Chapter Eight
Jade
Each morning I woke beside Kane, a voice inside me whispered someone would steal this away. The world had snatched so much from me already. Mom. My brother. Every apartment I’d called home. Any peace I’d managed to find.
And now Kane.
Not yet, I answered silently. Not while I could fight.
His arm draped warm and heavy across my waist. My back nestled against his chest, his breath warming the nape of my neck. Morning silence filled the house. The compound beyond our walls remained hushed too, though I sensed people moving around -- their sounds muffled by distance and walls.
For a full minute I remained still, soaking in the sensation.
I felt his heartbeat against my spine while he breathed, slow and deep. When he shifted, his stubble scratched my shoulder as he buried his face in my hair.
His fingers twitched against my stomach before a small jerk ran through his body. His breath caught. The arm holding me tightened around my waist.
“No,” he muttered, sleep roughening his voice. “Not her. You want somebody, you take me.”
My stomach clenched.
“Kane,” I said softly. “Hey. It’s me.”
He jerked again. His hand flexed against my skin like he braced for a hit. I rolled in his hold so I could see his face.
His eyes stayed shut. Jaw clenched hard, teeth grinding. A vein throbbed at his temple.
“Kane.” I laid my hand against his cheek. “Wake up for me.”
His lashes fluttered. The tightness in his mouth eased a fraction. “Jade?” he rasped.
“Yeah.” I stroked my thumb along his cheekbone. “You were dreaming.”
He sucked in a breath, then let it out on a curse. “Fuck.”
“Nightmare?” I asked.
“Old shit,” he said. He shifted away as though worried about crushing me, then stopped when I followed and stayed pressed to him. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” I said. “I talk in my sleep too. After double shifts, I’ve mumbled some truly weird nonsense.”
Kane huffed a laugh. His hand moved from my waist to the small of my back, fingers spreading across my skin in a gesture of reassurance.
“What happened?” I asked quietly. “Want to tell me or would you prefer to shove everything back in the box?”
Kane opened his eyes and studied me. Brown, warm, still gritty from sleep. Nobody had ever watched me with such trust -- more faith than in the morning light streaming through our window.
“Nothing useful,” he said finally. “Just greatest hits. Wrong doors. Wrong nights. Wrong people taking bullets because I made a call.”
“Club stuff?” I asked.
Kane’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “Some club. Some military. My brain loves to mash everything together so I wake up sweating and pissed off at ghosts I can’t punch.”
“Military,” I repeated. He never talked about his service beyond occasional references.
“Yeah.” His eyes darkened. “Ancient history now.”
My fingers traced his jaw. “Tell me or don’t tell me. Your choice.”
He studied me for another beat, like he weighed something. Then his shoulders dropped a little.
“Sometimes I dream I’m back there,” he said.
“Sand. Heat. Radio screaming. Somebody yelling in my ear. I always see faces I don’t remember in the daytime.
Just blurs. Men I probably knew better than my own family for a while.
In the dream they’re always dying. And I’m never fast enough.
Never smart enough. Never enough, period. ”
My chest ached. “I don’t see you as the type to stand by and not do anything. I’d imagine you did what you felt was right at the time.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Doesn’t matter. They still died.”
“You came home,” I said. “You found this place. You built a life. You’re here now. That counts too.”
He watched me with a question in his eyes, weighing whether to believe my words.
“I hate your nightmares,” I said.
“Yeah, me too,” he replied dryly.
I shifted closer and pressed my forehead against his. “Next time one tries to drown you, I’ll drag you back. You’ve done the same for me.”
His hand slid up to cup the back of my neck. “Deal.”
We lay together for several minutes, breathing the same air while gray morning light crept around the edges of the curtain. For once I felt no rush to move. No alarm blared. No dread of a knock from a man who smelled of cologne and gun oil haunted me.
“I should get up,” I said eventually. “Stay here too long and I’ll fall asleep again. Your people might think I’ve become a bed tumor.”
“My people already think I went soft,” he said. “Until you, I never cared about anything other than earning a patch.”
Though he spoke the words as a joke, pride gleamed underneath.
“I’ll hurry,” I promised. “You can have the bathroom after I use all the hot water.”
He groaned. “So this is my life now.”
“Yep,” I said. “Welcome to couplehood.”
The word slipped out before I could stop it. I felt my face heat.
Kane’s lips curved slow. “Couple, huh?”
“The club said I was yours. I figured that meant we were a couple. Besides, we’ve slept together,” I said. “Pretty sure we passed whatever line ‘couple’ is.”
“Good,” he said. “I like the sound of that.”
