Chapter 8 Amanda
AMANDA
The first thing I noticed was the pressure on my wrists.
Plastic bit into my skin. It was tight and unyielding, pinning my hands behind me. I flexed my fingers and felt the bite deepen, sharp and real enough to make my breath stutter.
Zip ties.
Cold metal pressed against my back as I was shoved forward. The elevator doors slid shut with a soft, final sound, sealing us inside. Fluorescent light buzzed overhead, too bright, too white. The air smelled like disinfectant and something sour underneath it.
“Wait,” I tried to say.
The word didn’t come out right. It was muffled by a fabric that was in my mouth and knotted tightly behind my head.
My reflection stared back at me from the brushed steel wall. My red hair was pulled back tight, my eyes wide with fear, mouth parted in a breath I couldn’t quite finish. A girl who looked like me and wasn’t. A girl I should have helped.
Hands closed around my arms.
They were not gentle. Not frantic. Just firm, practiced pressure, fingers digging in like they knew exactly where to grip to keep me moving, but keep me under control. I stumbled, shoes scuffing metal, heart slamming into my chest so hard it hurt.
This wasn’t right.
I wasn’t supposed to be here.
The elevator didn’t move. No sense of rising or falling. Just the low mechanical hum vibrating through my bones, patient and endless.
I twisted, panic flaring hot and fast, but the grip on my arms tightened. One of the men holding my wrists laughed—quiet, bored, like this was routine
My chest locked.
I sucked in a breath and only got half of it, lungs stopping short like the air itself had decided I didn’t deserve the rest. My body knew what came next even if my mind refused to say it.
This was what freezing felt like.
The doors shuddered.
Metal parted slowly, deliberately, revealing a stretch of hallway that didn’t feel like an exit at all.
I tried to scream—
—and my hands tangled in sheets instead of zip ties.
I bolted upright in the dark, a sound tearing out of me as my body finally remembered how to move. My wrists burned like the plastic was still there. My heart slammed against my ribs, breath coming in sharp, useless pulls before finally catching.
I quickly reached out my hands and felt fabric. Not metal.
I rotated my wrists slightly and let out a breath as I realized I was no longer restrained.
I dragged in a breath that actually reached my lungs and clutched the blanket, holding on like it was the only thing anchoring me to the bed.
I pressed my feet into the mattress, trying to feel the give of it, the softness.
Tried to count, inhale, exhale, the way Doc had told me earlier.
My chest refused to cooperate. Each breath scraped shallow and sharp, like my lungs were afraid to open all the way.
I dragged a hand down my face, grounding myself in sensation. The warmth of my skin. The ache in my throat from screaming. The faint sting in my palms where my nails had dug in.
This is real, I told myself.
This bed. This room. This night.
But my body didn’t listen.
The air still felt wrong. Too thick. Too close. My ears rang, the silence stretching until it felt just as loud as the nightmare. I twisted in the sheets, heart hammering, every nerve braced for something that wasn’t coming but still felt inevitable.
I hated this part. The space where logic knew I was safe, but my body hadn’t caught up yet. Where memory moved faster than reason.
I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing another breath.
It barely helped.
A bed.
A room.
Darkness broken by moonlight slipping through the curtains.
The compound.
Wrecker’s room.
I dragged in a breath that shook all the way through me, but my body didn’t settle. My chest stayed tight. My skin buzzed like I was still standing in that hallway, frozen in place, watching something I couldn’t stop.
The scream echoed again in my head. Not mine this time.
Hers.
I curled forward, arms wrapping around my middle as another wave hit.
The bathroom door quickly rushed open and then arms closed around me from behind.
Immediate. Solid.
“Hey,” Wrecker said, already pulling me back against his chest. “Hey. You’re here.”
I broke.
The control I’d been gripping since the warehouse, since the phone, since Cap’s voice cut across the yard finally slipped. I folded into him, fists knotting in his shirt like it was the only thing keeping me upright.
“They know where I am,” I whispered.
Wrecker’s arms tightened immediately—not crushing, not frantic. Certain.
“They saw me,” I said. “Not the compound. Me.”
My chest burned as the truth settled deeper. The dream hadn’t been about the girl alone. It had been about what came next.
“They’re going to do to me what they did to her,” I said hoarsely. “That’s why they took the picture. That’s why they wanted confirmation.” I swallowed hard. “I lived. She didn’t. And now it feels like—like that’s something I have to pay for.”
Wrecker shifted us back against the headboard, solid behind me, one hand pressing between my shoulder blades like he was anchoring me to the present.
“This isn’t karma,” he said quietly. “This is predators circling because you got away.”
I shook my head, breath shuddering. “It feels the same.”
“I know,” he said.
That stopped me.
“I know,” he repeated. “Because once they see you, once they decide you’re useful or interesting or unfinished… they don’t like letting go.”
My stomach twisted. “So what happens now?
His jaw tightened. Not with fear, but with resolve.
“Now,” he said, “you’re not facing that alone.” I swallowed hard, pressing my forehead into his chest. My hands loosened their grip on his shirt, fingers aching.
The room came back to me in pieces. The weight of the blankets, the heat of him behind me, the faint hum of the compound settling into night. Somewhere outside, a door closed softly. Footsteps crossed gravel and faded.
My body was still trembling, but the worst of the panic had crested.
Shame slid in to take its place.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“For what?” he asked.
“For waking you. For… this.” I made a small, helpless gesture at myself. “For being a problem you didn’t ask for.”
His hand stilled.
