Chapter 22
The club girl gets one hand on my arm and I know immediately it’s not happening.
That should not be unusual.
Any other week, any other version of my life, I would’ve let her stay there.
Maybe longer. Maybe long enough for the drag of her nails over my skin to turn into something else by the time the porch emptied and the noise in the clubhouse dropped low enough that nobody paid attention to who disappeared where.
She’s pretty enough, available enough, and for a long time that’s been more than enough for me.
No promises. No softness. No confusion.
A woman knows exactly what I am, I know exactly what she wants, and nobody wakes up asking stupid questions in the morning.
Easy. Clean. Forgettable.
That used to be enough too.
Now all I can see when she steps too close is amber eyes going tight for a split second before Raven turned away on the porch.
Long black hair over my sweatshirt. The shape of her standing there in the dark while I told her she didn’t have to unlearn the things that kept her alive.
The way she left before I could stop the scene from becoming exactly what it looked like.
That’s what stops me.
Not the club girl. Not restraint. Not some sudden attack of morality.
Raven.
She’s been stopping me since the night I picked her up, and I’m only just getting honest enough with myself to admit it.
The girl’s fingers slide along the leather ending at my bicep again like she thinks I’m just taking a second to decide. “Come on,” she says, mouth tilted in a smile that’s done the job often enough to make her confident in it. “You look bored.”
I catch her wrist before she can drag her hand any farther.
Not rough enough to hurt. Clear enough to make the point.
“No.”
She laughs softly like I’m teasing. “You’ve never complained before.”
“Then let tonight be educational.”
That wipes some of the smile off her face. Not enough. She still thinks this is a game.
Hard to blame her. Men like me don’t usually give sudden speeches about boundaries, and she’s spent enough time around the clubhouse to know I’ve never exactly been a monk.
She tilts her head and lowers her voice. “What, you playing hard to get now?”
I look at her for one flat second too long and feel absolutely nothing.
That’s new too.
“No,” I say. “I’m telling you to find someone else.”
Her expression tightens. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
She shifts closer like maybe proximity is still going to fix the problem. “You sure this isn’t because of that girl on the porch? I can make you forget her real easy.”
That gets my attention in a way she probably doesn’t enjoy. I lower my voice. “You don’t say shit to her or about her.”
She nods, “okay.”
“Good. Keep it that way.”
Now she’s irritated, which is fair. Confused too. Also fair. Still not my problem. “What is this?” she asks, crossing her arms. “You got some new rule I missed?”
I’m done being polite. “No,” I tell her. “I just won’t ever be touching you again.”
The words land hard enough to finally strip the disbelief out of her face. That’s the version she understands.
Cold. Direct. Final.
She stares at me for a second, probably waiting for some sign I’m joking, some crack in my face, some familiar edge that tells her this is all part of the dance.
She doesn’t find it. Then her mouth goes hard. “Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s how you’re gonna do it?”
“That’s how I just did it.”
She shakes her head once and mutters something under her breath I don’t bother catching.
I don’t move. I don’t soften it. I don’t explain that the idea of taking anyone back to my room now feels wrong in a way I’m not prepared to unpack because another woman’s room is right next to mine and my body hasn’t belonged entirely to me since the first night Raven walked into my truck in that cheap blonde wig.
That explanation isn’t for her. It’s barely for me.
She exhales sharply, lifts both hands in surrender, and takes a step back. “Fine.” Then she adds, because some people can’t help themselves, “Could’ve just said you were taken.”
My patience evaporates. I take one step toward her and drop my voice low enough to make sure every word lands. “You can accept the answer or you can get the fuck out of my space. Those are the options.”
That does it.
She glares, but she also knows me well enough to recognize where the line is. She steps aside, mutters, “Asshole,” and disappears back into the common room without another look.
I should probably feel something about that. Regret. Relief. Irritation. Instead, I just stand there on the porch for one extra beat staring at the empty space she left behind and acknowledging the obvious.
There isn’t room for that kind of easy anymore.
Not with Raven under this roof. Not with Lexi starting to look for me in rooms. Not with my head wired this wrong.
I drag a hand over my jaw and head inside before I do something even stupider than turning down uncomplicated sex for the first time in recent memory.
