Chapter 11 Aurora
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Aurora
By the time we get back to The Hollow, my nerves have been skinned.
Everything looks normal, which feels offensive. The barstools are where they always are. The lights hum softly. Someone’s laughter drifts in from the back like the world didn’t just shift a few degrees to the left.
I don’t trust it.
Finn looks up the second we walk in.
There it is, the smile. Bright. Easy. Dialed up to eleven like he’s walking onto a stage.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite roommate upgrade,” he says, eyes flicking to me with exaggerated appreciation. “You disappear for an hour and come back looking like you survived a true crime podcast.”
Zane’s jaw tightens beside me.
Finn doesn’t notice.
“Seriously,” Finn continues, stepping closer, hands loose. “You good, Heartbreaker? Because you’ve got this whole mysterious ‘woman with a tragic backstory’ thing going on, and I’m torn between offering coffee or dramatically volunteering my shoulder.”
He winks.
I stare at him.
He grins wider. “Too much?”
“Yes,” I say flatly.
He laughs loudly. “Okay, okay. Dialing it back. Just…” He glances between Zane and me. “Wow. You two look intense. Did I miss something fun, or just the part where Zane scares off a squirrel for looking at you wrong?”
“Finn,” Zane snaps.
Finn finally clocks the tone. Slows. “What?”
“I don’t want jokes,” I say, shaking despite my best effort. “I want answers.”
The words come out sharp enough that they cut through the room.
Finn freezes.
“Oh,” he says. “Okay. That kind of day.”
“We saw the truck again,” Zane says simply. “And things have gone missing from Aurora’s cabin.”
That does it.
Finn’s expression drains fast. The grin slides right off his face, replaced by an alertness.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
Zane doesn’t embellish.
“No forced entry. No mess. But something was taken.”
Finn’s gaze snaps to me. “Aurora?”
“My grandmother’s locket,” I say. Saying it again makes my chest ache. “The one I always keep in my jewelry box.”
Finn swears under his breath.
“That’s not random,” he says immediately.
“No,” Zane agrees. “It’s not.”
Finn paces like a caged thing, hands raking through his hair. He opens his mouth, probably about to make a joke out of habit… then stops himself.
The charm hesitates.
“I was just trying to keep it light,” he says finally, glancing at me. “You came back looking wrecked, and I figured, hell, if I could make you laugh, maybe it wouldn’t feel so bad.”
My throat tightens. “It is bad.”
“I know,” he says quietly.
He exhales, long and rough, the sound of someone letting the mask slip without meaning to.
“I’m scared,” he admits.
The word hits me harder than I expect.
“You?” I ask softly.
He huffs a humorless laugh. “Yeah. Me. Surprise.”
The flirt is gone now. The man in front of me looks different without it. Still handsome. Still sharp. But raw in a way I haven’t seen before.
“I joke because it’s easier than sitting with this,” he says, gesturing vaguely at the situation. “Because if I stop talking, I have to think about the fact that someone targeted you. And it might be simply because you met me.”
My stomach twists.
“And that means,” he continues, “whatever mess we thought we left behind didn’t actually stay behind.”
Zane’s silence beside me is heavy. Agreement without words.
“I don’t scare easy,” Finn says, looking at me again. “But I don’t like this. I don’t like that you were alone. I don’t like that someone thought they could touch your life and get away with it.”
I swallow hard.
“You’re not stupid,” I say.
He blinks. “Never said I was.”
“You’re not shallow either. But I do have to ask… what did you leave behind? What might be following you here?”
Finn goes still.
Not the playful freeze from earlier. Not the oh shit, I messed up pause.
This is different. This is him deciding how much truth I can handle.
Zane shifts beside me, just enough that I feel the quiet gravity of him there. A wall at my back if this goes sideways.
Finn drags a hand down his face. His jacket rides up slightly, and I catch a glimpse of ink along his wrist.
I don’t know why my brain clocks that.
“Some people,” he says slowly, “don’t take kindly to being left.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He nods. “Fair.”
He leans his hip against the bar, eyes dropping to the scarred wood.
“We were part of something that didn’t end clean,” he says. “When you’re in that kind of world, leaving isn’t neutral. It’s a statement.”
My gaze flicks to Zane without meaning to.
