CHAPTER FIVE
EDEN
I know, even before I open my eyes, that something bad has happened to me.
A cold heaviness sits in my chest, a hollow ache I can’t explain. I’m scared to see where I am; scared to confirm the feeling crawling up my spine.
So I lie still, eyes squeezed shut, shivering against the cool air, forcing my fogged brain to rewind the night.
The club. The dancing. Looking for the bathroom. Ending up outside. Texting Fern.
Fern. She’ll be worried sick.
I need to move. I need to face whatever happened.
Slowly, I crack my eyes open.
Dark sky. No stars. A strip of cloud over my head. I blink, once, twice, letting my vision steady. My limbs feel heavy, uncooperative, like I’m waking from the deepest sleep I’ve ever had.
It takes me minutes—actual minutes to curl a finger. Then a second. Then to bend my knees.
Nothing seems broken. But everything feels slowed. Distant. Fuzzy.
My head throbs with a ruthless, pulsing ache, and when I push myself upright, the world tilts for a second before settling again.
My legs come into view, bare and dirty. Mud streaks my calves, and there are raw grazes across both knees, dried blood crusted around them.
A tremor ripples through my hands. I don’t remember falling.
I don’t remember any of this. The harder I try to reach for the memory, the further it slips away, leaving a hollow pressure in my chest. My breathing quickens, shallow and uneven and I carefully touch my knees where my skin is torn. The blood is dried.
How long have I been here? How did this even happen?
Panic chokes me as I scan my surroundings. I’m in an alley beside a large industrial waste bin. The smell of damp cardboard and something metallic hangs in the air.
I swallow hard and roll onto my knees, wincing as my body protests. Every muscle aches. There’s a heavy discomfort deep in my stomach, a wrongness I can’t explain.
I find my bag tossed half-behind the bin. It’s open. My purse is gone. My phone’s gone.
Was I robbed? Did I fall and knock myself out? I don’t remember. God, why can’t I remember?
A ringing starts in my ears, high and piercing. My chest tightens, my breaths turning quick and shallow as my eyes dart around trying to find anything familiar.
Holding the wall, I stumble out of the alley and onto a quiet street. Drunk stragglers weave past, laughing, but everything feels muffled, far away.
A couple slows when they see me.
“Are you okay?” the woman asks, eyes wide.
I shake my head—and suddenly I’m crying, hot tears spilling without warning. I don’t even know why I’m crying. I can’t stop.
“Where am I?” I choke out.
“Duke Street,” she says gently. “Are you from around here?”
I nod. Duke Street. I know that name. “I… I need to find my friends. What time is it?”
The man checks his watch. “Almost four a.m.”
Four a.m. My chest tightens.
Something terrible happened. Something I can’t remember. Something my body seems to know even if my mind doesn’t.
KADE
The women glance nervously at each other. Four a.m. Two hours since they came home without my ol’ lady. Four hours since she texted Fern to say she was going to the bathroom.
They’d gone looking for her—until they realised Tap and Cole were tailing them. Then the truth came out. They’d been separated from Eden.
Every available man went out searching, me included, and I’ve only just walked back into the clubhouse to find she still hasn’t returned.
My stomach churns. How does someone like Eden just vanish? How can no one have seen her for four fucking hours?
“Did you ring the hospitals again?” I ask.
Lucy nods, pale.
“Can’t we go back out there?” Martha asks, voice small and shaken. She’s been crying. I can tell.
I shake my head. “I’m not risking more women disappearing. You stay put.”
Fern follows me into my office, closing the door behind her.
“Pres,” she says carefully, “I hope I’m not out of line, but could this have anything to do with those men who followed us while we were shopping?”
I fix her with a hard stare. She straightens, ready for the fallout.
“No,” I say, firm enough to end the question.
“But they weren’t acting right. Something felt—off.”
“I don’t answer to you,” I mutter, then force myself to soften a fraction. She’s worried for Eden. “In light of the situation, I’ll say this once. I was with them around the time you last saw her. We cleared the air.”
“You told Eden they were from the past,” she challenges. “So what air needed clearing?”
I pull in a slow, patient breath. She’s scared. That’s all.
“Past air,” I say. “Past problems. They’re not an issue, Fern.”
Before she can ask anything else, my phone buzzes. Cole.
I snatch it up. “Yeah?”
“We’ve got her, Pres. She’s fine.”
I stand so fast that the chair nearly topples. Relief slams into me like a hit of pure oxygen.
“Is that her?” Fern whispers.
I nod. She bursts into tears and runs out to tell the others.
I force my voice to remain steady. “Where has she been?”
“Couple found her wandering around Duke Street,” Cole says. “Looked lost as hell. She can’t remember what happened. Purse and phone are gone—she thinks she bumped her head and knocked herself out.”
My hand curls into a fist.
“She said she kept trying to remember her address, so the couple walked her around to jog her memory. We found them just before they decided to take her to the police.”
“Get her to the hospital and I’ll meet you there.”
“We tried. She freaked out, Pres. Proper meltdown—crying, shaking. She wants to come home.”
“No.” My voice leaves no room for argument. “If she hit her head, she needs checking.”
“I get that,” Cole says gently, “but right now she just needs you. Once she’s with you, you can talk her into it.”
