Chapter 6
BUTCHER
She was trouble with a capital T. Not the loud kind, and definitely not the obvious kind, but the dangerous kind. She was the kind of trouble that walked into your life looking exhausted and pissed off while quietly bleeding from wounds nobody could see.
Butcher leaned back against the kitchen counter after Princess disappeared into the pantry, rubbing a hand over his beard as he watched her from the corner of his eye.
She had made herself at home in his house, but she still moved like someone who expected an attack at any second.
As though she was always aware of where he was standing, and that wasn’t normal—not for spoiled little rich girls.
And Princess sure as hell wasn’t what she pretended to be.
The fridge opened, and she stared into it for a long second before looking over her shoulder at him suspiciously. “You don’t have normal food.”
Butcher snorted. “What the hell is normal food?”
She shut the fridge with more force than necessary. “Something besides beer, steak, and enough eggs to feed a small army.”
“That’s all protein,” he said simply.
“Beer isn’t protein,” she challenged.
“Close enough,” he grumbled. That actually pulled a short laugh out of her.
It caught him off guard enough that his chest tightened strangely because there it was—the real her.
Not the sharp-tongued woman with an attitude who seemed mad at the entire fucking world.
She was just a woman laughing for half a second before she remembered she wasn’t supposed to.
Princess seemed to realize it, too, because the sound died quickly and her walls slammed right back into place.
Butcher crossed his arms over his chest. “There’s pasta in the cabinet.”
She looked offended.
“You eat pasta?”
“Princess,” he drawled, “I live in Mississippi, not a cave.”
Her eyes narrowed at him again, and he was starting to enjoy that look a little too much. “You enjoy irritating people, don’t you?”
He shrugged, “Nope, it seems that I only enjoy irritating you so far. Most everyone else seems to like me.”
She muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like asshole, and Butcher grinned despite himself.
“Or they tolerate you,” she shot back. Christ—this woman seemed to have comebacks for every damn thing that he said.
He couldn’t remember the last time somebody stood in his kitchen arguing with him like they belonged there. He was sure that the answer was never.
Once he left the Bastards behind and built a life designed specifically to avoid attachment, he led a pretty quiet life.
Butcher learned a long time ago that people left or betrayed you—sometimes both.
Hell, he’d learned that lesson the hard way, so why the hell did having her here feel less like an inconvenience and more like something dangerous in an entirely different way?
Princess finally settled on making pasta, though she looked personally insulted by the limited ingredients in his kitchen the entire time. “You season absolutely nothing,” she informed him.
“I season plenty,” he insisted.
“With black pepper,” she deadpanned.
“That’s a seasoning,” he argued.
“Your lack of spices is depressing,” she mumbled. Butcher barked out a laugh before he could stop it—a real one this time. It was the kind he hadn’t heard come out of himself in years. Princess froze slightly at the sound, like she hadn’t expected it either. Hell, neither had he.
The room went quieter after that, and she turned back toward the stove, but he caught the way her shoulders loosened a fraction. And damn if something about that didn’t punch him straight in the chest.
He pushed away from the counter before he could think too hard about it. “You hungry or just insulting my kitchen for sport?”
“I can multitask,” she sassed.
“Clearly,” he grumbled. She plated the food a few minutes later, sliding one of the bowls toward him carefully, like she wasn’t entirely sure where they stood. But the truth was, neither did he.
Butcher sat across from her at the small kitchen table, studying her while she twisted pasta onto her fork with the kind of elegance that screamed money. Everything about her screamed money. Even wearing the baggy T-shirt and leggings that she had changed into, she looked expensive.
“You keep staring at me,” she said without looking up.
“No, I don’t,” he lied. That made her glance up, finally, and he could feel the tension in the air between them. It was like a conversation between them balanced on the edge of something neither of them understood.
Butcher took another bite before speaking again. “You running from somebody?” Her entire body went still. Years ago, he might’ve missed it, but now he saw everything.
Princess set her fork down carefully. “That’s a pretty personal question.”
“I feel that I have a right to know if you’re going to be staying at my place until I get your car fixed. I mean, if you’re bringing trouble to my door, then I should know about it, right?” he asked.
Her eyes held his across the table, cool and guarded. “You always interrogate women you bring home?”
He leaned back slightly in his chair. “You always avoid answering simple questions?”
“You answer my question first,” she said quietly.
Butcher’s jaw flexed. “You don’t want to hear what I do to women that I bring home with me.”
“Is that your way of telling me that you’re a serial killer and that you’re going to kill me in my sleep, chop me up, and bury me in your backyard?” she asked.
“Um, that’s pretty specific,” he said.
She shrugged, “Well, I love watching true crime shows,” she said.
“I guess I have a flair for all things gruesome. “But you don’t have to answer my question,” she insisted.
“I’m afraid that I don’t want to know what you do with women you bring back here.
” The problem was, he wanted to tell her.
He wanted to crack open ten years’ worth of silence and let somebody finally see the ugly parts underneath him.
He wanted to tell someone about Savage and his club. He wanted to share the betrayal of losing his brothers and the loneliness that he felt afterward, but going down that road never ended well. So he shut it down before it could start.
“Trust me,” he said roughly. “You really don’t.” Something flickered across her face then. Not fear, but recognition. Like she understood exactly what it meant to carry things too ugly to say out loud.
And suddenly, Butcher knew two things with absolute certainty. First, Princess was absolutely running from something, and it was bad enough to put that look in her eyes. And second, whatever brought her to his town wasn’t finished with her yet.
He didn’t sleep much that night. It wasn’t because of her sleeping in the room just down the hallway—at least, that’s what he told himself anyway.
Butcher sat on the back porch with a beer in his hand and the Mississippi night wrapped around him thick and humid.
