Chapter 8 Shade
SHADE
The cold gnaws at my knuckles as I tighten the screw into the last mounting bracket. I’ve worked in worse conditions. Rainstorms, busted roofs in the dead of winter, broken down bikes at the side of the road. But something about Isla’s porch makes me more careful.
First, it’s so goddamn rotten that I can hear it splintering beneath my feet. One wrong step off the cross joists, and I feel like the sucker may collapse and open up a sink hole.
But also, I don’t want to scare her any more than she already is.
My mind runs riot with all the things that could have happened to her.
Was she raped by one of the hangarounds or prospects or bikers?
The younger guys with old ladies are loyal, but the old guys that come from a different era, not so much.
The tiny LED light flickers, annoying as hell, but I need both hands to use the bit and brace.
I line the camera into the bracket and hear it click home. I just need to put one on the opposite corner of the porch and another above the back door, and then Isla’s got a protective grid that no stalker cousin or uncle with anger issues can break.
There’s probably some symbolism that the house feels vulnerable without the functioning cameras, because I’m starting think its occupant is the same.
My jaw ticks.
I don’t like that feeling.
I don’t like that the pane of her window would fall right out with one solid nudge.
I don’t like that she lives alone. The woman needs a dog or something.
A big one that will love her and bite the arm off an attacker on command.
I don’t like that her uncle and cousin have already scared her once.
And I especially don’t like that she won’t seem to accept our help, even though it’s crystal clear that she needs it.
Because while our house needs work, this house needs work. Given the peeling paint and sag in the screen door and the porch about to collapse, I can only imagine what the interior is like.
I reach for the manual drill to move to the other side of the porch, and the damn thing slips through my fingers.
And the fucker doesn’t just drop onto wood. It hits the cracked concrete planter and ricochets off my shin before falling off the porch onto the concrete below.
“Motherfucker,” I curse, dropping to a knee so I can grip my shin. “Son of a bitch,” I whisper.
I take a breath, then another, as my heartbeat settles, but then—movement.
A curtain twitches in Isla’s front window.
I freeze, wondering what to do for the best.
Her silhouette appears faintly backlit. She looks smaller than usual. Bet she’s half-awake, trying to figure out who the hell is messing around her house.
“Is that you, Kevin? Because I’m calling the police.”
Ahh, shit. She thinks it’s her uncle or someone else coming to fuck with her.
I step in front of the window, hear the scream, and see the curtains fall shut. “It’s me. Shade.”
The curtains sway, but Isla doesn’t return.
“Isla, I’m not trying to break in. I dropped my drill.”
It takes a few seconds, but the front door opens a crack. “What…What are you doing here?”
She looks so fucking cute and cuddly. Plaid pajamas in a brushed fabric that looks fleecy and soft. She’s not wearing a scrap of make-up and her face looks…soft.
That word again.
Soft.
Someone you could cuddle into.
And even though my cock is drained, it still has the audacity to stir.
I point to the camera that will cover the area from her front door down the driveway. “Was fitting you some cameras.”
She glances over to where I’m pointing. “I didn’t ask you to do that,” she says. “Certainly not at night.”
Her long hair, toffee-colored, now, instead of blonde, is in a braid, and her eyes are puffy from sleep. But there’s no missing the emotional sharpness to her tone. The words poke at something sore in me. That my help is unwanted or unneeded.
“I know you didn’t.”
“Then, why?”
“Because someone needed to,” I reply, my words harsher than intended.
Her chin lifts, defensiveness etched in the tightness of her shoulders. “I can take care of myself.”
I breathe hard or else I’m gonna say something I shouldn’t. Something that will make this all worse. “Never said you couldn’t. But I heard the way your voice wobbled just then when you said Kevin’s name.”
“Then why are you on my porch, in the middle of the night, scaring me half to death? I’m not some problem you have to fix.”
Something pulls taut in my chest, like a wire being yanked tight.
“You’re not the problem, Isla.” I force myself to soften my voice.
“But your uncle and your cousin sure as hell are. I saw the way you looked when they were letting bullets fly. I’m not stupid.
You’re scared of something, of them coming back, and I hate that you’re over here alone. ”
Her expression flickers with shades of shame and anger and confusion.
She steps fully onto the porch, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. “All that might be true, but it doesn’t give you the right to just insert yourself into my life because you feel like it. You don’t get to play protector with me.”
Again, her words hit. Smashing into something raw that leaves me feeling disposable. “You think that’s what this is?”
