Chapter 4 - Wrecker
WRECKER
Carrie tries to slide off the barstool and nearly goes down.
Her knees fold and she grabs at nothing.
I catch her by the arm before she hits the floor.
Her skin is cold. Her eyes are wet and unfocused.
Whiskey clings to her breath, and underneath that is something bitter that makes me want to find Jinn and put him through a wall.
Out in the main room he’s laughing at something Marcy says, hand easy on her hip. Club president. Big man. I taste metal and swallow it.
“I want to go home,” Carrie mutters, words blurring at the edges.
“Not happening.” I keep my voice low. “You can’t even stand.”
She fishes out her keys with clumsy fingers. They slip once and I take them before she drops them. I slide them into my cut. She blinks up at me like she might fight me for them, then looks away.
“You’re staying right here,” I tell her. “Hate me for it in the morning.”
Her mouth wobbles. I think she’s going to cry again, but she just nods, small and tired, and that lands harder than a punch.
I get an arm around her waist and guide her off the stool.
She leans into me without meaning to, warm and heavy at my side.
We cut along the edge of the crowd, past brothers who pretend not to notice.
Music hammers the floorboards. Grease and fryer oil hang in the hall by the kitchen.
I shoulder the side-room door and the noise drops a notch.
It’s a cramped little box. Sagging couch.
Dented file cabinet. Window painted shut years ago.
I ease her down and she sinks into the cushions like her strings got cut.
Mascara shadows her eyes. A faint track of dried tears glints on her cheek.
She stares at the floor like it might answer for any of this.
Boots hit tile behind me.
“You really bringing her back here?” JC asks as he steps inside, calm like always when the world tilts.
Nico—Blade—slips in after him, eyes hot, jaw tight. He doesn’t ask a thing.
He saw the glasses go down one after another. He saw Jinn and Marcy float past like none of it mattered.
JC’s gaze flicks to my pocket. “You take her keys?”
I tap my cut. “Yeah.”
“Good.” He goes to the tiny sink, finds a half-clean glass, fills it with water, and presses it into my hand without looking like we rehearsed it.
Nico angles his head toward the gap in the door and spots Jinn in the reflection of the steel fridge. His lip curls. “You seeing this?”
“Don’t start,” I tell him. Gravel in my voice I didn’t plan.
I kneel in front of Carrie and offer the water. “Small sips.”
Her fingers tremble around the glass. The first swallow makes her cough. She tries again. It squeezes my chest to watch it.
“I need to go home,” she whispers. “Please, Levi.”
The please hits something I keep locked up. Most folks call me Wrecker like that’s the only name I ever had. She says Levi and a window cracks open.
“You’re not driving,” I say, softer. “Lie down in here. I’ll sit outside the door if that helps.”
I don’t add that I’m not leaving her alone while Jinn plays house with her sister twenty yards away.
JC plants himself in the doorway, blocking the hall. He’s giving me time. Nico prowls once, then crouches by the arm of the couch so he’s level with her.
“You want food?” he asks, voice rough but gentle enough. “Bread, fries, whatever you’ll keep down.”
She shakes her head. “No.”
Her lips tremble and she swallows it. I can see her holding herself together with both hands and a prayer. Rage climbs my spine clean and bright. Jinn knew exactly what he was doing.
“Look at me,” I say, and she does. Her eyes are red but clear. “You are safe in here.”
She nods. A breath shudders out. “Thank you.”
Nico glances at me, then at JC. He wants blood. I’m not far behind. Someone has to be the wall, and it looks like I drew that job.
JC breaks the silence. “I’ll talk to Whale. Nobody comes down this hallway. She doesn’t need an audience.”
“Do it,” I say. “And close the kitchen door.”
He goes. Nico lingers, gaze ticking to the couch, then to me. “You want me gone?”
I look at Carrie. Her knuckles are white on the water glass. The couch springs complain under her weight. The room smells like bleach, old smoke, and a beer that died here last week.
“Stay,” I tell him. It tastes like surrender. “But keep it quiet.”
He slides to the far end of the couch and sits, not touching her, close enough if she needs it. I take the hard chair by the door, hands loose on my knees. From the main room, Jinn laughs. The sound curls through the wall and tries to get under my skin.
Carrie’s eyelids keep fluttering. She fights it, then loses ground inch by inch until her gaze goes soft and unfocused.
I ease the glass from her hand and set it on the file cabinet.