I swallow hard. “Fine, bring her back here. I’ll take her in myself.”
EDEN
I can’t stop shaking. Not from the cold—Cole forced his jacket over me the second he found me.
It’s heavy on my shoulders, swallowing me whole.
I’m shaking because my body won’t obey me.
Because my limbs still feel slow, disconnected, like I’m underwater.
Maybe the hit to my head was harder than I realised, but I can’t feel any lump.
No bruise. Nothing. And that sick feeling twisting in my stomach keeps getting worse.
Cole pulls up outside the club, and before I can even try to open the door myself, it’s yanked open, and Kade is standing there, breathing hard, eyes wild.
“I’ve been out of my mind,” he hisses.
I start crying immediately. Ugly. Loud. Uncontrollable. The kind of crying that hurts.
“I’m so sorry,” I manage, my voice barely a whisper.
He leans in, scooping me out of the back seat effortlessly, but the movement makes my arms flare with pain where his hands grip me. I wince.
His expression softens instantly. “I was so worried, Queenie.” This time, his voice cracks, gentler. “So damn worried.”
He pulls me against him, and I bury my face in his chest, inhaling the familiar woody aftershave that normally calms me. But something else hits me. A faint, sharp scent—citrus. Zesty. Wrong. It twists through my thoughts like a splinter.
I frown, trying to latch onto the memory, the meaning, something.
Kade strokes a hand down my back. “Let’s get you to bed.” But a word floats up from the dark edges of my mind, slurred and sticky.
Baby.
Kade never calls me baby. Why am I thinking about that word? Why does it echo so loudly now?
Why won’t my brain let it go?
Inside, I’m swallowed by warmth and arms and voices.
Fern is the first to reach me, hugging me so hard I almost lose my balance. The other women pull me into their arms one by one, whispering apologies—We should’ve checked sooner. We shouldn’t have left you. We’re so sorry, Eden.
I shake my head, forcing a small smile. “It’s my fault,” I tell them. “I got lost. I wandered outside. You couldn’t have known.”
And they accept it because they want to. Because the alternative is too terrifying to consider.
Kade’s arm stays firm around my waist as he guides me upstairs. His other hand is clenched so tightly his knuckles are white. He keeps telling me we need to go to the hospital, talking in low, steady tones that are trying very hard not to sound panicked.
“I just want to get you checked out,” he says, rummaging for my pyjamas. “It won’t take long. We’ll be in and out—”
But I’m barely listening. My feet carry me into the bathroom on autopilot.
When I flick on the light, the brightness slices through my skull, but I force myself toward the mirror anyway.
And I freeze.
I look awful.
My face is pale, blotchy, streaked with dirt. Mascara smudged down my cheeks. My hair tangled, with dried leaves and dust, like I’ve been lying somewhere I shouldn’t have been. Which I have.
Hours. I lost hours.
I stare at myself, my reflection swimming in and out of focus. My stomach twists sickly. Fear prickles under my skin.
An alley. Beside a rubbish bin. Cold concrete. The metallic taste in my mouth.
I sit down on the toilet, trying to breathe through the pounding in my head. When I glance down, a sharp gasp rips out of me.
There’s blood on my inner thighs.
For a moment, I just stare at it, unable to make sense of anything. My brain feels like it’s full of static. Slowly, with trembling fingers, I touch the edge of the bodysuit between my legs and more dried, dark blood flakes away.
My stomach lurches.
I begin to pee and a bolt of pain slices through me—sharp, burning, wrong. I bite down on a cry.
Pain. A deep throb. A memory half-formed. I shudder violently. Why does it hurt like that?
I must sit there too long, frozen, because Kade suddenly pushes the door open.
“Queenie, what’s taking you so—” He stops dead when he sees the blood on my underwear.
“You got your period early?” he asks gently.
I force myself to nod. Slowly. Mechanically.
The word baby echoes through my mind from somewhere dark. And that faint smell—citrus, sharp, wrong—flashes again. My chest tightens.
Kade doesn’t notice. He just nods and reaches for the shower controls.
“I’ll put the water on,” he says softly. “And a towel on the radiator. You okay?”
Another nod. A smile that feels like tearing paper.
“Right. Clean up, then get some sleep. We’ll go to the hospital first thing.”
He steps out. And the second the door closes, I break.
I wipe between my legs, and a red-hot pain shoots through me again. I inhale sharply, wincing. It’s like my nerves are on fire. I look down at the tissue and clamp a shaking hand over my mouth.
The memories flicker like broken film.
Zesty. Pain. Baby. Relax. Hold still.
My entire body trembles.
I stand, undressing in clumsy, jerking movements. My clothes drop in a heap. When I lift my gaze to the mirror, I choke on a sob.
Bruises.
On my arms. My ribs. My chest. Places that should never be bruised like that.
My knees buckle, and I grip the sink to keep myself upright.
Zesty. Pain. Relax, sweetheart. Baby.
I bend over the basin and vomit, the sound ripping out of me from somewhere deep and terrified. When the retching stops, all I can think is, Kade is on the other side of that door. He can’t see me like this. He can’t see the bruises. Not until I understand what happened. Not until I’m sure.
My hands shake violently as I reach out and turn the lock. The click echoes far too loudly in the quiet room.
And I know Kade heard it.
We never lock doors.