Chapter 16
I wake up before my alarm and know exactly why the second I open my eyes.
For one disorienting second, I stare at the ceiling in the dim gray of early morning and try to figure out what pulled me out of sleep when the clubhouse itself is still mostly quiet. No pounding on the door. No prospect being stupid in the hallway. No bike roaring to life outside my window.
Then I hear it.
Not even a real sound. More the absence of one. No footsteps next door. No soft murmur through the wall. No shift in the hallway outside.
And my brain, being the unhelpful bastard that it is, decides that means I’m awake now.
I roll onto my back and blow out a breath through my nose.
This is exactly the kind of thing I was trying not to think about when I spent half the night staring at the ceiling like an idiot.
The fact that I am apparently now aware of whether or not the woman in the room next to mine is moving around before sunrise is not useful information.
It is not healthy information. It is definitely not information a man like me should be making space for in his head.
And yet.
I lie there another minute anyway, listening to the muted heartbeat of the clubhouse around me.
Somewhere upstairs, one of the old pipes knocks once in the wall.
Farther down the hall, a door opens and shuts softly.
Outside, a bike starts, idles for a few seconds, then cuts out again.
Somebody laughs somewhere in the common room, low and rough, probably a brother who never went to bed in the first place.
Normal sounds.
My room still feels wrong with Raven on the other side of that wall.
I hate that too.
I shove the blanket back, swing my legs over the side of the bed, and sit there for a second rubbing a hand over my face while my brain catches up with the fact that sleep is over whether I want it to be or not. I’m tired, irritable, and just grounded enough to know exactly who to blame for it.
Myself. Logan too, a little. Mostly myself.
I stand, drag on jeans, pull a black T-shirt over my head, and jam my feet into boots without bothering to lace them yet.
I slip my cut on over my shoulders, the feeling of responsibility that comes with it is heavier this morning.
The room is still dark enough that I don’t bother turning on the lamp.
Doesn’t matter. I know every inch of it.
Bed. Dresser. Chair in the corner. Gun where I left it. Knife where it belongs.
I splash water on my face in the bathroom, stare at myself in the mirror, and decide I look exactly how I feel.
Rough. Annoyed. Too awake for this hour.
Perfect.
By the time I step into the hallway, the place is just starting to shift from dead quiet to early movement.
Enough life in the walls to feel the day getting ready to start, not enough to call it busy.
I hook one thumb in my pocket and head for the kitchen because coffee is currently the only thing standing between me and homicide.
The smell hits me before I even get there. Fresh pot.
Thank Christ.
I turn the corner into the kitchen and stop short.
Raven is already there.
She’s standing barefoot at the counter in yesterday’s clothes minus my sweatshirt.
Her hair is still loose, dark and wild from sleep, falling over the front of a plain fitted T-shirt that definitely isn’t the oversized one from the drive.
She’s in soft gray sleep shorts that skim high enough over her thighs to be a problem I absolutely did not ask for before coffee.
Her back is to me, and for one full second I get the strange, jarring impression of something domestic.
A woman in a kitchen in the early morning light, moving quietly so she doesn’t wake a sleeping child. Nothing about that should hit me. It does anyway.
Then she turns, catches sight of me in the doorway, and stills with a mug halfway to the coffee pot.
For a second neither of us says anything.
She looks as surprised to see me as I feel to find her here.
Not alarmed. Just caught off guard. Her eyes are still a little sleepy, her face softer than it was last night without all the fear and travel ground into it, and that alone almost makes me turn around and walk back out on principle.
Because I was not prepared for early-morning Raven. I’m not prepared for regular Raven either, but this version feels especially unfair.
“Morning,” she says finally, voice rough with sleep.
There is absolutely nothing sexual about a sleepy woman saying one word in a kitchen. That doesn’t stop my body from acting like there is.
“Yeah,” I say, which is apparently the full extent of my personality until caffeine.
Helpful.
Her mouth twitches just slightly, like she notices I’m not firing on all cylinders yet. “I hope you don’t mind. I couldn’t sleep, so I came looking for coffee.”
The fact that she thinks she needs my permission to stand in a kitchen in a clubhouse where she is currently living for her own safety irritates me more than it should. “Why would I mind?”
