Chapter 5
SIENNA
The desert before sunrise felt like the world holding its breath.
Cold slipped under my thin T-shirt and raised goose bumps along my arms, sharp enough to wake me faster than coffee.
The firepit had burned down to black ash and stubborn orange embers, the smell of smoke hanging low over the yard, mixing with dust, dry sage, and the faint ghost of spilled tequila.
Above me, the sky stretched wide and bruised, deep navy bleeding into gray at the edges while the first pale light cut along the mountains like a blade.
Everything was still.
Still enough to leave.
I moved quietly through the Airbnb with my boots in one hand and my overnight bag over my shoulder.
The house slept around me, all soft breathing behind closed doors, settled beams, and that expensive-rental silence that made every floorboard sound accusatory.
Nobody stirred. No Regan appearing in the hallway with a mug and a prophecy.
No Amber wrapped in a blanket asking where I thought I was going.
No Savannah twirling my keys like she had legal custody over my bad decisions.
Good.
Bandit, unfortunately, had not agreed to participate in stealth operations. The second I crouched beside his crate, he opened one green eye and hissed at me like I’d interrupted an ancient curse.
I glared back. “Don’t start.”
He started.
By the time I got him outside, he had clawed my wrist through the crate door and screamed loud enough to notify several counties. I shoved the crate into the passenger seat, breathing hard, hair falling in my face, dignity somewhere in the gravel behind me.
“Traitor,” I told him.
He answered with a furious yowl.
My truck looked worse in daylight. Rust along the wheel wells.
One headlight fogged over. Dust caked thick across the windshield.
The blue tarps tied over my belongings had loosened at one corner, flapping sadly in the cold wind like even my possessions were trying to escape.
My whole new life sat packed under rope and plastic in the bed of a truck that had begun looking less like transportation and more like a rolling metaphor.
Sad as hell.
Fitting.
I tossed my bag into the cab, climbed in, and put the key in the ignition. For one optimistic second, I pictured a clean getaway. Not dramatic. Not rude. Just gone before anyone woke up and decided to pity me with eggs, sisterhood, or another background check.
I turned the key.
The engine coughed, clicked, and died.
I sat there, hand still on the key.
Bandit let out a long, judgmental yowl.
“Shut up.”
I tried again. Pumped the gas. Turned the key. The engine dragged, fought, almost caught, then gave up with the mechanical equivalent of a death rattle. My hands tightened around the wheel.
No.
Not here. Not now.
I tried again.
Nothing.
A knock hit my window.
I jumped hard enough to bang my knee against the steering column, which was undignified and painful, my two least favorite combinations. I whipped my head toward the glass and there he was.
Mason.
Leaning down beside my door with one forearm braced against the frame, dark green eyes cutting through the half-fogged window like he’d been built specifically to ruin quiet exits.
His hair was rough from sleep, boots unlaced, black Henley stretched across shoulders that had no business existing before sunrise. He looked warm. Solid. Annoying.
I rolled the window down halfway. “What?”
His gaze slid over the truck, then me, then the overnight bag, the loaded cat, and the engine that had very clearly chosen death over cooperation. His mouth twitched.
“Thought you were harmless.”
Heat climbed my neck. “I’m leaving.”
He glanced toward the horizon, where the sun had barely begun touching the desert. “Before sunrise.”
“So?”
His eyes came back to mine. “Looks like running.”
I shoved the door open and climbed out, forcing him to step back. The cold slapped harder now that I wasn’t inside the cab. My hair was loose from sleep, tangled from the blanket and the wind, falling over one shoulder in a way I could feel before I saw his gaze drop there for half a beat.
Then to my mouth.
Then away.
Fast. Too fast.
Still caught it.
Good.
“You spying on me?” I asked.
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“That your excuse for being creepy?”
“That your excuse for ghosting?”
I froze.
His jaw tightened like the word had come out before he’d decided whether to use it. “Regan brought you in. Fed you. Gave you a bed.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You stayed.”
I stepped closer, which was stupid because now I could smell him. Soap and cold air first. Then leather, engine grease, and something unmistakably male underneath it all. The combination hit low in my stomach with humiliating speed.
I hated that.
“I heard you,” I said.
That landed. His face changed, not into guilt exactly, and not surprise. Recognition. The side-door conversation. The risk. The background check. The ugly little reminder that I had mistaken someone else’s warmth for safety.
He knew.
His eyes narrowed. “Then you know why.”
