn't buzz, and no warning came. For days, every car on that road has been announced before it arrived, Crow or Nova or someone sending a text, plates already run, threat already assessed.
This one wasn't.
"Get away from the window."
He doesn't wait for me to move. His hand closes around my wrist and he pulls me with him—out of the kitchen, across the living room. My feet barely keep up.
He presses me against the wall beside the front window, positioning himself between me and the glass. One hand still on my wrist. The other reaches for the side table drawer, yanks it open, and comes out with a gun.
Matte black. Compact. It's been there this whole time. I wonder how many more there are.
He lets go of my wrist and angles his head to see out without being seen.
Through the pines, I catch glimpses of a dark sedan. Not passing. Slowing.
It stops.
"Diesel." My voice comes out too high. "Who is it?"
"Don't know." He doesn't look at me. "Probably nothing."
But his phone didn't buzz, and the warning didn't come.
It's happening again.
The sedan just sits there. Engine idling. Why isn't it moving?
My hand finds his back, fingers curling into the fabric of his thermal, gripping tight.
His muscles tense under my palm. His stance shifts, his weight settling back toward me.
He doesn't turn. Doesn't speak.
He just lets me hold on.
The sedan rolls forward. Slow. Moving.
Pulling into the driveway.
"Down." His voice cracks through the room. "Floor. Now."
I slide down the wall, my back scraping against the plaster. Knees hit hardwood. Palms brace against the cold floor. From somewhere above me, I hear him move—the soft scrape of metal, the shift of his weight as he changes position.
The crunch of tires on gravel. Getting closer.
I squeeze my eyes shut. This is how they found me. This is the safe house all over again—gunshots, hands grabbing, the screaming that never—
The sound changes.
The crunch continues, but the direction shifts. Reversing. The sedan is turning around.
I don't move. Don't breathe. Count the seconds in the space between heartbeats.
Gravel. Engine. The sound growing fainter. Fainter.
Gone.
I stay on the floor. My hands are shaking—I see them, pressed against the hardwood, trembling, disconnected. Not quite mine. My whole body is shaking, and I can't make it stop.
"They're gone." His voice comes from above me. "Car's gone. You can get up."
I can't.
I try to push myself up and my arms won't cooperate. The floor is cold under my palms, and I focus on that—the temperature, the grain of the wood, the place where a knot creates a bump under my left hand—something real.
Footsteps. He crouches in front of me, lowering himself to my level.
"Eden. Look at me."
I do. His face is hard, watchful, but the gun is lowered now, pointed at the floor between us.
"They left," he says. "Could have been lost. Could have been checking addresses. Happens sometimes out here—people miss turns, need to use a driveway to turn around."
"You don't believe that."
His jaw works.
"No."
"Your phone didn't buzz."
He hears it too—the absence. He flexes his grip on the gun.
"I'm going to do a perimeter check." He stands, and the gun comes up with him. "Stay away from the windows. Don't open the door for anyone."
"Diesel—"
"Anyone, Eden. Not even if they say they're police. Not even if they look official. You don't open that door until you hear my voice." He pauses. "And if you have to run, go North. Find Gus. Tell him to contact the club."
I nod. I can't speak.
He looks at me for a long moment. Then he's gone. The back door opens and closes, and I'm alone.
The kitchen floor is cold when I sit down. I pull my knees to my chest and wait.
I don't know how long it takes. Long enough for the shaking to stop. Long enough for my heartbeat to slow to something approaching normal, for the roar to fade from my ears. Long enough for a smell to register—something burning.
The tenderloin.
I scramble up. The cast iron is still on the burner, smoke rising from the pan. I grab a dish towel and yank it off the heat. The bottom of the roast is black. Not dark brown, not charred—black. The twine burned clean off on the bottom, leaving the meat splayed open.
I use tongs to flip it onto a cutting board. The top looks fine. Seared, like it's supposed to be. But underneath—
Not ruined. Just... half-ruined.
The back door opens.
I whip around, dish towel still in hand, before I register who it is. He steps inside, scanning the room—corners first, then windows, then me. His eyes find the smoking cast iron, the blackened roast on the cutting board.
"Clear," he says. "No tracks. No sign anyone came onto the property."
I nod.
He tucks the pistol into the back of his waistband. Tries to make it casual. It's not.
His hands are steady. His face is blank. But his shoulders are tight.
His phone buzzes.
He checks it, and his shoulders loosen—just slightly, just enough for me to see.
"Text was delayed," he says. "Cell tower issue. Crow got the alert twelve minutes ago. Ran the plates. Rental car out of Asheville. Probably looking for the trailhead—people miss the turn all the time."
That's twelve minutes where the system was blind, where a car appeared and neither of us knew if it was nothing or everything.
"Okay." My voice sounds distant. "That's... good."
He looks at the cutting board. At the half-burnt tenderloin. At the disaster of a kitchen—the salt on the ceiling, the garlic scattered everywhere.
"You should eat something."
I almost laugh. "So should you."
A few hours ago, my fingertips touched his jaw. Now we're sitting three feet apart and he won't look at me.
We eat at the small kitchen table. I sliced off the burnt side and threw it away. What's left is uneven—overcooked on one end, almost raw in the middle where the heat never reached. The garlic butter I never finished sits congealed in a pan on the stove.
He eats without complaint, cleans his plate in the time it takes me to get through half of mine, and goes back for seconds—I can't tell if he's being polite or if orc taste buds just work differently.
Food moves around my plate. I try to taste something other than adrenaline.
I wanted to give him something—a thank you he couldn't deflect.
The joy got stolen.
We eat anyway.
Dishes pile up in the sink—plates, the cast iron, the cutting board.
"Leave it," he says, already moving toward the living room, putting space between us.
"No."
He stops. Turns.
"My mess," I say. "I clean it."
"The cook doesn't clean."
"That's not how it's been." I cross to the sink, turn on the water.
He doesn't argue. Just stands there, watching me scrub at the cast iron.
"You should rest," he says.
I scrub harder. "I'm fine."
"Eden—"
"I said I'm fine." The words come out sharper than I mean them to. "I'm scared, okay? I'm not going to pretend I'm not. But I'm not broken. I'm not going to shatter because a car turned into the wrong driveway."
Silence.
Then he's beside me. He leaves a careful gap. Reaches past me for the dish towel.
"I wash," he says. "You dry."
I step aside. Let him take over the sink.
He passes me dishes. I dry them, put them away.
He's careful not to let our fingers touch, every handoff deliberate.
I want to ask what changed, want to say a few hours ago you were pressed against me and neither of us pulled away. But I don't. Because maybe I already know the answer.
Maybe the second he heard tires on gravel, he realized what a mistake this was. Maybe he's been figuring out how to walk it back ever since.
"Thank you," I say when the last dish is put away. "For today. For how you handled everything."
"Nothing to thank me for." He won't look at me. "It's what I'm here for."
It's what I'm here for.
Right. That's all this is. His job.
"Go to bed," he says.
"It's the middle of the afternoon."
"Rest."
My mouth opens to argue. Then I see his face.
He's not looking at me like I'm fragile. He's looking at me like he's the one about to break.
"Okay," I say.
The bedroom is dim. I climb into bed and stare at the ceiling. Through the thin walls, I hear him pacing. The creak of floorboards as he checks the windows again.
He's not resting. He's standing guard.
Or maybe he's just staying as far from this room as he can.
Four more days until the trial. Four more days of this.
I close my eyes.
When sleep finally comes, I dream of kitchens and counters and the question he asked before the car.
What do you want, Eden?
I wanted him to mean it.