Chapter 5
Five
Ledger
Shattered
There are a lot of ways a man can get gutted. Steel. A bullet. A fist. A betrayal. But nothing—absolutely nothing—cuts as deep as when Kelly looks me dead in the eyes and asks a question she’s never asked me before.
Do I know you?
My breath stops. My heart stops. The whole damn world stops.
The nurse is still talking, explaining shit I can’t process—concussion, swelling, head trauma—but all I can hear is the echo of her voice, soft and confused and scared, “I don’t remember.”
My hands curl at my sides, leather creaking under my palms as I fight the instinct to close the distance between us. To touch her. To reassure myself that she’s alive and breathing and here.
But she doesn’t know me. Not anymore. I take a slow step forward, and the nurse immediately lifts a hand like she’s handling a dangerous animal.
“Sir, give us a little space—”
“Her name is Kelly Ringle,” I say, voice low, steady, cracking at the edges despite everything in me trying to hold it together. “She’s—” I stop. The word gets trapped behind my teeth.
Mine.
She’s mine.
But that isn’t true anymore. Maybe it never was.
My throat feels tight enough to choke on. I swallow hard and finish weaker than I started trying to explain, “…she’s under my protection.”
Kelly’s eyes flicker at that. Recognition? Fear? I can’t tell. God, I used to be able to read every tiny shift in her expression. I used to know when she was overwhelmed, or spiraling, or when she was trying to hide that she cared too much.
Now there’s nothing familiar in her face.
Just confusion. Just pain. Just distance.
“Riot,” the nurse says more gently, her voice shifting as she puts together that I’m not just some biker barging in. “She needs calm.”
Calm. Right. I’m the last man who should be in this room. I drag in a breath, chest burning, and force my hands to loosen. My knuckles ache. My jaw aches. Every muscle in my body feels like it’s about to snap.
But I move back half a step.
Just one.
Close enough to protect. Far enough not to scare.
Kelly’s eyes track the movement like she’s watching a wild animal pace a cage.
She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t remember the nights she fell asleep on my chest with her curls falling in my face.
She doesn’t remember how she used to get nervous before big orders and I’d stand behind her in the bakery’s kitchen, rubbing slow circles on her back.
She doesn’t remember how I pulled her into my lap on her couch and she whispered don’t fall in love with me like it wasn’t already too late.
She doesn’t remember any of it.
The nurse checks her pupils again, humming under her breath. “Memory loss after head trauma is common. It usually comes back with rest and time.”
Time. That’s the one thing I lost when we ended things this morning. My chest tightens.
“Can I talk to her?” I ask quietly.
The nurse hesitates. “If you stay calm.”
I nod once. “I’m calm.”
That’s a lie. My insides feel like frayed electrical wires, sparking at every breath. But I move to the foot of the bed, giving Kelly as much space as I can without leaving her defenseless.
Her gaze finds mine again—wide, uncertain, confused—and it hits me like a sucker punch.
She’s scared of me. She never used to be scared of me.
When she speaks, her voice is barely there. “Were we close?”
I don’t know how to answer that. Yes. No. Not enough. Too much.
The silence stretches and she looks down, twisting her fingers weakly in the blanket. Her nails are chipped. There’s a small cut on her knuckle. Her wrist is bruised. My vision goes red at the edges—pure rage at whoever did this, pure helplessness because I wasn’t there to stop it.
“We knew each other,” I manage, keeping my voice even. “Spent time together.”
Her eyes lift. “Friends?”
God. If there was ever a moment I hated more in my life, I can’t remember it.
I swallow hard. “Yeah,” I say the words as the pure disgust at the label sits heavy on my tongue. “Friends.”
The nurse gives a tiny approving nod. “Good. Familiar connections can help recovery.”
But that’s the thing—I don’t feel like a familiar connection to her. I feel like a stranger standing in the ruins of something I didn’t appreciate until the second it was gone.
Kelly shifts against the pillows, wincing. “Why were you the first person here?”
“Ally called me,” I answer immediately. “She was with Chux. He told me. I came as fast as I could.”
She studies me, trying to make sense of it. There’s a crease between her brows, the same one she gets when she can’t find an ingredient on a high shelf.
Except this time I can’t reach up and hand her what she needs.
“You look…” she searches for the word, “…worried.”
I let out a soft huff. “Yeah, sunshine. I’m worried.”
Her breath catches slightly. She blinks. “Sunshine?”
I freeze.
Damn it.
That nickname slipped out before I could pull it back. I haven’t called her that in weeks—not since the days of our arrangement when she used to roll her eyes and pretend she hated it even though she smiled every time.
The nurse looks between us, sensing something heavy. “Sometimes familiar language can help stimulate recall,” she says quietly.
Kelly’s cheeks warm slightly. “Do you… call me that a lot?”
I shake my head. “Used to.”