The porch light buzzed overhead while crickets screamed from the tree line, but his attention kept drifting back inside the house.
Toward the closed guest room door and the woman sleeping under his roof, and that irritated the hell out of him.
Ten years alone had trained him out of habits like this.
He didn’t worry about people anymore. Didn’t think about them after they left his line of sight.
Life was easier that way—cleaner. But Princess had walked into his life like a lit match tossed into gasoline, and now his instincts wouldn’t shut the fuck up.
She was lying. Not directly about anything in particular, but consistently.
Every answer she gave was polished, controlled, and measured.
It was as though she had spent years learning how to reveal just enough truth to keep people from digging deeper.
He recognized that, too, because he did the exact same damn thing.
Butcher tipped the beer back, his eyes narrowing into the darkness.
She had talked about Chicago, and that little slip earlier stuck with him.
Most people with money ended up in places like Miami or New York when they ran.
Somewhere flashy. Somewhere easy to disappear.
But she ended up stranded in a tiny Mississippi town, looking like she hadn’t slept properly in days.
And he was sure of one thing from personal experience—nobody landed here by accident.
Not unless they were desperate or hiding.
The screen door creaked softly behind him.
His body reacted before his brain did, shoulders tightening slightly as he turned his head.
Princess stepped onto the porch quietly, barefoot again, and the T-shirt that he had lent her was hanging off one shoulder enough to show her smooth skin beneath the porch light.
Christ—seeing her like that wasn’t helping anything.
“You always sit outside looking miserable at two in the morning?” she asked softly.
Butcher looked back out toward the trees. “Usually,” he admitted.
She hummed as though she believed him, and after a few seconds, she lowered herself into the chair beside him without asking permission.
That shouldn’t have felt intimate, but somehow it did.
Neither of them spoke right away, letting the silence stretch out between them, but unlike earlier, it didn’t feel uncomfortable.
Princess tucked one leg beneath herself in the chair, staring out into the darkness.
“It’s weird here,” she admitted finally.
Butcher snorted quietly. “That bad, huh?”
“No,” she said after a second. “It’s just a lot quieter than where I’m from.” He understood that too well.
“When I first got here,” he said slowly, “the silence drove me insane.” Her eyes slid toward him. That was the first real thing he had admitted to her, and he could tell that she noticed.
“You came here alone?” she asked.
Butcher’s jaw flexed. That was a dangerous question, but he still answered it anyway. “Yeah,” he admitted.
“Why were you alone?” she asked. He wanted to tell her that it was because he destroyed the only family he ever had, and his brother died hating him.
Or that he was too damn stubborn to stay and too damn broken to go back to Huntsville.
Instead, he shrugged, letting her believe that he didn’t know why he was alone.
“I just needed a fresh start,” he said, giving her a partial truth.
Princess watched him for a long moment, like she was trying to decide how much of that she believed. “Did it work?”
Butcher looked down at the beer bottle in his hand before answering. “Some days.” His honesty seemed to surprise both of them, but Princess looked away first. He found that fact to be interesting.
“You know,” she said quietly, “for a guy named Butcher, you’re surprisingly decent.”
He barked out a rough laugh. “There it is.”
“There’s what?” she innocently asked.
“The insult hidden inside the compliment,” he said.
A tiny smile tugged at her mouth and disappeared just as fast, but he caught it.
She looked younger when she smiled—less haunted.
Less sharp around the edges, and even more beautiful, if that were possible.
That realization hit him square in the jaw. Absolutely fucking not.
Butcher leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his knees. “You should get some sleep.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Are you kicking me off your porch?”
“No,” he breathed. “I’m going to bed before I make a bad decision.” The second the words left his mouth, he felt the air shift around them. It became hotter, if that was possible, and Princess went still beside him. Butcher cursed himself internally for being too honest with her.
Her voice came quieter this time. “What kind of bad decision?” she asked.
Jesus Christ. He turned his head slowly, meeting her eyes fully for the first time since she stepped outside, which was a big mistake, because she looked softer in the moonlight—and entirely too tempting.
Butcher felt the pull immediately. That dark, dangerous kind of attraction that never ended well. It was the kind that made men forget common sense and ruined lives. He’d spent ten years mastering control of his emotions, and somehow this woman was already cracking it apart.
“You ask too many questions, Princess,” he said roughly.
“And you avoid too many answers,” she countered.
They stared at each other for one long second too many, and there it was again—that thing building between them since the moment she walked into his shop.
It wasn’t trust, nor was it safety. It was something rawer—something that felt a lot like two lonely people standing too close to a fire they both knew would burn them alive.
Butcher broke eye contact first, standing abruptly. “Go to bed,” he growled. Princess looked irritated by his order, which worked for him. Maybe irritation would kill some of this tension before it became a real problem.
She stood slowly, crossing her arms over her chest. “You’re very bossy for someone who I’m paying to fix my car.”
“And you’re very mouthy for somebody living in my house,” he argued.
“You know,” she murmured, stepping closer as she passed him, “most people are nicer to their guests.” Butcher looked down as she breezed past him.
She was too close to him, and he could smell her shampoo.
Hell, he could feel the heat rolling off her skin, and suddenly every instinct he had was screaming at him.
Princess tilted her head slightly. “Goodnight, Butcher.” He watched her as she walked back inside, leaving him standing there like an idiot on his own porch. The screen door slammed shut behind her, and silence rushed back in immediately, but it didn’t feel peaceful anymore.
Butcher scrubbed a hand over his face hard enough to hurt. “Fuck,” he muttered. Because he already knew that the real problem wasn’t the secrets she was hiding. It wasn’t whoever she was running from. It was the fact that for the first time in ten years, he didn’t want his house guest to leave.