Chapter 6 #2
"I'm sitting on this porch talking to you instead of in a cell somewhere, so I'd say it worked well enough."
I laugh.
A real one—quiet, but real.
And he looks at me when I do, and something in his face opens up the same way it did in the ortho waiting room when I said we match. That softening. That light through the cracks.
"You're cold," he says.
"I'm fine."
"Leah. You've been shivering for ten minutes."
"I have not been—" I stop. I have been shivering. I've been so focused on his voice and his story and the way the coin moves between his fingers that I didn't notice my own body temperature dropping. "Okay. Maybe a little."
He stands without a word, goes inside, and comes back with a flannel.
Not from a closet—from the back of a kitchen chair, which means it's the one he was wearing earlier, which means it's going to smell like him.
He holds it out. I take it and put it on.
It's warm from the house, too big in the shoulders, the sleeves hang past my hands and it smells like leather and cedar and that warm-skin scent underneath that I've been trying not to think about for weeks now.
I am now wearing Coin's flannel on his porch and I have made a series of choices tonight that I cannot undo.
"Thanks," I say, pulling the sleeves over my hands.
He sits back down, closer this time—not by much, but enough that I notice.
Enough that I can feel the warmth coming off him in the cold air, the solid presence of him next to me, the quiet weight of a man who just told me something real and is waiting to see what I do with it.
"I became a nurse because of the fire," I say. I don't plan to say it.
It just comes out—the way things keep coming out around this man, bypassing every filter I've built.
"Garrett saved me. And I spent my whole childhood watching him carry that—the guilt of choosing me over our parents, the weight of being the one who survived and had to keep surviving.
He saved me, and then he spent the rest of his life trying to save everyone else. "
I pull the flannel tighter around me.
"I wanted to be like him. Not the club part—the saving part.
I wanted to be the person who shows up when everything is falling apart and holds it together.
So, I became a nurse. And I'm good at it.
I'm really good at it." I pause. "But sometimes I think I got so good at taking care of other people that I forgot how to let anyone take care of me. "
The words hang in the cold air between us. I can't believe I said them. I don't say things like that—not to anyone, not out loud.
I'm the one who holds it together.
I'm the one who doesn't need help.
I'm a Mercer, and Mercers feel everything and show nothing, and I just showed this quiet man with the matching scar everything I've been hiding for years.
He doesn't say anything for a long moment, then he reaches over and takes my hand.
Not dramatically. Not with any kind of grand gesture.
He just reaches across the space between us and wraps his hand around mine—rough against smooth, warm against cold, his scarred knuckles pressing against my fingers. He holds on.
"I know," he says. "I do the same thing."
My heart is doing something it has no business doing.
My breath is doing something it has no business doing.
The entire county of Monongalia could be on fire right now and I wouldn't notice because Coin is holding my hand on his front porch and his thumb is moving across my knuckles the way I watched it move across Wrenleigh's in the ER, slow, steady, and deliberate.
His eyes drop to my mouth. Just for a second. Maybe two.
My whole body goes still.
He leans toward me. An inch. Maybe less.
The space between us shrinks to something I could close with a breath, and I can see every shade of blue and gray in his eyes and the line of his scar and the way his jaw tightens like he's fighting something—
"You're Garrett's sister."
The words land like cold water.
He pulls back.
Not far—just enough.
Just enough to put the distance back, to rebuild the wall, to remind both of us that this isn't simple and it was never going to be.
"I'm my own woman," I say. And my voice is steadier than I expect it to be, steadier than I feel, because I mean it. I mean it more than I've meant anything in a long time.
He looks at me. Those eyes—searching, careful, wanting something he won't let himself take.
"I know you are," he says quietly. "That's the problem."
We sit there. His hand is still holding mine. Neither of us lets go.
We don't kiss. Not tonight. But something happened on this porch that can't unhappen, and we both know it, and the knowing sits between us like a third person—present, patient, waiting.
He squeezes my hand once, then lets go.
"You should get home," he says. "It's late."
"Yeah." I don't move. "It is."
I stand up eventually. Give him back the coffee mug. Don't give him back the flannel because he doesn't ask for it and I'm not offering, and we both pretend that's not significant.
"Good night, Coin."
"Good night, Leah."
I walk to my car.
Bloodhound is in the shadows at the end of the porch—I'd almost forgotten he was there, which tells me how far gone I am.
He watches me pass without a word.
I don't know what he heard or didn't hear, and right now I don't really give a damn.
I get in my car, and start the engine.
I sit there for a second with my hands on the wheel and his flannel around my shoulders and the ghost of his hand still warm against mine.
Then I drive. Not home. Not yet.
Backroads is closing when I get there.
The parking lot is almost empty—just Tildie's car and the delivery truck that comes on Thursday nights.
The neon sign in the window flickers between OPEN and something that's mostly just the O and the N.
Ellie's bar. The heart of the club's world, even when it's quiet.
I push through the door.
The place smells like fryer grease and spilled beer and the lemon cleaner Tildie uses on the bar top after close.
The jukebox is off.
The chairs are up on half the tables.
