Chapter 2
Diesel
The road up to my cabin is dirt and gravel, a thin vein cut through pine and shadow. Night wraps tight around the trees, the kind of dark that swallows headlights and sound, and I’ve always liked it that way.
Except tonight I’ve got a woman on the back of my bike, her hands hovering like she’s afraid to touch me.
Her hesitation sits on my nerves like a spark.
“Hold on,” I say, low, not looking back.
A beat. Then her fingers land on my sides, careful, barely there.
The moment she touches me, my whole body reacts like it’s been waiting. Heat hits fast, sharp and stupid. Possession, too, rough around the edges, instinctive and unwanted.
Mine.
I’ve never been that guy. Not really. I don’t do soft fantasies. I don’t do romance. I don’t do anything that can leave.
But her hands, light on my ribs, and the tremor running through them, flip something primitive in me. Something that doesn’t care what I want.
I ease the bike forward, slow, because she’s tense enough to shatter. I can feel it in the way she holds her breath, in the way her knees press in like she’s trying to make herself smaller.
She smells like cold air and soap, with a smear of engine grease underneath. She’s wearing my jacket now. It hangs on her, swallowing her up.
It makes me want to wrap her up tighter. Lock her away. Keep her.
The rational part of my brain clears its throat.
This is a setup.
One look under the hood and it was obvious. A connector missing, pulled clean, small enough to disappear in a fist.
You don’t “break down” like that by accident.
She knew what she was doing. Which meant someone taught her. Which meant someone told her to do it.
I snapped a picture of her and the license plate when she wasn’t looking and sent it to Ghost. Told her I’d texted for a tow. I hadn’t, but Ghost would already have a prospect rolling.
Ghost’s reply is still lit up in my head like a warning sign.
Grace Henley. Wolves. Malice. Meatgrinder. Hospital “falls.” Mistreated.
And then I looked at her face.
Wide eyes. Too bright. Fear written all over her, not performed, not staged. Real enough that it sat in her throat and made her voice shake when she lied to me.
That’s the thing. A girl can set a trap and still be terrified of the trap she’s forced to carry.
I’ve seen that kind of fear before. In people following orders with their stomach turning inside out.
I didn’t call her out. I could have. I could have asked her what she pulled, where she put it, who sent her.
Instead, I said my name and offered her my cabin.
I’m not an idiot. I’m just not leaving a scared woman alone out here in the dark.
She shifts behind me, and her grip tightens. I feel her cheek press against my back, light through the jacket, and my jaw clenches so hard it aches.
She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
Not in the way the world likes to define beauty, polished and posed. In the way that makes you swallow and forget to breathe. In the way that feels like a hit.
Curves that look soft until you realize softness doesn’t mean weakness. Freckles scattered across her cheeks like somebody flicked paint at her. Red hair that catches the smallest hint of light and turns it into something warm. Green eyes that should look alive, bright, defiant.
Right now they look hunted.
And that, more than anything, is what makes me want to tear the world apart.
I keep my speed steady, slow enough to be safe, fast enough to get her off this road.
I’m not much for conversation. Never have been.
My hands are better with engines. With metal and bolts and fixing what’s broken. I can take something that doesn’t run and make it run again.
People aren’t like that.
People leave.
My brain tries to remind me of my rules. Keep distance. Don’t get attached. Don’t bring trouble home.
Trouble is already on my bike, breathing against my spine.
I turn up the drive, trees closing in, and the cabin comes into view, a small shape against the dark. One light on the porch. Another over the garage door. Enough to see, not enough to invite.
I roll to a stop and kill the engine.
She doesn’t move at first.
It’s like her body is waiting for the moment the hit comes.
I’ve seen that too, and it makes something in my chest go hot and violent.
“You’re good,” I say, rough. “We’re here.”
Her breath releases in a shaky exhale.
She slides off the bike carefully, like her legs might not hold.
I want to touch her.
I don’t.
I keep it controlled.
I walk her toward the porch, and she glances back once toward the road, fear in her eyes.
“No worries about your car,” I tell her, because she’s going to ask and she’s too scared to. “It’ll be towed tonight. I’ll fix it tomorrow.”
She nods like she believes me.
