Chapter 9
The last customer left at eleven.
Amy locked the door behind him—a Fort Liberty sergeant who'd nursed three cups of coffee through a quiet evening—and flipped the sign to CLOSED. The parking lot sat empty under the new security lights, the cameras blinking their silent vigil from the building's corners.
Quiet. Safe.
For now.
Trauma sat at his usual spot, third stool from the register. He'd been there since eight, working through paperwork she didn't understand, occasionally answering calls on his phone in clipped sentences that told her nothing.
She poured two cups of coffee and carried them to his end of the counter.
Then she did something she'd never done in two weeks of his visits.
She sat down across from him.
His eyebrows rose slightly—the closest thing to surprise she'd seen on his face.
"Closing up?" he asked.
"Already closed." She wrapped her hands around her mug. "Thought maybe we could talk. Actually talk. Not just me deflecting and you pretending not to notice."
"I always notice."
"I know." She took a sip of coffee. "That's part of the problem."
The diner hummed around them—the refrigerator's hum, the coffee maker's gurgle, the soft tick of the clock on the wall. Familiar sounds. Safe sounds.
"The sixty seconds," she said. "You mentioned it when we were hanging the light. Someone you lost."
Trauma's hands stilled on his mug. For a long moment, she thought he wouldn't answer.
"My team sergeant," he said finally. "Ray. We'd been running ops together for four years. He caught shrapnel during an extraction—bad hit, arterial bleed. I had him stabilized, had the bleeding controlled, had everything I needed to keep him alive."
"What happened?"
"Helicopter was late." His voice stayed steady, but something shifted behind his eyes. "Sixty seconds. That's all I needed. The bird touched down sixty-one seconds after he coded."
"It wasn't your fault."
"I know that. Logically." He turned his mug in his hands. "But logic doesn't stop you from counting the seconds. Doesn't stop you from running the scenario over and over, trying to find the sixty-one you missed."
Amy understood that. Understood the way guilt could live in your bones long after your brain had processed the facts.
"Kyle put me in the hospital the night before his arrest," she said.
Trauma looked up.
"We'd been fighting about money. He wanted to cash out the diner, sell it for whatever we could get, use the money to fund some scheme he had with his prison friends.
" She kept her voice steady, the way she'd learned to talk about it during therapy sessions that hadn't helped as much as they should have.
"I said no. It was my aunt's diner, my family's legacy. I wasn't going to let him destroy it."
"What did he do?"
"Beat me until I stopped saying no." The words came out flat.
Clinical. The only way she could say them without breaking.
"Broke three ribs. Fractured my orbital socket.
Ruptured my spleen. The doctors said if the neighbor hadn't called 911 when she heard the screaming, I would have died on my kitchen floor. "
Trauma's jaw tightened. His knuckles went white around his mug.
"The night he was arrested, I was still in the ICU. Couldn't even testify at his bail hearing." She laughed—a bitter sound. "He pled down to assault and armed robbery. Five years. Got out in three with good behavior."
"Good behavior."
"Apparently he was very polite to the guards."
Silence stretched between them. The clock ticked. The refrigerator hummed.
"I'm sorry," Trauma said quietly. "That you went through that. That the system let him out. That he's still breathing."
"He won't be forever." Amy met his eyes. "Will he?"
The question hung in the air—heavy, loaded with everything she wasn't quite saying.
"No," Trauma said. "He won't."
She didn't know who moved first.
One moment they were sitting across from each other, two damaged people sharing wounds in the quiet of a closed diner. The next, she was reaching across the table, her fingers finding the surgical scars on his forearms.
He went still.
"What are these?" she asked, tracing the thin white lines that crisscrossed his skin.
"Practice." His voice had dropped, rough around the edges. "18D training. You practice sutures on yourself before you're allowed to practice on patients."
"That's insane."
"That's Special Forces."
She traced another scar, then another. His skin was warm under her fingers, the muscle beneath corded and tense.
"You're shaking," she said.
"Yeah."
"Why?"
He caught her hand, held it against his forearm. His grip was gentle, but she could feel the tremor running through him.
"Because you're touching me," he said. "And I've been trying very hard not to want this."
"Why?"
"Because you're under my protection. Because you're vulnerable. Because taking advantage of that would make me no better than—"
"You're nothing like him."
The words came out fierce. Certain.
"Amy—"
"You're nothing like him," she repeated.
"Kyle took. He controlled. He hurt me because he could and he enjoyed it.
" She turned her hand in his grip, lacing their fingers together.