By morning, the feeling hasn’t gone away.
If anything, it’s sharper. I wake already keyed up, like my body caught something in the dark and passed the message along before my brain had words for it.
The clubhouse is moving through the usual early routine when I head out front with coffee, cut on, boots laced, eyes already scanning before I tell them to.
That’s when I see the car.
Old sedan. Dark. Nothing special about it at first glance except the way it slows a little too much when it passes the property line. Not enough to be obvious to anyone not looking.
Enough for me.
The windows are up. Driver keeps his head forward. Doesn’t rubberneck. Doesn’t stop. Just drags the speed down by ten, maybe fifteen miles an hour for the stretch where he has the clearest view of the entrance before picking it back up again. Could be nothing.
Still gets filed away immediately.
I watch it disappear down the road until the taillights vanish behind the bend. Then I pull my phone out and make a note of the make, color, and partial plate before the details can blur. When
I lift my head again, Shadow is standing on the porch with his own coffee, looking at me like he’s trying to decide whether I’ve gone paranoid or if he should trust the look on my face. “What?”
I jerk my chin toward the road. “That sedan’s gone by twice since sunrise.”
Shadow glances that direction. “You sure it’s the same one?”
“Yeah.”
He takes that in, no jokes for once. “Want me to send somebody after it?”
“Not yet.”
That’s the thing about bad feelings. Sometimes they’re instinct. Sometimes they’re just a man too deep in his own head looking for patterns because he wants an excuse to justify the tension under his skin.
I’ve survived this long by knowing the difference. So I don’t move on the car yet. I just log it and keep watching.
The rest of the morning doesn’t help.
In town, the feeling gets worse.
I’m at the gas station on the edge of Bartsville grabbing filters and a couple things Logan wanted for the garage when I walk in on the cashier talking to one of the locals.
Old guy. Farm cap. Smells like cigarettes and feed store.
Harmless enough. Except the second he sees my cut, he says, “You boys got company out there at the clubhouse now?”
The question is casual.
I don’t stop walking. “We always got company.”
He chuckles like we’re sharing some local joke. “Nah, I mean new company. Saw a dark-haired woman with a kid the other day. Ain’t seen her before.”
There it is. Not proof. Not a threat. Still enough to get my attention.
I take the filters to the counter, set them down, and look at him just long enough to make the atmosphere go slightly wrong. “Then you still haven’t,” I say.
The cashier, who knows better, suddenly becomes very interested in scanning my shit as fast as possible.
The old guy lifts both hands a little. “Wasn’t prying.”
“Good.”
I pay, walk out, and don’t bother looking back, but the knot under my ribs pulls tighter anyway. Word travels in towns like this because people are bored and curious and half their social life depends on remembering everyone else’s business. One man asking doesn’t mean danger.
It does mean Raven isn’t invisible anymore. That matters.
By noon, I’ve got a second thing to add to the pile.
A face.
Not familiar enough to place immediately, but not local either.
Mid-thirties maybe. Clean cut. Button-down shirt trying too hard for this heat.
He’s parked across from the diner Logan sent me to for a meeting with one of the suppliers, and he watches the storefront reflection in the window longer than anyone with a normal life should.
Not me directly. Not long enough to challenge. Just lingering in a way that raises the hair on the back of my neck.
When I head back to my truck, he pretends to be on his phone.
I get in, start the engine, pull away.
He doesn’t follow. Still goes in the file.
Then there’s the cop.
Local deputy, not county. One I’ve seen around before.
Usually he clocks our cuts, gives us the standard law-abiding-citizen suspicion, and keeps moving.
Today he slows while I’m parked outside the hardware store, idles long enough to study the truck, then actually gets out and circles once like maybe he’s checking tags.
Could be routine. Could be boredom. Could be nothing.
But when his gaze hits the passenger side and lingers on the stray stuffed-animal sticker still stuck to the inside of the window from where Lexi pressed one there yesterday, he goes a little too still. That one flips something hard in my gut.
Because now we’ve got a local cop paying unusual attention to a truck that’s been moving Raven and Lexi around town in small doses when the women take them out for safe errands and air. Still not enough for alarm bells. Definitely enough for escalation.
I don’t tell Raven any of it. Not yet.