She doesn’t.
I can see it in the way her eyes keep scanning the dark.
I unlock the door and step inside first, because habit keeps you alive. Light flicks on. Warmth hits.
The cabin is simple: one main room with a kitchenette, a couch, a small table, my bed tucked into the corner. Bathroom door off to the side. Everything clean but not fancy. Nothing soft except the blanket folded at the foot of the bed.
The attached garage is my real home. Tools, parts, the smell of oil and possibility.
This cabin isn’t where I grew up. I built it when I came back, when I needed something that belonged to me. Something nobody could take, nobody could ruin.
She steps in slow, like she’s expecting the walls to bite.
Her eyes flick around, taking inventory. Couch. Bed. Small kitchen. Windows. Exits.
She’s calculating.
That tells me more than her lie ever did.
“Bathroom’s there,” I say, nodding. “You hungry?”
She looks at me like I asked her a question in a language she doesn’t speak.
Then she blinks. “What?”
“Food,” I repeat, like it’s not a big deal. “You eat?”
Her throat works. “Yeah. I mean. Yes.”
Her voice is still thin. Still stretched.
Instinct roars.
Protect her.
I hate the feeling because it makes me reckless. I’ve spent years training the reckless out of myself. In the military, reckless gets people killed. At home, reckless gets you attached.
And attachment gets you abandoned.
My mind flashes, uninvited, to my mother’s back disappearing through a doorway while my father’s anger shook the walls. She left to save herself. I understood that part later.
What I never understood was why she didn’t take me.
I was sixteen when I started fixing cars and bikes for cash and favors just to eat. When I realized engines don’t leave you if you keep them running. Machines don’t punish you for needing them.
People do.
I joined the military because it was a straight line out. Came back with things in my head I don’t talk about. Built my cabin with my own hands because I needed a place that belonged to me, away from ghosts, away from noise.
And now a woman from Wolves territory is in my home.
I don’t like it, but I don’t want to stop it.
I start cooking.
Cast iron skillet. Heat. Oil. Salt.
The sizzle fills the cabin, loud in the quiet, and I watch her shoulders loosen a fraction at the normal sound of something simple happening.
Food. Heat. Home.
It’s almost stupid how powerful those things are.
“Smells good,” she says, voice cautious, like she’s testing if she’s allowed to speak.
“It’ll feed you,” I answer.
She shrugs out of my jacket, then tugs off the oversized hoodie underneath. A plain T-shirt clings to her skin, and when she moves, the fabric pulls across her collarbone.
There it is.
Bruising.
Not the kind you get from bumping into a doorframe. Not the kind you get from being clumsy.
A shadowed mark near the collarbone, and another along the shoulder like fingers pressed too hard.
My hands go still for half a second.
Heat spikes behind my eyes.
I don’t react the way I want to. I don’t whirl around and ask her who did it. I don’t start breaking things.
I keep cooking.
Because she’s scared. Because she’s already braced for punishment. Because if I push, she’ll shut down, and whatever she came here to do will twist tighter around her throat.
Instead, I keep my voice level. “You hurt?”
She freezes.
Then she laughs, short and thin. “No. I’m clumsy.”
Clumsy.
Exactly like Ghost said.
I let my eyes drop back to the skillet. I let the lie sit where she put it.
“Yeah,” I say, like I believe her.
I don’t.
But she needs the lie right now. It’s armor. It’s all she’s got.
The steak sears, the smell turning rich and warm, and I plate it like I’ve done a thousand times.
She watches me like she can’t understand why a man like me would cook at all. Like where she comes from, women are servants and men take.
I set the plate on the table and nod toward it. “Eat.”
She doesn’t move for a second.
Then she stands, slow, and crosses to the table with that same careful control, like sudden movements are dangerous.
She sits.
She picks up the fork.
Her hands are still shaking.
And I realize, with a clarity that makes my stomach drop, that whatever the Wolves thought they were doing tonight, they handed her to the one man in this county who cannot ignore a broken thing.
I built my whole life around fixing what doesn’t run.
Tonight, they dropped a terrified woman into my path, and my body has already decided.
I’m going to fix this.
Even if it ruins me.
Even if it starts a war.