Chapter 8 – Ronan
I don’t move right away. Her forehead is still against mine, the valley spread out below us, my hands on her waist. I’m in no hurry to deal with what just happened—an unexpected thought in itself.
I kissed her. I did that.
I pull back just enough to see her properly. Her eyes are open, dark and steady, not scared, not performing—just present, like she chose this exact moment.
That look is going to cost me something.
"We should head down," I say. My voice comes out even. I'm proud of that.
She nods. No argument, no attempt to pull something out of the moment I'm not ready to give.
She puts the helmet on herself.
The ride down is quiet in the way that matters.
Not empty, charged. Every switchback amplified by her behind me, arms around my waist, chest against my back. The mountain road unreels beneath the tires and I keep my eyes on the next curve and try not to think about the fact that I can feel her breathing.
I pull up outside her house on Cedar Street at quarter past eight.
She slides off. Hands me the helmet. Stands in the porch light with her wind-wrecked hair and that steady gaze and doesn't say anything for a moment.
"Tonight—" she starts.
My phone goes.
Judge's name on the screen. She reads my face, takes a step back. Giving me room without being asked.
"Talk to me," I say.
"Blackridge MC." Judge's voice is clipped. Church tone, means business, no room for questions. "Stone followed one of them into Nell's Diner an hour ago. He was asking about the businesses on Main Street. Asked specifically about Ridgeline Clinic." A pause. "By name."
I go still.
"Stone's certain?"
"Stone doesn't guess."
I hang up.
Harper is watching my face. She's good at reading faces, occupational habit, probably. Whatever she sees in mine makes her straighten.
"What happened?" she asks.
"Someone was asking about the clinic today." I keep my voice flat. "Don't know what it means yet. But until I do, I want you somewhere I can account for."
She holds my gaze. Three full seconds of it. Then she tilts her chin and goes inside for her jacket.
She's back in ninety seconds.
I nod once.
I don’t tell her the rest of what I’m thinking—that her hands were shaking in the cold after that call, that she called it an old problem with the weight of someone who’s dealt with it before.
I don’t ask who was on the phone. I don’t need to.
The Blackridge MC at her workplace, the way she held that phone in the dark—my gut does the math anyway.
Three tours taught me to trust that math.
The cabin sits at the end of a dirt track off the east ridge, pines on three sides, a valley drop on the fourth. No neighbors. No traffic. Only Judge knows exactly where it is, and Blaze—who found it once while trying to stop Dante Navarro from going anywhere.
Harper walks in without waiting to be invited.
She takes in the bare walls, the stone fireplace, the single shelf of books, the only proof that someone actually lives here instead of just shelters here. Her eyes move over everything carefully, the way she takes everything in, and she doesn't fill the silence with noise.
"It suits you," she says.
I start building the fire. It gives my hands something to do that isn't reaching for her, which at close range in a small cabin is a genuine operational concern.
She sheds her jacket. Hangs it on the chair back like she's done it before.
Sits on the floor in front of the fireplace when the flames catch, knees up, hands out to the heat.
Her hair is loose and the fire turns it amber at the edges and I sit in the chair behind her and don't pretend I'm looking anywhere else.
The wind pushes against the cabin walls. The pines move. The fire settles.
"Those men asking about the clinic," she says, to the flames. "Should I be worried?"
"Not while I know where you are."
She turns her head slightly at that. Just slightly. Doesn't push further, which I appreciate, because my answers past that point get complicated.
We go quiet again. The good kind.
Then she shifts, turns fully to face me, sitting cross-legged on the floor, firelight full on her face. Looking at me with that direct, unhurried attention she gives everything.
Then she reaches up.
Her fingers find the scar.
I go completely still.
She traces it with two fingertips, jaw to cheekbone, the full length, slowly.
Like she's reading something the rest of the world never bothered trying to understand.
No pity in it. No performance. Just her hands doing what her hands do, which is make contact with things that hurt and refuse to look away.
I close my hand around her wrist.
"Careful," I say. Low.
She doesn't pull back. Her pulse beats against my fingers, fast and honest.
"Why?" she asks.
I lean forward.
Close the space between us until I can see the exact color of her eyes in the firelight and the way the flames move inside them.
Her breath reaches my jaw. Her wrist is still in my hand and the distance between us is nothing now, just heat and firelight and the full weight of everything I've been holding back since she walked into the bar.
"Because I might not stop," I say.
The wind hits the cabin hard.
She doesn't move away.
Her free hand comes up and her palm flattens against my chest, right over the center of it, feeling my heartbeat with the same steady attention she gives everything. First clinical. Then not.
"Ronan," she says.
I let go of her wrist.
My hand finds her jaw instead.