I folded my arms. “Because I’m suspicious?”
“Because I don’t know you.”
I laughed once, sharp enough to hurt my own throat. “And that justifies digging through my life?”
His voice dropped. “It justifies protecting my people.”
That pissed me off faster than coffee on an empty stomach. “Your people?” I pointed toward the house. “I’m not robbing anybody.”
“Didn’t say you were.”
“You implied it.”
His gaze moved to my packed truck, then back to me. “You’re proving my point.”
“I’m leaving because I don’t like feeling unwanted.”
His eyes stayed on mine, hard and steady. Nobody had eyes that green. It was irritating on principle. Like rainwater over stone. Like something alive in the desert that had no right surviving there.
Unfair.
He stepped closer. Not enough to touch. Enough to feel. The cold between us seemed to thin until all I noticed was the heat of him and the steady weight of his attention.
“You’re dramatic,” he said.
I barked out a laugh. “You’re an asshole.”
His mouth almost moved. Almost.
Bandit screamed from the truck.
Mason glanced over. “Cat agrees.”
I shoved past him toward the hood. “Move.”
He didn’t. “Truck’s dead.”
“It’s tired.”
“It’s dead tired.”
I popped the hood, and a pale curl of steam rose into the morning.
Mason leaned over beside me, shoulder brushing mine, and that was a mistake.
Not his. Mine. The heat coming off him rolled through the cold air, clean skin and soap and something rougher underneath.
It made me hyperaware of every point where we weren’t touching, which seemed scientifically unnecessary and personally offensive.
He studied the engine in silence for longer than I liked.
“You drove this all the way here?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He looked at me. “That’s reckless.”
“It worked.”
“Until now.”
I crossed my arms. “Can you fix it?”
He looked at me long enough to make me wish I hadn’t asked. His face was unreadable in that infuriating biker way, all scar, stubble, and emotional lockdown.
Then he said, “Probably.”
The word sat there between us, heavy and annoying, because now I needed him.
And he knew it.
That was the worst part.
I lifted my chin. “What’s it cost?”
One dark brow rose. “You charging?”
His gaze dropped to my mouth again, slower this time, intentional enough to heat the air between us. When it came back up, there was something sharper there. Something hotter.
“Depends.”
My pulse kicked. Not fear. Not exactly. More like my body had received information from a department I had specifically requested remain closed.
I took a step back.
Space.
Needed it.
Bandit hissed again, apparently serving as my externalized common sense.
Mason shut the hood. “You’ve got twenty minutes before Regan wakes up and realizes you’re trying to sneak out.”
“I wasn’t sneaking.”
He looked at the packed truck, the cat, the dawn, then me.
“Right.”
The desert wind kicked up, bending the cactus near the fence and carrying dust, cold, and the mineral scent of morning.
Behind Mason, the sun cracked over the mountains.
Gold caught the auburn in his hair, the scar near his jaw, the hard line of his cheek.
It made him look rougher. Meaner. Beautiful in the dangerous, deeply inconvenient kind of way.
I hated that too.
Mason was under my hood for seven minutes before he started swearing.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just low, steady, and creative enough that even Bandit stopped screaming long enough to listen.
I sat behind the wheel with my arms crossed, freezing my ass off in the driver’s seat while the desert slowly turned gold around us.
“Pump it twice,” Mason called.
I pressed the gas pedal twice.
“Again.”
I did.
“Now turn it.”
I turned the key. The engine coughed, caught, shuddered with the effort of a Victorian child, then died like it had given everything it had and wanted a medal.
Bandit yowled.
“Same,” I muttered.
Mason straightened from under the hood, and I tried very hard not to notice the way he looked with his hands black with grease, forearms flexing as he braced them against the front of my truck.
Morning light hit the tattoos running down his skin and made them look darker, sharper, like they belonged there more than his actual skin did.
He looked too comfortable dirty.
That was annoying.
“What?” I asked.
His eyes lifted to mine. “This thing’s a miracle.”
I got out of the truck and slammed the door harder than necessary. “Don’t say that like an insult.”
“It is an insult.”
“She got me here.”
“She almost got you killed.”
“She has character.”
“She has a coolant leak, a bad belt, a weak battery, one tire giving up on life, and something knocking in the engine that sounds expensive.”
I stared at him.
He stared back.
I hated that he didn’t blink first.
“So what I’m hearing,” I said, “is she’s fixable.”