Chapter 2
GRIM
Iwas riding to clear my head.
The desert at night is the only place that's quiet enough.
No voices, no demands, no brothers needing something handled.
Just the road and the dark and the hum of the engine drowning out everything else.
Out here, there's nothing but empty space and stars and the kind of silence that lets you forget, just for a little while, all the things you've done.
I do this sometimes. When the noise inside gets too loud. When I need to remember what silence feels like. When the walls of the clubhouse start pressing in and I can't breathe without tasting blood and gunpowder and regret.
Tonight was one of those nights.
Then I saw her.
A ghost in white, crouched at the edge of the road. Wedding dress torn to hell, the fabric so dirty it was barely recognizable as white anymore. She was hunched over, knees in the dirt, ruined silk pooling around her, shoulders shaking with sobs she was trying to muffle with her hands.
Every instinct said keep driving.
Not my problem. Not my business. I don't do rescue missions.
I don't do damsels in distress. I'm the guy they send when someone needs to bleed, not the guy who stops for strangers on desert roads.
Fifteen years I've been building a reputation that keeps people away, keeps them from getting close, keeps me from having to give a shit about anyone outside the club.
Keep driving. That's what I should do.
I slowed the bike.
She heard the engine. Lifted her head as I approached, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
Then she lifted her head.
Dark eyes. Full mouth. A face that didn't belong out here in the dust and dark.
Even wrecked—dress destroyed, makeup smeared with tears, hair falling out of whatever fancy style it had been pinned into—she was beautiful.
Not the polished kind of beautiful you see on the Strip, all artifice and effort. Something deeper. Something real.
And she met my eyes without flinching.
I know what I look like. I know what people see when they look at me—six-four, two-forty, covered in ink and wrapped in leather, with a face that's never learned how to smile. I'm built like a nightmare. I move like a threat. Women like her cross the street when they see me coming.
She didn't cross the street.
She looked at me like I might be salvation instead of a threat. Like maybe, just maybe, I was the answer to whatever prayer she'd been sobbing into her hands.
Something hit me square in the chest. Something I didn't recognize. Something I didn't have a name for.
I should have kept driving.
I didn't.
"Who's chasing you?"
The question came out rougher than I intended. She flinched, and I saw her weigh her options—lie, run, scream. Watched her realize she didn't have any good ones.
Then she told me. Her fiancé. Something she overheard. The way she said it—broken, bitter, terrified—told me more than the words themselves.
She didn't elaborate. Didn't explain what she'd overheard or who her fiancé really was.
But she didn't need to. I've been in this world long enough to read between the lines.
A woman in a wedding dress, running through the desert, terrified of whoever's behind her—that's not a woman who discovered her groom was cheating.
That's a woman who stumbled onto something dangerous.
I should have asked more questions. Should have gotten details, assessed the threat, figured out if helping her was going to bring heat down on the club.
Instead, I shrugged off my cut, pulled my hoodie over my head, and crossed to her in three strides. Draped it over her shoulders before she could protest. She was shivering—the desert gets cold after sundown, and that dress wasn't covering much.
My hands brushed her arms as I tugged the fabric into place, and something sparked between us. Electric. Immediate. Her breath caught. Our eyes met in the fading light.
I stepped back. Put distance between us. Pulled my cut back on over just my t-shirt, the night air biting at my arms.
"Get on the bike."
She didn't argue. Didn't ask where we were going. Just climbed on behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist like she'd been doing it her whole life.
The ride to the clubhouse was twenty minutes.
She didn't talk. Just held on, her body pressed against my back, her grip tightening every time I took a turn.
I could feel her shivering even through the hoodie.
Could feel the press of her breasts against my spine, the warmth of her thighs bracketing mine.
I kept my eyes on the road. Tried not to think about how right she felt behind me.
Didn't work.
The clubhouse looms out of the dark like a fortress—concrete and steel, no windows on the ground floor, built to keep people out and secrets in. I pull into the lot and cut the engine. The sudden silence feels heavy. Loaded.
She doesn't move right away. Just sits there, arms still around me, like she's not sure what happens next. Like maybe she's afraid to let go.
"We're here," I say.
She lets go slowly. Reluctantly. Climbs off the bike on legs that aren't quite steady, and I watch her take in the building. The row of bikes parked outside. The prospect smoking by the door who's trying very hard not to stare. The general air of this is not a place for someone like you.
I get off the bike and head for the door without looking back. Her heels click on the concrete behind me. Those ridiculous, ruined, delicate heels that have no business being anywhere near this place.
Inside, the main room is half-full. Knox is behind the bar, cleaning glasses with the focused intensity he brings to everything.
Looks up when the door opens, and his hands go still.
Wolf and a couple others are playing cards in the corner—at least they were, until they saw what walked in behind me.
Vice is sprawled on one of the couches, beer in hand, and his eyebrows climb so high they nearly hit his hairline.
Every head turns.
Every head stays turned.
A woman. In a torn wedding dress. Following me into the clubhouse like a stray I picked up on the side of the road. Which, I guess, is exactly what happened.
Silence. The kind that's thick with questions no one's going to ask out loud.
I don't explain. Don't justify. Just put my hand on the small of her back—light, barely touching, but I feel the warmth of her through the thin silk—and steer her toward the hallway.
"She's staying here."
Vice opens his mouth. I give him a look that could curdle milk. He closes it again.
Knox and Wolf exchange a glance. The prospect by the door is staring like he's never seen a woman before. Nobody says a word.
They know better.
