Chapter 1 #2
"Safe." The word comes out barely above a whisper. "You always made me feel safe."
I don't know what to say to that. The silence stretches between us, thick with everything neither of us is ready to say.
The front door swings open, and Cole comes through at a near-run. He's still in his work gear, covered in road dust and engine grease, relief and worry warring across his face as he spots his sister.
"Gem. Jesus Christ, Gem."
He crosses the bar in four strides and pulls her into his arms before she can stand up from the stool. For a second everything looks fine, looks like a normal reunion between siblings who haven't seen each other in too long.
Then Gemma flinches. Her whole body goes rigid in Cole's embrace, and she has to force herself to relax. The effort it takes for her to accept a hug from her own brother shows in every line of her body.
Cole notices too. His hands gentle on her back. He adjusts his grip to something looser, less confining.
"What happened?" His voice is rough. "Gemma, what the hell happened?"
"I'm fine." The words come out automatic and empty. "I'm just tired. It was a long drive."
"Bullshit." Cole pulls back but keeps his hands on her shoulders, studying her face the way I've been studying it since she walked in. "You're not fine. You're about twenty pounds underweight and you look like you haven't slept in a month. Talk to me."
"Cole." Her voice breaks on his name. Just slightly. Just enough. "Please. Not tonight. I can't do this tonight."
A look passes between them, some sibling communication I'm not privy to, and Cole's shoulders drop. He pulls her back into a gentler hug, and this time she leans into it instead of pulling away.
"Okay," he murmurs. "Okay. Not tonight. But soon."
"Soon," she agrees, and I don't think any of us believe her.
The next hour passes in a blur of logistics. Cole insists Gemma can't stay at the empty house alone, not tonight, not until it's been aired out and the utilities are working. She resists, but not hard, and eventually agrees to stay at his place for the time being.
I stay behind the bar through it all, pouring drinks and pretending to clean glasses that are already clean.
Gemma holds herself apart even standing next to her brother. Her eyes dart to the door every time it opens. When she thinks no one's looking, she wraps her arms around herself like she's trying to hold the pieces together.
Cole doesn't touch her unless he telegraphs it first. He figured it out fast. We both did.
When they finally leave, Cole catches my eye over Gemma's head. His expression says everything his words can't with her standing right there. We need to talk. Tomorrow.
I nod once, and then they're gone, and I'm left with a half-empty bar and a chest full of broken glass.
I know what those reactions mean. I know what the exhaustion carved into her face means.
I've seen it before, in women who came to the private side of our bar, our club, looking for something they were afraid to name.
Women who'd had submission twisted into something ugly by men who didn't deserve their trust.
The pieces aren't hard to put together. Gemma married a man who hurt her. Not just emotionally, though that too. The way she braced when I set that glass down. The way she holds herself. The instinctive fear when Cole's arms came around her too fast.
Someone taught her to be afraid of touch. Someone taught her to expect pain.
And she missed her own parents' funeral because of him. That thought burns hotter than the rest.
My hands curl into fists against the bar top, and I have to close my eyes and breathe through the rage that wants to consume me.
Gemma is Cole's little sister. She's vulnerable and damaged and running from whatever tried to break her. She needs safety and time and people who won't ask anything of her.
She doesn't need me looking at her the way I caught myself looking at her tonight.
But as I lock up the bar and head out to my bike, I can't shake the image of her standing in that doorway. Can't stop thinking about the woman she's become and the girl she used to be and all the distance between them.
She stood beside me at Sarah's grave. She knew what Sarah and I had. She saw it, lived alongside it, even if just at the edges. But the man she found gave her the opposite of everything I tried to give my wife.
The irony tastes like ash.
She's not mine to protect. She's not mine to want. She's not mine at all.
But whatever happened to her, whoever did this, I'm going to make sure she's safe. It's not a decision. Just the truth, bone-deep.
I kick the bike to life and pull out of the lot. The house is dark when I pull into the driveway, same as always.
Safe. Out of everything she could have said, she chose that word.
I sit there longer than I should, engine cooling, thinking about a woman standing at my wife's grave five years ago. Thinking about the way she looked at me tonight, like I was something she'd forgotten existed.
I don't know what I'm going to do about Gemma Holloway. But sleep isn't coming anytime soon.