Chapter 6
The last customer left at seven-thirty, and Kristen flipped the sign to CLOSED with a relief she felt in her bones.
"Long day," Breaker observed from where he'd been restocking the cooler. He'd been doing that all evening—finding small tasks to keep himself busy, staying close without crowding. Like he couldn't quite make himself leave.
"They're all long days." She started her closing routine: wiping down the counter, checking the bait tanks, making sure the register balanced. Familiar motions that usually calmed her mind.
Tonight, her mind wouldn't calm. It kept circling back to the conversation they'd started that afternoon. The way his grin had faltered. The look in his eyes when she'd cut through his deflection.
Someone to save so you don't have to think about whatever you're running from.
She'd meant it to provoke. She hadn't expected it to land so hard.
"You don't have to stay," she said, counting out the cash drawer. "The motion lights are up. Doors are reinforced. I'll be fine."
"Didn't say you wouldn't be."
"So why are you still here?"
He didn't answer immediately. When she looked up, he was watching her with that intensity she was starting to recognize—like she was a puzzle he couldn't quite figure out.
"Maybe I'm not ready to leave."
The words hung between them, heavier than they should have been. Kristen finished counting the drawer and locked the register, using the motion to buy herself time. This man was dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with violence. The way he looked at her. The way he stayed.
"Help me with the inventory?" she asked instead of responding. "Back room."
He followed her into the storage area, where boxes of tackle and supplies lined metal shelves from floor to ceiling.
The space was cramped, meant for one person, and his presence made it feel smaller.
She was hyperaware of him—the breadth of his shoulders, the way he moved, the heat that seemed to radiate off him in the enclosed space.
She handed him a clipboard. "Count the lures. I'll do the line and leader."
They worked in silence for a few minutes, the scratch of pens and rustle of boxes the only sounds. Kristen found herself stealing glances at him—the concentration on his face as he counted, the scars on his hands, the way his broken fingers moved awkwardly around the smaller items.
"You never answered my question," she said finally. "Earlier. About why you're really here."
"You didn't give me a chance."
"I'm giving you one now."
He set down the clipboard, leaning against the shelf behind him. The single overhead bulb cast shadows across his face, making him look older. Harder.
"What do you want to know?"
Everything. Nothing. She wasn't sure which answer scared her more.
"What did you do before the club?"
"Salvage diving." The words came out flat, rehearsed. "Commercial underwater work. Cutting apart shipwrecks, clearing debris. Eight years of it."
"That's the job description. I'm asking about the life."
His jaw tightened. She watched him war with something internal—the urge to deflect, maybe, versus whatever had made him stay past closing instead of riding back to his compound.
"The life was..." He exhaled, running a hand through his hair. "It was the only thing that made sense. Working underwater, everything goes quiet. No distractions. Just you and the job and a dozen ways to die if you stop paying attention."
"That sounds terrifying."
"That's the point." His eyes met hers, and something raw flickered behind the usual wildness.
"Some people feel alive in safe spaces. I feel alive when everything's on the line.
Down there, in the dark, cutting through metal that could crush you if you breathe wrong—that's when my brain finally shuts up. "
Kristen set down her own clipboard. This was more than she'd expected—more honesty, more vulnerability. The adrenaline junkie who grinned at danger was telling her he chased it because ordinary life didn't work for him.
"What happened to the diving?"
"Company folded. Insurance costs got too high, contracts dried up. One day I had a crew and a purpose, the next I had skills nobody was hiring and a..." He hesitated. "A need. For something. Anything that felt real."
"So you found the club."
"The club found me." A ghost of his grin appeared. "Hurricane knew a guy who knew a guy. They needed someone for a job—dangerous work, tight spaces, nobody else would take it. I said yes before he finished explaining." The grin faded. "That was four years ago. Been saying yes ever since."
She understood more than he probably wanted her to. The pattern was clear: a man who measured himself by what he risked, who volunteered for the worst jobs because that was the only time he felt valuable.
"Why demolition?" she pressed. "Specifically. There are other dangerous jobs."
"Demolition is..." He searched for words. "Controlled destruction. You take something that's dangerous, that's in the way, and you make it not exist anymore. Precisely. Perfectly." His voice softened. "The company folding felt like drowning. Demolition feels like breathing."
"Because you're good at it."
"Because I'm necessary for it. The brothers—they're fighters, sailors, watermen.
They can handle most things. But the jobs nobody else will touch?
