Chapter Five
Grace woke to the smell of coffee and the sound of pacing.
Sunlight filtered through the gap in the blinds, casting stripes across the unfamiliar ceiling.
For a moment she didn't know where she was—just that her neck hurt from sleeping on a couch that was older than she was and that someone was moving in the kitchen with the restless energy of a caged animal.
Then memory crashed back. The stockroom. The violence. The motorcycle ride through darkened streets with her arms wrapped around a stranger who moved like war had never really ended for him.
She sat up slowly, wincing at muscles she hadn't known she had. Marlowe was curled on the pillow beside her, supremely unbothered by their displacement. Cats, she decided, had the right idea about crisis management.
Crash stood at the kitchen counter, his back to her, pouring coffee into two mugs.
Even that simple action seemed to vibrate with barely contained intensity—his shoulders tight, his movements sharp and economical.
He'd changed at some point during the night, trading his cut for a plain black t-shirt that stretched across his back.
The fabric did nothing to hide the coiled power underneath.
"Coffee's fresh," he said without turning around. "There's food if you want it."
Grace pushed herself off the couch and crossed to the kitchen on stiff legs. "Did you sleep at all?"
"Don't need much."
"That's not an answer."
He turned then, holding out one of the mugs. His eyes were sharp despite the shadows beneath them, that intense blue gaze sweeping over her like he was checking for damage that might have appeared overnight.
"I slept enough," he said. "How's the wrist?"
Grace accepted the coffee and looked down at her arm. The bruising had bloomed overnight, ugly purple and yellow spreading from where Buckner's hand had clamped down. It hurt to flex her fingers, but nothing felt broken.
"I've had worse."
His jaw tightened. Something dark flickered behind his eyes—that cold, patient anger she'd glimpsed in the stockroom. Like her injury was a personal offense he intended to answer.
"Buckner," he said flatly. "He's Walsh's head of security. Former trucker turned muscle. Good at scaring people who don't fight back."
"And people who do fight back?"
"Then he calls for reinforcements." Crash leaned against the counter, the mug untouched in his hand. "Maverick's got eyes on your shop. Nobody's tried to torch it yet, which means Walsh is still thinking this through. That won't last."
Grace absorbed the information while she sipped coffee that was strong enough to strip paint.
The safehouse felt smaller in daylight—cramped and sparse, nothing like the comfortable chaos of her apartment above the bookstore.
She missed her books. Her routines. The familiar creak of floorboards that had known her footsteps since childhood.
"The other business owners," she said. "Miller, Mrs. Chang—do they know what happened?"
"We got word to them. They know you're safe, but not where." He watched her over the rim of his mug, studying her reaction. "Walsh's people will try to use them to get to you. Make you come out of hiding to protect them."
The thought made her stomach clench. She'd organized them. Made them targets by convincing them to stand together.
"This is my fault."
"This is Walsh's fault." The words came out sharp, almost angry. "You didn't make him threaten people. You didn't make him send muscle to terrorize a bookstore owner. He made those choices, and he's going to answer for them."
"But if I hadn't organized the resistance—"
"Then he'd be picking you off one by one instead of all at once." Crash set down his mug and moved toward her, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to hold his gaze. "You gave those people a fighting chance. Don't apologize for that."
Grace stared at him—this stranger who'd turned her life inside out in less than twenty-four hours. He was too close. Too intense. Every instinct said she should step back, create space, maintain the careful distance that kept people from getting too close.
She held her ground.
"You really believe that?"
"I believe in people who stand up when everyone else sits down." His voice dropped, rough and certain. "That's rare. That's worth protecting."
The moment stretched between them, charged with something Grace didn't have a name for. Then Marlowe chose to wind between their ankles, demanding breakfast with the imperious yowl of a cat who'd been neglected for nearly eight hours.
Crash stepped back. The tension broke.
"There's cat food in the cabinet," he said, turning away. "Maverick dropped supplies last night."
Grace fed Marlowe and made herself eat something from the provisions—granola bars and fruit and bottled water, nothing that required cooking or attracted attention.
The day passed slowly. Crash moved through the safehouse like he couldn't stop moving, checking windows, pacing the perimeter, his restless energy filling the small space until Grace felt jumpy just watching him.
By afternoon, she couldn't take the silence anymore.
"Tell me something," she said. "Anything. I'm going crazy in here."
He stopped pacing and looked at her. "What do you want to know?"
"Why Crash?"