“Why did you stop?”
Because I walked away from you. Because I didn’t think I deserved to call you anything that sounded like affection. Because you were slipping through my fingers and I told myself it was safer to let you go.
I force myself to look at the wall, not at her. “Things changed,” I reply.
She seems to sense the weight behind that and doesn’t push.
The doctor comes in then—a short man with silver-framed glasses and a calm, patient voice. He checks her vitals again, scans her chart, explains that the amnesia is likely short-term.
Likely. That word pisses me off.
“Her scans look clean,” he continues. “No internal bleeding, no fractures. She’s lucky.”
Lucky. My fists clench so tight my nails bite into my palm. She’s lying in a hospital bed, covered in bruises, terrified, with a chunk of her life missing and he calls that lucky?
Kelly breathes out a shaky sigh of relief, and I bite back my frustration. Let her hold onto that hope. She needs it.
“Do you remember anything from the accident?” the doctor asks her gently.
She frowns. “I… remember a truck. Then it hit me.” Her voice cracks. “Twice. I think, maybe not.”
I freeze.
Twice. That wasn’t an accident. That was deliberate.
My blood runs cold.
The doctor nods sympathetically. “Trauma often blurs the details. It’s okay to let the memories come back on their own.”
But she looks at me—not him—eyes glossy, searching. “It felt like someone wanted to hurt me,” she whispers.
My jaw locks. Everything in me goes still. She’s right. Someone did want to hurt her.
And they will pay for it. Mark my damn words.
The doctor excuses himself, promising to return once the neurologist arrives. The nurse adjusts Kelly’s blanket, dims the lights, and leaves us alone in the quiet room.
For a moment neither of us speaks.
Then she licks her lips nervously and says, “You really cared that I was hurt.” Cared.
Past tense.
My throat burns. “Of course I do,” I respond.
“Why?” Her voice is so small, so afraid to ask.
Because I love you, sunshine. Because losing you is the one thing that would break me clean in half. Because even when we weren’t speaking the same language emotionally, you were still the best part of my day.
But I can’t say any of that. Not when she doesn’t know me. Not when I’m the idiot who broke things off instead of claiming what I knew was mine.
So I give her the truth she can handle. “You matter,” I share softly. “More than you think.”
Her breath catches. Then, in a whisper: “I wish I remembered.”
The words gut me. She lifts a hand slightly—hesitant, unsure—and for a second I think she’s reaching for me. My heart lodges in my throat.
But she stops herself and lets her hand fall back onto the blanket. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I don’t even know what I’m apologizing for.”
“You don’t need to apologize for anything,” I tell her. My voice is low, steady, the opposite of what I feel inside. “This isn’t your fault. What happened to you—someone else did that.”
Her eyes widen. “You think it wasn’t an accident?”
I shouldn’t tell her. Not yet. But after everything she’s been through, I can’t lie to her again. “I don’t know for sure,” I explain. “But I’m gonna find out.”
She stares at me like she’s trying to understand who I am beneath the leather and tattoos and anger. Like she’s trying to decide if I’m someone she can trust.
God, I wish I could give her something easy. A smile. A memory. A promise that doesn’t come wrapped in danger.
Instead she gets me, and I’m nothing but a pile of problems and sharp edges.
“I feel like I should know you,” she mutters after a moment. “Like something in me recognizes you, but my brain won’t catch up.”
That hits me harder than anything else today. My voice drops to a whisper. “Maybe it will. When you’re ready.”
She nods faintly, eyes growing heavy as the pain meds begin to take hold.
I watch her fight sleep, lashes fluttering, her breathing slowing. She looks fragile in a way that makes every cell in my body go protective and violent at the same time.
A nurse steps back in. “She needs rest.”
I nod once. But I don’t move. “Sir,” she says gently, not unkindly, “visiting hours are about to end.”
Kelly murmurs, half-asleep, “Don’t leave.”
My heart lurches.
The nurse sees it. Softens. “You can stay until she’s fully asleep. Five minutes.”
I nod again.
Kelly’s breathing deepens, her brow smoothing, her fingers loosening their grip on the blanket. I stand there in the dim light, watching her chest rise and fall, memorizing every breath like I’m scared it might stop if I blink.
When I finally back away, it’s slow. Careful. Like leaving the room too fast might break something sacred.
The hallway lights are harsh after the warm dimness of her room.
I walk until I’m far enough away that the tightness in my chest cracks open.
I lean against the wall and press my hands to my face.
My mind races with everything I didn’t say.
Everything I can’t say now. Everything I already know I’ll have to fight for again.
She doesn’t remember me. But that doesn’t matter. I remember her. Every damn inch.
And whoever did this—whoever hit her—they just signed their own death sentence.
Because Kelly might not know me right now, but I know exactly who she is. And that is mine.
And I will burn the world down before I let anything happen to her again.