“This isn’t a problem,” he said.
“It feels like one,” I replied. “Cap said you’re my shadow.” My throat tightened. “That means you’re stuck with me. Watching me. Guarding me. Cleaning up whatever mess I make next.”
I waited for him to correct me.
He didn’t.
Instead, he went very still behind me.
“That’s not why I stay,” he said quietly.
My breath caught. “Then why?”
He exhaled slowly as his gaze fixed on the far wall like he needed the distance.
“Because I know what it’s like to hear screaming and not make it in time.”
The words landed without drama. Without warning.
Just truth.
I didn’t move. Afraid that if I did, I’d break whatever line he’d just crossed.
“Overseas,” he said quietly. “Before the club. Before any of this.”
His hand stilled on my back.
“Village on the edge of a supply route. We had bad intel. We were told it was clear.” His jaw tightened. “It wasn’t.”
I stayed still, listening.
“There was a woman,” he continued. “A civilian. She’d been hiding people. Mostly women and children. Moving them at night, feeding them, keeping them quiet when she could. She was trying to get them out and somewhere safe.”
Pressure bloomed behind my ribs.
“We were supposed to meet her,” he said. “Help her move the last group out.”
He took in a deep breath.
“But we got there late. Late enough that the smoke was still in the air.” His voice didn’t shake. That somehow made it worse.
“I saw it happen,” he went on. “Not after. During.” His breath dragged once, sharp and controlled. “Men kicking in doors. Dragging her out. Pretty much all the women dead and their children screaming.”
My fingers curled into his sleeve.
“I raised my weapon,” he said. “I knew what to do. I knew the rules. I knew the orders.”
He swallowed.
“But I froze.”
The word landed between us, heavy and unmistakable.
“Not long,” he added. “Seconds, maybe. Enough.” His mouth tightened. “Enough that by the time I moved, it was already over.”
My throat burned.
“I killed the men who did it,” he said. “Every last one of them.”
That wasn’t pride.
That was fact.
“But that didn’t erase the part where I stood there and watched,” he continued. “Didn’t erase the sound. Didn’t erase her face when she saw me and realized help was standing right there but it was still too late.”
His hand curled slightly in the fabric at my waist, like his body remembered before he did.
“They called it operational success,” he said. “Mission complete.”
He huffed once, bitter.
“Bodies counted. Area cleared. Paper signed.”
My stomach dropped.
“My CO said hesitation gets people killed,” he went on. “Psych said I was hypervigilant.”
He let out a breath through his nose.
“Which was their way of saying I couldn’t shut it off. I would keep replaying the situation in my head.”
I waited.
“So they discharged me,” he finished. “Medical. Quiet. No ceremony.”
I turned in his arms then, slowly, so I could see his face.
“That’s why the club exists,” he said, meeting my gaze. “Every man here brought something home with him he didn’t know how to live with alone. Nightmares. Anger. Guilt. The moments we didn’t make it in time.”
His thumb brushed once, absent and grounding, against my arm.
“We didn’t form it because we like violence,” he said. “We formed it because we needed somewhere the shaking made sense. Somewhere freezing didn’t make you weak.”
My chest cracked open at that.
“You didn’t fail her,” he said softly.
I swallowed hard. “You froze.”
“Yes,” he said. “And I still live with it.”
He leaned his forehead against mine.
“Freezing doesn’t make you useless,” he murmured. “It makes you human.”
Something deep and tight inside me finally loosened. Not relief. Not comfort exactly. Recognition.
This wasn’t a man standing above the wreckage untouched. This was someone who had stood in it and kept going anyway.
I’d been looking at him like an anchor. Something solid I could cling to so I wouldn’t drift.
But this was different.
He wasn’t pulling me away from the memory. He was standing inside it with me.
I saw it then, the way his stillness wasn’t indifference. It was restraint. The way his steadiness wasn’t control, it was practice. Learned the hard way. Paid for in things he didn’t talk about unless it mattered.
And right now, it mattered.
I didn’t feel smaller for needing him.
I felt… understood.
Not fixed.
Not erased.
Just seen.
Something inside me cracked open.
I turned carefully in his arms so I could see his face. The tension in his jaw, the weight he carried so quietly. This was a man who treated his past like a debt he never planned to stop paying.
I lifted my hand and touched his jaw, grounding him the way he’d grounded me earlier. He didn’t pull away.
“That wasn’t your fault,” I whispered.
His breath hitched once.
“You don’t get to decide that,” he said softly.
“I do,” I replied. “Because I’m here. I’m alive. And you’re the one holding me now.”
I held his face between my palms, forcing him to meet my gaze.
“You didn’t walk away,” I said. “You didn’t harden. You didn’t stop showing up.”
His forehead dropped to mine.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. Our breathing slowly matched, the space between us quiet and fragile and charged.
The night stretched on around us.
Eventually, the shaking faded completely. Exhaustion settled in its place, heavy and deep.
Wrecker shifted the blankets higher around us, careful not to break the contact. His arm stayed wrapped around my shoulders, protective without being heavy.
“You sleep,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.”
I didn’t argue.
I let myself sink back against him, letting his heartbeat anchor me to the present. The guilt was still there. The fear hadn’t disappeared.
But for the first time since the elevator doors closed, I wasn’t alone with it.
And as the dark outside the window slowly softened toward morning, I realized something else too.
Freezing hadn’t ended me.
It hadn’t erased me.
And with him here. Steady, quiet, unflinching. I could finally believe that surviving counted.