The tight spaces, the explosives, the work that might kill you if you blink at the wrong moment?
" His eyes found hers again. "That's when they call me. That's when I matter."
The confession hit her somewhere deep. He wasn't just an adrenaline junkie chasing highs—he was a man who didn't know what he was worth unless something was about to explode.
"Breaker."
"Yeah?"
She stepped closer, closing the distance between them until she could see the pulse jumping in his throat. His whole body went still, like he was afraid to move.
"You sound like someone who doesn't know what he's worth unless something's on fire."
Silence.
The words landed exactly where she'd aimed them—somewhere vulnerable, somewhere true. She watched his expression shift: surprise, then something like pain, then a careful blankness that told her she'd hit bone.
"That's—"
"Don't." She held up a hand, the same gesture she'd used that afternoon. "Don't deflect. Don't grin. Just... sit with it for a second."
He stood frozen, that careful blankness cracking at the edges. Nobody did this to him—she could see it in the way he held himself, the way his hands clenched at his sides. Nobody pushed past the charm and called out what was underneath.
"You don't know me," he said finally, voice rough.
"I know enough. I know you've been sleeping in your truck outside my shop for two nights because you're worried something will happen while I'm alone.
I know you picked a fight with two men because you didn't like the bruise on my face.
I know you volunteer for every dangerous job because that's the only time you feel real.
" She held his gaze. "That's not nothing, Breaker.
That's a man who's convinced himself he has to earn the right to exist."
"Kristen—"
"My brother is the same way." The words came out before she could stop them.
"Different flavor, but the same root. Tyler gambles because he needs the rush, needs the proof that he matters enough to beat the odds.
And when he loses, he disappears—because losing means he was right all along, that he isn't worth anything. "
She watched that land, too. Watched him connect the dots.
"You're not your brother," he said quietly.
"No. I'm the one who stuck around and cleaned up the messes." She smiled, but it hurt. "And you're not whatever story you've been telling yourself. The one where you're only worth what you risk. That's bullshit too."
The storage room felt impossibly small. He was close enough to touch, close enough that she could smell leather and salt air and the warmth underneath. His chest rose and fell with controlled breaths, like he was fighting something.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked.
"Doing what?"
"Pushing. Seeing things I don't show people." His voice dropped. "Most people take the grin and move on."
"I'm not most people."
"I noticed."
Something shifted in his expression. The raw vulnerability she'd glimpsed was still there, but overlaid now with something else—something that made her pulse kick up and her skin flush warm.
"We should finish inventory," she said, suddenly aware that they'd been standing too close for too long.
"Yeah." He didn't move. "We should."
Neither of them reached for their clipboards.
The moment stretched, tension building like a storm front over the bay. Kristen could feel her heart hammering against her ribs, could see the same awareness in his eyes—the knowledge that they were one wrong move from something that couldn't be undone.
He broke first.
"Tomorrow," he said, stepping back. The word sounded like it cost him something. "Compass is running surveillance on Birch's operation. We'll know more about what we're dealing with."
The subject change was obvious—a retreat into safer territory. But his eyes stayed on her differently now. Less of the wild energy, more of something deeper. Like she'd cracked open a door he usually kept bolted shut.
"Tomorrow," she agreed.
They finished inventory in silence, the scratch of pens and rustle of boxes filling the space where words had been. But the silence felt different now. Charged. Full of everything they hadn't said and everything they were pretending not to feel.
When she walked him to the door, his bike waiting in the lot under the new motion lights, he paused at the threshold.
"Kristen."
"Yeah?"
"Nobody calls me on my bullshit." His grin flickered—not the wild one, something softer and more uncertain. "It's disorienting as hell."
"Good." She leaned against the doorframe. "Disoriented looks better on you than untouchable."
He huffed a laugh, and something warm spread through her chest. This man—this dangerous, reckless, complicated man—was letting her see past the armor. That meant something. More than she wanted to admit.
"Lock up behind me," he said. "I'll be in the lot if you need anything."
"You don't have to—"
"I know." He held her gaze, and the softness in his expression made her breath catch. "I'm staying anyway."
Then he was gone, walking across the gravel toward his bike, and Kristen stood in the doorway watching him go.
She'd pushed. He'd let her in. And somewhere in the middle of it, something had changed between them—something that felt less like protection and more like the beginning of falling.
She locked the door, turned off the lights, and climbed the stairs to her apartment above the shop with his words echoing in her head.
Nobody calls me on my bullshit.
Well. Someone did now.