Her fingers tighten around the mug handle for a second. “I don’t know. It’s your…” She trails off, probably realizing halfway through the sentence that none of this is actually mine in any meaningful way beyond the fact that I live here.
“It’s a kitchen,” I say. “You’re allowed to use it.”
She nods once, like that answer matters more than it should. Maybe it does.
I move farther in, grab a mug from the cabinet without needing to think about it, and pour coffee black enough to strip paint.
Raven shifts a step to the side automatically to make room for me, and the movement brings us close enough that I catch the faint scent of her shampoo under the coffee and dawn air.
Something clean, something light, something completely at odds with the rough edges in the rest of my life.
My shoulders tighten for no useful reason.
I lean back against the counter with my mug and take the first swallow while she adds creamer to hers. One sugar. Two small pours of creamer. Stirring slow, like she’s trying not to make noise.
I file it away before I can stop myself.
She glances at me over the rim of her mug. “Do you always wake up this early?”
“Do you?”
“No. Usually Lexi does that for me.”
The answer is dry enough to catch me off guard. “Fair.”
“I think she’s still out because the drive wore her out.”
“Probably.”
That truth sits heavy between us for a second.
Because the drive shouldn’t have worn her out the way it did. Not really. Kids get tired. Sure. But not like that. Not from one truck ride unless there’s a whole lot more piled underneath it.
Raven must feel the shift too because she looks down into her coffee instead of meeting my eyes.
The silence stretches, but it doesn’t bite the way it did on the road before we found the rhythm of each other. It settles differently now, easier, though I still don’t entirely trust that.
I take another swallow and force my attention onto something safe. “You sleep at all?”
She lets out a quiet breath that might’ve been a laugh if she had more energy behind it. “More than usual.”
I look at her then. Really look. There are still shadows under her eyes, still strain in the way she’s holding herself together, but she doesn’t look wrecked the way she did last night. Her face is less tight. Her shoulders aren’t up around her ears. Whatever rest she got mattered.
That shouldn’t make me feel as relieved as it does.
Before I can answer, soft footsteps patter in the hallway.
Then Lexi appears in the doorway, Bunny clutched in one fist, hair sticking up in three different directions, eyes still half closed.
She’s wearing the same little T-shirt she fell asleep in, and one tiny sock is twisted sideways on her foot like she pulled it on in the dark and didn’t care enough to fix it.
She blinks at the kitchen, at her mother, then at me. For one second she just stands there, sleepy and suspicious. Then she says, “Juice.”
Raven laughs softly under her breath. “Good morning to you too.”
Lexi doesn’t bother answering that. She drags herself toward the table on stubby little legs, Bunny trailing, then stops in front of Raven and lifts both arms without a word.
Clingy. Sleepy. Done with life.
Raven bends automatically to pick her up, but I’m already moving before I even realize it.
“Sit,” I tell Raven.
She blinks at me. “What?”
“You look like you’re about to fall over. Sit.”
That earns me a look. Not offended. Just confused enough that it almost slows her down. “I’m fine.”
“Sure.” I reach past her for the fridge. “Sit anyway.”
To my complete surprise, she does.
Not gracefully. More like she’s too tired to argue about it and half aware I might be right.
She lowers herself into the nearest chair with Lexi settling bonelessly in her lap, Bunny mashed between them, and looks at me like she can’t decide whether I’m overstepping or rescuing her from standing up too long before breakfast.
Maybe both.
I open the fridge, grab the first kid juice I see, and then discover it’s one of those stupid tiny boxes that never open right unless you enjoy suffering.
“Need scissors?” Raven asks, and I hear the sleep-thick amusement under it.
“I need the people who make these to answer for their crimes.”
I find the scissors, stab the straw through on the first try because I am not losing a fight to a juice box in front of a toddler, and hand it over to Lexi.
She takes it without even looking at me, still half asleep, and immediately starts drinking.
No fanfare. No suspicious stare. No hesitation.
I don’t know why that lands. It does.
Raven watches the whole thing like she can’t quite process it. Then she says, “You didn’t have to do that.”
I shrug, already turning back toward the counter. “Did it anyway.”
There’s cereal in the cabinet above the toaster, because apparently we are a house that stocks cereal for visiting kids or brothers with questionable diets. I grab the first box I recognize from watching Mac feed Cain’s kids a dozen times and set it on the table.