Her skin looks flushed, so I slide my palm over her forehead.
Warm. Not fever, just worn out. She exhales, a small sound that catches at the end, and it kills me a little.
“It’s all right,” I tell her, voice low. “Rest.”
Her lashes sink. I stroke the line of hair at her temple with the back of my fingers. She leans into the touch without waking.
JC stands in the doorway, shoulders filling the frame. He tilts his head toward the kitchen. “A word.”
I don’t want to move. I don’t want to take my hand off her. Nico catches my eye and nods once. He eases into my spot, forearms on his knees, his presence a wall between her and the rest of the world.
I rise and follow JC into the kitchen. The hum of the old fridge is loud in here, and the light is the color of old bone. The door to the side room is pulled nearly shut. It feels like a thin lid on a boiling pot.
JC doesn’t waste time. “I saw the way you were looking at her,” he says. His voice is calm, but his eyes pin me. “This is dangerous. She is Jinn’s business.”
“He’s out there with her sister,” I shoot back, my voice harsher than I planned. “Looks like his business moved on.”
JC’s jaw tightens. “You know what I mean. Lines like this get men hurt. They get clubs torn in half.”
Nico slips out and joins us, folding his arms. His gaze flicks from me to JC, waiting for where this is going to land.
We have stood in kitchens like this our whole lives, one twin to the other, reading the air for sparks.
People say we look the same. Same height.
Same jaw. Same eyes. To me he’s a mirror with a different soul behind it.
“She needs someone tonight,” I say. “I’m not leaving her to the wolves.”
“That’s not the point,” JC answers. “You get involved, it shifts everything. The presidency, the vote, the way the brothers pick sides. And you know Jinn. He won’t let this slide.”
“He already let her slide,” Nico mutters.
Nico lifts his hands like fine, I’m done. He’s not done. I can feel it rolling off him.
I look between them. “I’m not asking permission to sit with a woman while she sleeps off a bad night. I’m telling you what’s going to happen. She stays put. I stay with her.”
JC steps closer. He lowers his voice. “You care. I can see it. That’s the problem.”
Silence stretches. The fryer pops out in the main room. Someone laughs too loud. It scrapes along my nerves.
“Then say it plain,” I answer. “You think I can’t keep my head.”
“I think you’ll try,” JC says. “And I think the line between trying and failing is thin when you’re tired and angry and she looks at you like you’re the only one left. You’re not wrong to want to protect her. I’m telling you what it costs if you let it turn into something else.”
Nico’s eyes cut to me. He knows the part I’m not saying.
He knows it because he’s my twin, because we were born minutes apart and spent our childhood finishing each other’s sentences.
He could always feel when I was about to swing.
I could feel when he was about to laugh.
Right now we both feel the same tight pull in the chest.
“She’s not property,” I say. “Not Jinn’s. Not anyone’s.”
“No one said she is,” JC replies. “But you know how the patch reads to outsiders. You know what message it sends when the president claims a woman and his enforcer starts looking at her like that.”
I set my palms on the cold steel counter and breathe through it. “I’m not taking her from anyone. I’m keeping her breathing and off the road. He can be mad at me for that.”
JC and I are still jawing in the kitchen when a noise cuts through the hum of the fridge. A loud slam, the sound of a door closing.
All three of us look up. Nico is already moving. We push through the swinging kitchen door and cross the short hall to the side room.
The door is open. The couch is empty. The water glass sits on the file cabinet with a wet ring underneath it. The dent in the cushion where her head was is already rising.
“I shouldn’t have left her alone,” I say. The words taste like rust.
“Well, she wasn’t exactly walking when we left her,” JC answers. He scans the floor, then lifts his head. “Let’s go look for her.”
We hit the back door at once. Cool night air slides over my skin.
The yard behind the clubhouse is a rectangle of patchy grass and dirt that gives way to a tree line.
Beyond that, the county forgot to mow, then forgot to care.
We jog across the gravel, past the burn barrel and the stack of busted pallets, and into the dark.
The forest takes us in fast. Pines crowd close, their trunks black in the half-moon light.
Oak limbs knit overhead, leaves whispering.
The ground is a mess of needles, deadfall, and sand.
It smells like sap and damp soil and old smoke from a hundred bonfires.
Crickets grind away in the brush. Somewhere far off a dog barks twice and goes quiet.
“Carrie,” Nico calls, voice low but carrying. “Carrie, answer me.”
Nothing.