That surprised him. She could tell by the way his expression flickered—brief uncertainty before the mask slid back into place.
"It's what they called me in the Corps." He moved to the window, checking the street through the blinds. "I was first through the door on every breach. Too fast, according to my CO. Too aggressive. Like I couldn't wait to get into the fight."
"Was he right?"
"Yeah." No hesitation. No apology. "Combat made sense to me. Clear mission, clear targets, clear objectives. You knew who the enemy was and what you had to do about it. Everything else was just..." He trailed off, his shoulders tightening. "Noise."
Grace watched him struggle with words, this man who spoke through action rather than explanation. Something in her chest ached for the loneliness underneath all that intensity.
"And now?"
"Now I'm trying to figure out how to live in a world that doesn't require what I'm good at.
" He turned to face her, and for the first time she saw something vulnerable beneath the controlled violence.
"The club helps. Brotherhood. Structure.
Missions that matter. But peacetime still feels like drowning. "
She understood that more than she wanted to admit. The suffocating weight of ordinary days when you were built for something more. The desperate search for purpose in a world that didn't seem to need what you had to offer.
"My mother was sick for two years before she died," Grace said quietly. "I came home to help, and I told myself it was temporary. That I'd go back to my life in Chicago once she recovered."
Crash had gone still, watching her with an attention that felt almost physical.
"She didn't recover. And by the time I accepted that, the bookstore had become my life instead of hers.
" Grace wrapped her hands around her coffee mug, long since cold.
"After the funeral, everyone expected me to sell.
The building was worth more than the business. It would have been the smart move."
"But you stayed."
"I stayed because walking away felt like letting her die twice." The words came out rough, grief she'd learned to live beside rather than overcome. "That bookstore is the only place where I still feel close to her. The only place where the missing doesn't swallow me whole."
Silence stretched between them. Then Crash crossed the small living room and sat down beside her on the couch—close enough that his knee brushed hers, close enough that she could feel the heat of him even through their clothes.
"I get it," he said simply. "Needing something to hold onto."
"Is that what the club is? Something to hold onto?"
"The club is brothers who've seen the same darkness I have.
Men who understand that some of us don't fit in the world anymore, so we made our own.
" He was looking at her now with something almost like recognition—like she was a code he'd finally cracked.
"But it's not enough. Hasn't been for a while.
I kept looking for something that would make the restlessness stop. "
"Did you find it?"
The question hung in the air between them. Crash didn't answer immediately, but his gaze dropped to her mouth for just a heartbeat before returning to her eyes.
"Maybe."
Grace's pulse kicked up. She should deflect. Change the subject. Remind both of them that she was a job and he was her protection and anything else was a complication neither of them needed.
Instead, she held his gaze and let the moment stretch.
The safehouse felt smaller suddenly. Warmer. The foot of space between them on the couch might as well have been an inch.
"This is probably a bad idea," she said quietly.
"Probably." He didn't move away. "You want me to stop looking at you like that?"
"I didn't say that."
Something shifted in his expression—heat, barely contained. His hand came up to brush a strand of hair from her face, his fingers rough against her cheek. The touch burned.
"We should focus on Walsh," he said, his voice dropping low. "On keeping you safe."
"We should." She didn't pull away from his hand. "But you're not very good at stillness, and I'm not very good at distance."
That surprised a breath of laughter out of him—short and almost rusty, like he wasn't used to the sound.
"Fair point."
They sat like that for a long moment, balanced on the edge of something neither of them was ready to name. Then Crash's phone buzzed, shattering the tension like glass.
He pulled back to check it, his expression going flat and focused.
"Maverick. Walsh's people are mobilizing." He was on his feet instantly, all that restless energy snapping into lethal purpose. "Something's happening tonight."
Grace stood too, her heart pounding for an entirely different reason now. "What do we do?"
"We get ready." He checked the window again, every line of his body taut with readiness. "And when they come for you, they find out what it costs to threaten something that's mine."
Something that's mine.
Grace should have bristled at the possessive language. Should have reminded him that she didn't belong to anyone, that she'd survived this long by depending on herself.
Instead, she felt something warm bloom in her chest—the dangerous comfort of being claimed by a man who would burn down the world to keep her safe.
She'd spent two days watching him move through the safehouse like a caged predator, all that violent energy looking for release. Two days learning the shape of his loneliness, recognizing it as a mirror of her own.
By Monday night, she'd stopped seeing threat in his intensity.
She'd started seeing someone who didn't know how to exist without purpose.
Just like her.