He kissed me once, slow and soft, then smacked my ass lightly as I crawled out of bed. “Go. Before I decide to strip you down and have you screaming my name for the next hour or two.”
Heat flooded me in a different way. “Shower,” I managed.
He grinned. “Shower.”
I shut the bathroom door behind me and leaned against it for a second, breathing.
Everyone claimed falling in love meant butterflies. Giddy excitement, flowers, and nerves. For me, love resembled standing on a cliff with wind whipping my hair, while I decided whether to jump or cling to safety forever.
I’d already jumped when I knocked on Kane’s door.
The fall continued.
Coffee and bacon smells embraced me when we entered the clubhouse together.
The ladies were busy, each doing their own thing.
The kids were in the corner at a low table, coloring.
Casey’s daughter had dragged a toy truck into the mix and was making it drive over crayons.
Solena’s little girl lined markers up in size order.
Voices overlapped. Men came and went, grabbing plates, dropping off empty ones, trading jokes. Life moved around me. I stood in the doorway for a second and let myself soak in the normal.
“Falcon, your face looks less murdery today,” Casey said. “We sleeping better?”
“I always sleep better when I have an armful of trouble,” he said, nodding toward me.
My cheeks heated. “Rude.”
“Accurate,” Marci said. “Coffee’s ready. Food’s almost done. Sit.”
I moved toward the pot, but Kane beat me to it. “Sit,” he echoed. “I got it.”
So I sat at the corner of the big, battered table. The wood bore scars from years of use: knife marks, carved initials, water rings. Someone had burned a little lightning bolt into the edge. It felt solid under my fingers.
Kane slid a mug in front of me, then sat beside me. Our knees touched. He didn’t move his away. Neither did I.
Marci brought plates. Scrambled eggs, bacon, toast. My stomach rumbled loudly at the sight.
“Eat,” she said. “You burned through a lot yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” I asked. “You mean the field trip where a man from a cartel tailed us and offered a trade for my life?”
She winced. “Hearing you say ‘cartel’ and ‘trade for my life’ makes breakfast seem pretty weak. Eat anyway. I’ve got extra cookies coming later.”
I shoveled a bite of eggs into my mouth, then another. My fork moved almost without my control, scraping the plate as though I hadn’t eaten a proper meal in days. Well, maybe I hadn’t.
“Spade hiding in his cave?” Kane asked.
Solena didn’t look up from her receipts. “The clubhouse office. He wanted Jade the minute she woke up. I told him humans need sleep.”
“Sorry,” I said automatically.
“Stop apologizing for basic needs,” she said. “You’re making me tired.”
I drank coffee and tried not to grin. “What does Spade need?” I asked.
“He wants you to look at more of Jason’s notes,” Kane explained. “Something about initials and dates. He said your brother had his own weird shorthand, and he’d rather not misinterpret.”
I wiped my mouth and chased the last bite of bacon with coffee. “Okay. I can do that.”
“You sure?” Kane asked.
“If I can help, I want to try.”
He found my thigh under the table, fingers warm, grip gentle. “We’re not judging your worth on how much you can give us. Just so you know.”
“I know. Let me have this anyway.”
His mouth twitched. “Bossy.”
“You like me bossy,” I said.
He didn’t argue.
* * *
I entered Spade’s office and found myself staring at a digital conspiracy board come to life.
Three monitors glowed on the desk, each full of spreadsheets, maps, and scanned pages.
Colored tabs and sticky notes covered the edge of the screen.
A whiteboard on the wall behind him held names and arrows. Some I recognized. Some I did not.
He sat hunched in his chair, hair tied back, dark circles under his eyes. A half-empty energy drink can sat beside the keyboard. Another, crushed, lay on the floor.
“You’re going to rattle apart if you keep drinking those,” I said.
“Results first, heart attacks later,” he replied. “Come in. Sit. Kane, shut the door.”
We did.
He spun one of the screens toward me. A folder labeled “JF -- Notes” sat open. Inside, scanned pages in Jason’s handwriting filled the screen. Dates at the top. Lists underneath. Abbreviations. Little symbols. Arrows.
My chest tightened. “What do you need?”
“He used some marks I can’t quite nail down,” Spade said. “See this?”
He zoomed in on the corner of a page. A small X sat next to a few names. Some had a circle around the X. Some did not.
“He always did that in his notebooks,” I said. “He never sat down and told me what everything meant, but based on things I heard when he was on the phone, I think the X meant he didn’t trust someone.”
“What about the circle?” Spade asked.
“Extra don’t trust,” I said. “Like… danger. Or ‘this guy’s bad news.’ But again, I’m guessing.”