Chapter 1 #2
The man in the hoodie’s jaw flexes, but he grabs the flashlight and angles the weak beam over the wound.
Deke.
I do not mean to keep the name. My brain keeps it anyway.
I clean around the wound with the antiseptic wipes. I pack it as best I can. I keep pressure where pressure needs to stay. I ask questions they barely answer and bark instructions they follow because blood scares men who think guns make them gods.
The whole time, I know the truth.
This man may live for an hour. He may live until morning. He may bleed internally while they convince themselves I fixed him because the bandage looks neat.
I can slow the bleeding.
I can help.
I cannot perform miracles on a dirty kitchen table in the woods.
“There,” I say finally, taping the last bandage into place. My hands are sticky. My scrub top is ruined. Sweat trickles between my shoulder blades. “He’s stable for the moment, but that can change fast. He needs real medical care.”
Deke lowers the flashlight and drops it onto the table with a dull thud.
Silence spreads through the cabin.
I look up.
Deke and the gunman are staring at each other.
A conversation passes between them without words, and my stomach turns to ice.
The wounded man’s eyes are closed. His breathing is shallow but steady.
Deke rubs his jaw. “She saw us.”
The gunman glances at me. “Yeah.”
My chest tightens.
“I won’t say anything,” I whisper.
Deke’s gaze moves over my face like he’s already done deciding what I’m worth. “You know my name.”
I wish I could rip it out of my own head.
“I don’t,” I lie.
His mouth curves.
I move before he does.
My hand closes around the flashlight.
I swing it hard.
It cracks against the gunman’s wrist. He shouts, and his gun hits the floor, skidding under the table.
I run.
Porch boards thunder under my sneakers. Cold air slaps my face. The woods beyond the cabin are dark, but dark is better than the men behind me.
“Get her!” Deke roars.
Behind me, someone scrambles across the cabin floor.
A shot cracks through the night.
Bark explodes from a tree beside me.
I stumble with a scream caught in my throat.
Then an engine tears through the dark.
A headlight cuts between the trees, blinding and sudden. Gravel spits as a motorcycle swings into the clearing, and the man who gets off it steals every thought from my head.
He is huge.
Black leather. Broad shoulders. Tattooed arms. Brown hair shoved back from a hard, beautiful face.
There is blood on my scrubs, a gun behind me, death close enough to touch, and my ruined brain still notices his mouth.
Then his eyes find mine.
Green.
Fierce.
Focused on me like nothing else in the world matters.
Deke comes out of the cabin with the gun in his hand and raises it again.
The biker moves without hesitation, putting his body between mine and the bullet.
The shot hits his shoulder.
His body jerks, and something tears open inside my chest.
“No!”
He barely looks at the wound. His gaze stays on Deke, cold and steady.
“You shot at her,” he says.
Then he hits him.
Deke drops hard, and the gun slides loose across the gravel.
The other man lunges from the cabin, and the biker turns, catches him, and drives him into the porch rail. Wood cracks. One more hit, fast and brutal, and the man goes down too.
The clearing falls silent.
The biker kicks the gun under the SUV, then turns to me.
All that violence drains from his face the second he sees me shaking.
“You hurt, sweetheart?”
Sweetheart.
My knees almost give.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
His gaze cuts to the cabin. “Anyone else inside?”
I nod, swallowing hard. “One man. Gunshot wound. I'm a nurse. I patched him as best I could, but he needs a hospital.”
Something cold moves through his eyes. “You did good.”
He steps toward me, and I should move back.
I don’t.
He is bleeding from the shoulder, his knuckles already split, his leather cut hanging open over a chest built like a wall, and all I can think is that he put himself between me and death like it was the easiest choice he ever made.
His hand comes up, slow enough for me to see it.
Two fingers touch my wrist.
Careful.
Barely there.
“Sweetheart,” he says, voice rough enough to scrape. “Look at me.”
I do.
Those green eyes lock on mine, and the panic inside me loses its teeth.
“I’ve got you,” he says. “Nobody touches you now.”
I want to believe him so badly it hurts.
“I need my bag,” I say. “It’s in the SUV. My phone is in there.”
His jaw tightens, but his touch stays gentle. “Stay close.”
I do.
He keeps himself between me and the men on the ground as we cross the clearing.
I grab my tote from the SUV and clutch it to my chest.
The biker takes it carefully, like he knows it matters because it is mine.
“Still yours,” he says. “I’m just putting it somewhere safe.”
I let go.
He tucks it into a compartment on his bike, then turns back to me.
“What’s your name?”
“Reina.”
His gaze holds mine.
“Reina,” he repeats, and my name sounds different in his mouth. Softer. Stronger. Like he’s already made it important.
“I’m Ace.”
Of course he is.
Of course the man who comes out of the dark, takes a bullet for me, and looks at me like I’m something worth bleeding for is named Ace.
He climbs onto the bike and reaches for me.
“Come here, Reina.”
I climb on behind him, clumsy from shaking, and his hand catches my thigh for one steady second before he lets go.
“Arms around me,” he says.
My arms slide around his waist.
He goes still, just long enough for me to feel it.
Then his hand covers mine and pulls me in tighter.
“Good. Like that.”
I press my cheek to his back.
He is warm under the leather. Solid beneath my arms. Real in a way nothing else feels right now.
The motorcycle surges forward, carrying me away from the cabin and everything waiting inside it.
I hold on to Ace, and some quiet, shaken part of me believes he will not let me fall.