"You've done nothing but protect me. Feed me.
Fix my lights and install my cameras and sit at my counter for hours just so I wouldn't be alone. "
"That doesn't mean—"
"It means everything."
She stood, moving around the counter to his side. He turned on the stool to face her, and suddenly they were close—her standing between his knees, his hands finding her hips like they belonged there.
"Tell me your name," she said.
"You know my name."
"Your real name. Not the road name."
He hesitated. She watched him weigh the decision, saw the moment he chose to trust her.
"Christopher," he said. "Christopher Davis."
"Christopher."
She tried the name in her mouth, felt the shape of it. Different from Trauma. Softer. The name of the man underneath the patch and the scars and the violence.
"Say it again," he said roughly.
"Christopher."
He kissed her.
His mouth was hungry.
Not rough—never rough—but demanding in ways that made her knees weak. He kissed her like he'd been starving for it, like she was the first real thing he'd tasted in years.
She kissed him back.
Her hands found his shoulders, his neck, the short hair at the back of his head. He pulled her closer, his fingers digging into her hips with a pressure that would leave marks.
She wanted the marks.
"Amy." Her name came out broken, breathless. "If you want to stop—"
"I don't."
"We should talk about—"
"Later."
She kissed him again, harder, and felt the last of his control snap.
He stood in one fluid motion, lifting her with him, and she wrapped her legs around his waist without thinking. He carried her through the diner—past the counter, past the register, toward the back office where her aunt had kept a small couch for nap breaks during double shifts.
The couch was old. Worn. Perfect.
He laid her down with a gentleness that made her throat tight, then stood over her, breathing hard, looking at her like she was something precious.
"You're sure?" he asked.
"Christopher." She reached for him, pulled him down. "I'm sure."
He took his time.
Learned her the way he'd learned her pie—slowly, thoroughly, savoring every taste. His hands traced her body through her clothes, then under them, finding sensitive spots she'd forgotten existed.
She'd expected urgency. Desperation. The kind of frantic coupling that came from too much tension held too long.
This wasn't that.
This was deliberate. Careful. The same patience he brought to everything, applied to the task of taking her apart piece by piece.
"You're beautiful," he murmured against her collarbone.
"You're wearing too many clothes."
He laughed—a low, rough sound she'd never heard from him before—and let her pull his shirt over his head.
More scars. A map of violence written across his chest, his shoulders, his abdomen. She traced each one, feeling the stories beneath her fingers.
"Does it bother you?" he asked.
"Does what bother me?"
"The damage."
She pulled him down, pressed her lips to a particularly jagged scar just below his heart.
"It makes you real," she said. "I've had enough of men who pretend they don't have damage."
His breath caught. His hands shook as they found the hem of her shirt.
"Mine," he said, the word slipping out like he couldn't hold it back.
"Yours," she agreed. "Tonight. Tomorrow. As long as you want me."
"That's going to be a long time."
"Good."
Later—much later—they lay tangled on the narrow couch, her head on his chest, his arms wrapped around her like he was afraid she'd disappear.
The diner was dark except for the security lights casting faint shadows through the windows. The clock read 3:38 AM.
"We should move," she murmured.
"Should we?"
"The couch isn't meant for two people."
"I've slept in worse places."
She smiled against his chest. "Special Forces?"
"Among other things."
His hand traced lazy patterns on her back. She could feel his heartbeat beneath her ear—steady, strong, slowing toward something like peace.
"Thank you," he said quietly.
"For what?"
"For trusting me. With your story. With... this."
"You trusted me first." She lifted her head, looked at him in the dim light. "You told me about Ray. About the sixty seconds."
"That's different."
"How?"
He was quiet for a long moment. His hand stilled on her back.
"Because I've never told anyone that story," he said. "Not the brothers. Not anyone. But sitting across from you, watching you pretend you weren't scared..." He shook his head. "I wanted you to know. I wanted you to see the damage."
"I see it." She pressed a kiss to his chest. "I see you."
"Amy—"
"Christopher."
The name made him shudder. His arms tightened around her.
"We should talk about what this means," he said. "For you. For the situation with Kyle."
"Later."
"There are things you need to understand about the club—"
"Later." She kissed him softly. "Right now, I just want to stay here. With you. In my aunt's diner, where I've felt alone for two years."
"You're not alone anymore."
"No." She settled back against his chest. "I'm not."
Outside, the security lights kept their watch. The cameras blinked their silent vigil. The parking lot stayed empty.
They didn't leave the diner until morning.