Chapter Eleven #2
He hears me. I watch it land, watch the fury bank back down into something controlled, still furious but no longer teetering on the edge of something neither of us could take back. He eases the pressure just enough for the man to breathe properly, keeps him pinned, keeps his voice low and clear.
"Last chance. Who sent you."
"Colton," the man gasps out, finally. "Colton sent me. Said grab whatever paperwork's in the register, business records, anything with the deed info. Said it wasn't supposed to be dangerous, said the shop'd be empty by now."
Deuce arrives at a dead run a moment later, phone still in his hand, having apparently been close enough to hear the commotion himself, and between the two of them they've got the man secured, zip-tied and sitting against the brick, by the time Silas and Preacher screech up in a truck eight minutes later, faster than I'd have thought possible from a call that far out.
Silas takes one look at the scene, the secured man, Wyatt's controlled fury, me standing shaking at the mouth of the alley, and his jaw sets in a way I haven't seen from him before, something colder and more decisive than the careful patience he's shown all week.
"This ends," he says, to nobody and everybody at once.
"Tonight was the last warning shot either side gets.
Preacher, get this one back to the clubhouse, find out everything he knows before Dax realizes he's missing.
Wyatt." He looks at his road captain, something almost gentle underneath the hard set of his face.
"Get her inside. Stay with her tonight. That's not a request."
For once, Wyatt doesn't argue about propriety or boundaries or what he has or hasn't earned. He just nods, and something in his easy acceptance of the order tells me exactly how frightened he'd actually been these last ten minutes, however controlled he'd kept it on the surface.
Preacher pauses next to me on his way to load the prisoner into the truck, studying my face a moment.
"You did good tonight," he says, quiet. "Didn't freeze.
Didn't make it worse trying to be a hero either.
Just stayed sharp and let the men who train for this handle the parts that needed handling.
That's wisdom, not weakness, whatever your pride wants to tell you about it. "
I don't have an answer for that, so I just nod, and he squeezes my shoulder once before heading back to the truck, one more small kindness in a night that's had entirely too few of them.
I stand at the mouth of the alley through all of it, arms wrapped around myself, shaking again, but differently this time, less the helpless fear of the day Colton Reyes walked into my shop and more a hard, cold fury that settles into my spine and doesn't fully leave for the rest of the night.
"You're okay," Wyatt says, coming to stand in front of me once the man's secured, close but not touching, reading my face for what I actually need instead of assuming. "It's over. You're okay."
I search myself for the shaking, the same helpless tremor that took me over the day Colton Reyes walked out of my shop, and I don't find it, not in the same shape.
There's fear underneath everything else, real and reasonable, but it's buried now under something harder, colder, an anger that feels less like a crack and more like armor forging itself in real time.
"I'm not okay. I'm furious." My voice comes out low and steady, surprising even myself with how little of the earlier fear survives contact with the anger underneath it.
"They tried to break into my shop, Wyatt.
My shop. Not yours. Not the club's. Mine.
I built this with my own two hands, and some scared kid with a lock pick just tried to take it from me because Dax Cole thinks my life is a bargaining chip in whatever war he's fighting with you. "
"I know."
"I'm done being scared." I look at him, and something in my own voice surprises me, harder than I expected, more resolved.
"I'm not going anywhere. Not the shop, not this town, not out of whatever's left between us that I still haven't figured out how to name.
I built something here, and I'm not letting Dax Cole or Blackthorn or the ghost of a marriage I'm still not sure I want to save take it away from me. "
Wyatt looks at me a long moment, something fierce and proud and careful all moving across his face at once, and he doesn't reach for me, doesn't try to close the distance even now, even with adrenaline still running hot between us.
He just nods, slow, like he's taking in exactly the woman standing in front of him and finding her worth every bit of the fight still ahead.
I don't know exactly what he sees when he looks at me like that, but whatever it is, it's not pity, and it's not the careful, managing gentleness he's shown me most nights these past three weeks.
It's something closer to respect, unfiltered and a little stunned, the look of a man realizing the woman standing in front of him has been stronger than he gave her credit for the whole time he's been trying so hard to protect her.
"Good," he says, simply. "Then let's make sure nobody ever tries this again."
He walks me inside, checks every window and both locks himself before he'll let either of us sit down, and I let him, too tired and too wired at once to argue about whether I need the reassurance of watching him do it.
We sit at the same kitchen table from the night before, no chili this time, just two mugs of tea I don't remember agreeing to but drink anyway, and neither of us says much, the events of the last hour too large and too raw to fit into easy conversation yet.
"I'm staying on the couch," he says, eventually, not a question. "Not because Silas ordered it. Because I'm not leaving you alone tonight, and I'd rather say that honestly than pretend it's just following orders."
"Okay," I say, and I mean it, no hesitation, the careful distance I woke up determined to maintain this morning feeling suddenly, thoroughly irrelevant against the plain fact of what almost happened tonight.
I don't sleep much, even with him twenty feet away on a couch too short for him, but I sleep better than I have in three weeks, some old, exhausted part of me finally letting its guard down enough to rest, if only because the alternative, staying vigilant alone all night after everything, isn't a burden I have the strength left to carry by myself tonight.
Somewhere around three, I wake to the quiet sound of him shifting on the couch, clearly as unable to sleep as I am, and I lie there in the dark listening to him breathe, close enough to hear but too far to reach, and I think about the version of myself from this morning who was so certain closing the distance again would be a mistake.
I still don't know if she was wrong. I just know that tonight, with a stranger's lockpick set still sitting in an evidence bag at the clubhouse and my own hands only now fully steady again, the distance feels like a luxury I'm not entirely sure I can still afford.