The room I take her to is one of the empty ones at the end of the hall. Nothing fancy—a bed, a dresser, a door that locks from the inside. Clean sheets, at least. I make sure of that.
She stands in the doorway, arms wrapped around herself, taking it in.
My hoodie hangs past her hips. The ruined dress trails beneath it like a ghost of whoever she was supposed to be tonight.
There's dirt on her cheek and dried tear tracks cutting through her makeup and she looks exhausted, wrecked, like she's been running on fumes and sheer will for hours.
She's still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
"Wait here."
I find clothes in my room—a t-shirt that will hang to her knees, sweatpants with a drawstring she can cinch tight. Grab the first aid kit from the bathroom. When I come back, she hasn't moved from the doorway. Still standing there like she's waiting for permission.
"Sit." I nod toward the bed. "Let me see your feet."
She hesitates. Something flickers across her face—uncertainty, vulnerability, the realization that she's about to let a stranger touch her. Then she moves to the bed, lowering herself onto the edge like she's not entirely sure it won't swallow her whole.
I crouch down in front of her. Reach for one of those stupid heels.
Her feet are a mess. Worse than I expected. Blisters burst and bleeding, skin rubbed raw, angry red welts where the delicate straps cut in and didn't let go. She walked miles like this. Through the desert. In the dark. Running from something that scared her more than the pain.
I've seen men handle knife wounds with more complaining.
She flinches when I touch her but doesn't pull away. Doesn't cry. Just watches me with those dark eyes as I work—cleaning the wounds, dabbing antiseptic on the worst spots, wrapping bandages around battered feet with hands that shouldn't be capable of this kind of care.
My hands are huge next to hers. Scarred knuckles, tattooed fingers, calluses from years of things she doesn't want to know about. They look brutal. Wrong. Too rough for work this delicate. I've broken bones with these hands. Ended lives. Done things that would make her run screaming if she knew.
But right now, I'm gentle. So gentle it almost hurts. Like she's something precious that might shatter if I press too hard.
"Thank you," she says quietly. Her voice is softer than I expected. Warm, even through the exhaustion. "You didn't have to stop."
I don't respond. Don't know what to say to that. Keep working on her feet instead.
"I'm Fleur, by the way."
That makes me glance up. She catches the full impact of my face—hard jaw, grey eyes, the permanent scowl that keeps people at arm's length. Most people look away when I meet their eyes. Flinch. Find somewhere else to be.
She holds my gaze like it's nothing.
"Grim."
Something shifts in her expression. Lightens, almost. Like she's considering smiling even though nothing about this situation is funny. "That's not a real name."
"It's real enough."
"Well, Grim." She winces as I dab antiseptic on a particularly raw spot, her fingers curling into the sheets, but her eyes never leave my face. "Thank you. For being kind."
Kind.
The word lands wrong. Sits in my chest like a stone I don't know what to do with.
I'm not kind. I'm the opposite of kind. I'm the guy they call when kindness isn't an option, when violence is the only language left to speak.
Fifteen years I've been the club's enforcer.
Fifteen years of blood and broken bones and making problems disappear.
No one has ever looked at me and seen kind.
I finish bandaging her feet in silence. When I'm done, my fingers brush her ankle—accident, instinct, I don't know—and something passes between us. A charge. Electric and immediate, racing up my arm and settling somewhere in my chest.
She feels it too. I see it in the way her breath catches. The way her lips part. The way her eyes go wide and dark with something that isn't fear.
I pull back. Stand up. Put distance between us before I do something I can't take back.
"Clothes are on the dresser. Door locks from the inside." My voice comes out rough. Wrecked. "Get some sleep."
I leave before I can change my mind.
Saint finds me in the hallway ten minutes later.
He doesn't demand an explanation. That's not his style. He just appears out of the shadows like he always does and leans against the wall, arms crossed, watching me with those pale grey eyes that have seen everything I've done and never flinched.
"Is she okay?"
"Yeah."
"You going to tell me what this is about?"
I think about the wedding dress. The terror in her voice when she talked about her fiancé. The way she said he's not who I thought he was like she still couldn't believe it herself.
"When I know more."
Saint considers me for a long moment. Weighing it.
He's the president—he has every right to demand answers, to know why I brought a stranger into the clubhouse without warning.
But we've known each other fifteen years.
Bled together. Buried bodies together. Trust like that doesn't need explanations.
"Let me know," he says.
Then he walks away, and I'm alone in the hallway with nothing but the closed door and the silence and the scent of her still clinging to my skin.
I don't sleep that night.
I lie in my room, staring at the ceiling, thinking about dark eyes and a smile that almost happened and the way she called me kind like she actually believed it.
No one calls me kind. No one looks at me and sees anything but what I am—the threat, the enforcer, the monster they send when they need something ugly done. That's the point. That's what I've built. A wall so high and so thick that no one can get close enough to matter.
She looked at me like I might be safe.
I get up at 2 AM. Tell myself I'm just restless. Just checking the perimeter. Walk down the hallway on silent feet and pause outside her door.
Silence. She's asleep. Or at least she's quiet.
I go back to my room. Lie down. Stare at the ceiling some more.
At 4 AM, I do it again. Same hallway. Same door. Same pathetic excuse about checking on things.
I don't do this. I don't get attached. I don't lie awake thinking about women I just met, wondering what her laugh sounds like, wondering what it would take to make that almost-smile turn into a real one.
But here I am.
I'm in trouble. The kind of trouble I haven't allowed myself in fifteen years. The kind that gets people killed.
And God help me, I don't want to walk away.