She shrugs like she can’t see any other option. “What else would it be?”
I clench my jaw, grinding my molars against one another. “I can’t watch you struggle. Just don’t have it in me.”
Isla blinks, surprised. “Shade, I—”
“Don’t. I get it. You want nothing to do with the club anymore You want to deal with this by yourself.
I respect it. Hell, it’s the reason I’m out here in the middle of the night, so we wouldn’t have this very discussion.
But you need to accept you’re out here in a house that barely locks, with two assholes in your family who have already messed with you, and who we think sprayed that fucking slur on our house. ”
Her face shifts as she glances across at our property. “What slur?”
“The giant red one painted on our window the day you disappeared the moment you saw me and Catfish.”
Her face drains of color. “I just saw Catfish and…I didn’t see it. I’m sorry someone did that.”
“Whatever. Am I supposed to just let you handle that alone?” I shake my head. “Not on my fucking watch.”
Isla blows out a breath. “I think you need to let me.” Her voice is barely a whisper.
“Why?”
“Because I’m trying. Trying to…live a normal life. To fix things. To fix myself. To not…rely on bikers anymore.”
My brows pull together as I hear the pain in her words. I know what it feels like to run away from who you once were. And I know the kind of pain that sits beneath the skin, beneath the decision, beneath the noise. It never heals.
“That’s it, isn’t it? That’s the part you didn’t want to say. You don’t want to be around the club.”
Isla looks away and shivers. I grab the jacket I was wearing when I started work and put it over her shoulders. She doesn’t fight me.
“I just…I can’t be around bikers. Not like before. It does something to me that I can’t control. Makes me feel like I’m slipping.”
I step back to give her a bit more space, even though my every instinct is to step forward. “You think we’re all the same. You think I’m the same.”
“I don’t know what to think.” The words are whispered, intimate between us in the dark of the night.
I try to swallow back the sting working its way up my chest.
It hurts more than I can admit. Not because she’s wrong. But because she’s lumped me in with every shitty man who used her, ignored her, and treated her like something disposable.
“You don’t need to like me. You don’t even need to talk to me. But don’t put me in the same column as the men who hurt you.”
Her eyes snap up, immediately defensive. “I didn’t. I—”
“You did.” I hold her gaze. “I get why. I really do. But I’m not one of them. Jackal’s not one of them.”
“You don’t know what it is to build the armor to live in that world, offering your body in the hope someone will want your heart too. Then, being overlooked by everyone. Not being good enough for any of them. You wouldn’t understand.” Tears dance on her lower lashes, and it breaks my fucking heart.
Because I know what it feels like to go unloved, to then have to build armor to protect the pieces of you that are raw and vulnerable.
I think about the day my dad whipped me for being queer, the day my mom looked away in disgust. “I understand that better than you think. But I know what it looks like when someone’s been through hell and has tried to escape.
And I can’t let you stand out here, one bad night away from danger, pretending you don’t need backup. ”
She tugs my jacket tighter around her shoulders. “I just don’t want to be known as a club girl again.”
And there it is. The wound beneath the wound.
My chest tightens, swallowing the hard knot. “No one’s asking you to be. Our help isn’t dependent on you being one.”
Her breath comes more quickly. “I don’t trust myself around the patch. When I see it, a side of me comes out that does things that hurt me. It’s like I owe things to be liked, and I don’t want to owe things anymore. I want to take back who I am and make a different life for myself.”
I hate the fact that something so important to me, something that’s given me life and purpose, means fear to her.
I step back, giving her room to breathe. “Thank you for telling me.”
She blinks, fast. “What? You’re not mad?”
“Isla,” I say with a huff. “Why would I be? I’m here on your porch at three in the morning trying to make sure no one messes with you. I’m not doing it so I can mess with you too.”
A reluctant chuckle escapes her. Low and fragile.
“Look, I’ll finish setting these up for you and get off your property. When you’re ready to set them up on your phone, you come over to the house, and I’ll do it for you. You don’t owe me anything. We don’t even need to talk beyond setup instructions.”
“Fine,” she says quietly. “Just…don’t make a lot of noise.”
I smile at that. “Just go back inside, out of the cold. I’ll keep an eye on things out here. You can sleep safely.”
I’m just about to step down to grab the drill when Isla steps forward.
“Shade?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. I just don’t know how to let people help me yet.”
I shove my hand in my pocket as my heart does something funny in my chest. “It’s okay. Sometimes feel the same way myself. Good night, Isla.”
And I’m still looking at the porch when she closes the door.