Tildie is behind the bar, wiping down the counter with the focus of a woman who finds meditation in repetitive motion.
She looks up when I walk in.
Takes one look at my face— scrubs, messy hair, Coin's flannel hanging off my shoulders like a neon sign that says I MADE QUESTIONABLE DECISIONS TONIGHT—and reaches under the bar for a bottle.
"You've got the look," she says, pouring two whiskeys without asking.
"What look?"
"The 'I'm about to have feelings and I need someone to talk me out of them' look." She slides a glass across the bar. "Or into them. Depends on the night."
I sit down on the barstool and take the whiskey, but I don't drink it yet.
Just hold it, the way Coin holds the coin, like having something solid in my hands will keep the rest of me from spinning out.
"It's Coin," I say. Because there's no point pretending, not with Tildie.
This woman can smell bullshit from a mile away, and she's been watching me circle this thing for weeks with the quiet patience of someone who's been through it herself.
"I know," she says. She takes a sip of her own whiskey. "I've known since the hospital."
"How?"
"Honey. I've watched you walk into this clubhouse for weeks and look for him in the room before you find your own brother. That told me everything I needed to know."
I take a sip of the whiskey. It burns going down and settles warm in my chest.
"He almost kissed me. On the porch. Tonight."
"Almost?"
"He pulled back. Said I'm Garrett's sister."
Tildie sets her glass down. Leans her forearms on the bar.
Those amber eyes—warm, knowing, the eyes of a woman who fled an abusive ex and rebuilt her whole life behind this bar and fell in love with a club president when she wasn't looking—hold mine without flinching.
"What did you say?"
"I told him I'm my own woman."
"Good. Because you are." She pauses. "Leah, I'm not going to sugarcoat this.
Loving a man in this club is hard. The danger is real.
The secrets are real. The nights when they ride out and you don't know if they're coming back—those are real.
I've lived it. I'm living it. Every time Ruger walks out that door, a part of me holds its breath until he walks back in. "
"So, you're talking me out of it."
"I'm telling you what it costs. There's a difference.
" She takes another sip. "The way that man looks at you?
That's not casual. That's not a club brother being friendly with his SAA's little sister.
That's a man who's been alone too long and just realized he doesn't have to be.
And that's terrifying for a man like Coin, because he's spent ten years convincing himself that being alone is the same thing as being strong. "
I stare at my whiskey.
The amber liquid catches the low light of the bar, and I think about his hands.
Scarred, rough, gentle with his daughters.
The way he held my hand on the porch like I was something worth holding onto.
The way he said that's the problem like wanting me was the hardest thing he'd allowed himself to feel in a decade.
"He's got things going on," I say carefully. "Things he won't tell me about. Garrett's been at his house doing guard duty and nobody will explain why."
Tildie's expression doesn't change, but something behind her eyes shifts.
She knows. Of course she knows—she's Ruger's ol' lady.
She probably knows more about what's happening than I do.
But she won't tell me, because that's not how this works.
The women carry what they know and they don't spread it, and Tildie respects that line even when it's hard.
"When he's ready," she says, "he'll tell you.
Men like Coin don't shut you out because they don't trust you.
They shut you out because they're trying to protect you from the weight of it.
It's stupid and it's frustrating and it comes from a good place, and you'll want to strangle him for it. Trust me."
"Speaking from experience?"
"Ruger had a war brewing with Striker before I even knew what I'd walked into.
By the time I understood how bad it was, I was running through tunnels under the compound with bullets flying and Sarah bleeding out beside me.
" She says it matter-of-factly, the way you talk about things that almost destroyed you once you've survived them.
"But he learned. They learn. Slowly. Painfully. Like men do."
I almost smile.
"Go home," she says, collecting my empty glass. "Sleep on it. And Leah?"
"Yeah?"
"You're wearing his flannel."
I look down. The flannel. Coin's flannel. Still on me, still warm, still smelling like cedar and leather and him.
"I know," I say.
"That means something."
"I know."
She smiles and goes back to wiping down the bar.
I drive home, I shower, and I get into bed.
I put the flannel back on before I slide under the blankets.
I lie there in the dark wearing a man's shirt that smells like everything I've been telling myself I don't need.
His hands on mine.
The way he said that's the problem.
The inch of space between us that felt like both the longest and shortest distance in the world.
I think about his hands.
I think about how long it's been since anyone made me feel like I wasn't just useful, but wanted.
That's the word. Wanted. Not needed—I've been needed my whole life.
By patients, by Garrett, by the ER, by everyone who's ever looked at me and seen someone who could fix what's broken.
Needed is familiar. Needed is safe.
Wanted is something else entirely.
And the way Coin looked at me on that porch—like I was the first good thing he'd let himself see in years—that was want.
Pure, terrified, held-back want.
I press my face into the collar of his flannel and breathe in, and I make a decision the way Mercers make all their decisions: stubbornly, completely, with the understanding that it's probably going to hurt.
I'm not running from this.
Whatever this is, wherever it goes, however complicated it gets with Garrett and the club and the secrets and the danger—I'm not running.
I've spent my whole life saving other people.
Maybe it's time I let someone save me back.