His arms are crossed now. Ink disappears beneath his sleeves, but I’ve seen enough of it already to know it’s not accidental. Tools. Engines. Symbols that mean something to the people who recognize them.
“What kind of statement?” I ask.
Finn lifts his eyes back to mine. No jokes left in them. Just weight.
“That we were done riding the way we used to,” he says.
It clicks.
The bikes parked behind the bar. The way men at The Hollow watch doors instead of people. Ryder’s constant awareness. Zane’s instinctive scans. Finn’s charm as a shield.
I don’t say it.
But I understand.
“And someone didn’t like that,” I murmur.
Finn lets out a short, humorless laugh. “Understatement of the year.”
That seals it.
“What about the truck?” I ask quietly. “What about my locket?”
Finn’s expression hardens.
“Those aren’t coincidences,” he says. “They’re pressure. A reminder. Someone letting us know they can reach into our space. And perhaps you being seen with me made someone think we’re a serious thing.”
My stomach twists.
“So they might come for me?” I whisper. “To get to you.”
Finn nods once. “And because you’re visible. New. Soft enough to look like leverage.” His mouth twists. “No offense.”
“Some taken,” I mutter faintly.
He almost smiles. Almost.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “For the jokes. For not reading the room. For any part of this that touches you.”
The apology feels real. That scares me more than the flirting ever did.
“I didn’t come here to be someone’s weakness,” I say.
Finn straightens. “You’re not.”
“You’re not a liability, Aurora,” Zane agrees. “None of this is your fault. It’s ours.”
I look between them. Men who carry their pasts in their posture. In their scars. In the way they never fully relax.
They didn’t just buy a bar.
They ran.
And whatever followed them?
It didn’t forget.
This isn’t just danger circling closer.
It’s history catching up.
And somehow, without meaning to, I’m already part of it.
My breath catches as the kitchen door opens. I nearly spill my third cup of tea, which is ridiculous, because Finn is in the room with me. Nothing can happen to me here. That’s why we’ve been hiding away in here for the last hour.
And anyway, it’s Zane. He belongs here.
Just as I’m about to attempt a smile, he crosses the room and stops in front of me.
Then he opens his hand.
And there it is.
The locket.
My brain just… blue screens. Like it can’t process joy that fast. My chest locks up. My eyes burn. I stare at it as if it might be a trick. If I reach for it too quickly, it’ll vanish again, and I don’t think I can live through that a second time.
“Oh,” I breathe, which is not a sentence but feels adequate.
“I went back,” Zane says quietly. “Checked the cabin again. I wanted to have a better, calmer look, and I’m glad I did.”
My hands shake as I take it from him. The familiar weight hits my palm, and my insides collapse in on themselves in the best and worst way.
“It was under the bed,” he continues. “Kicked into the corner. Probably when you were packing.”
Probably.
Possibly.
I don’t care.
As long as someone hasn’t taken it.
The second the chain touches my skin, my chest caves. Relief floods me so hard it knocks the air right out of my lungs.
“Oh wow,” I choke. “I thought… I really thought…”
I don’t finish, because my throat closes and my eyes fill, and suddenly I’m crying in a way that’s deeply uncool and extremely sincere.
I press the locket to my chest like I can absorb it through osmosis. Evie herself might climb back into me through it and tell me everything’s fine and I’m doing great and also please stop apologizing for existing.
“I’m sorry,” I say into my hands, because apparently that’s my reflex. “I didn’t mean to… I just—”
“Hey,” Zane says gently. “Don’t.”
That’s it. Just one word. Firm enough to stop me. Soft enough not to hurt.
I look up at him, tears streaking my face, probably red and blotchy and not at all mysterious or alluring. He looks wrecked. My crying is doing something violent to him internally.
And then I do the thing without thinking.
I stand and step into him and wrap my arms around his middle.
Zane freezes.
Full system shutdown freezes.
For one horrifying second, I think I’ve messed up. That I’ve crossed some invisible line. That he’s going to gently pull back and apologize for letting me lean too hard on something I shouldn’t.
Instead, his arms come up slowly, carefully, like he’s afraid that if he moves too fast, I’ll break or disappear.
One hand settles between my shoulder blades. The other wraps around my back, making sure I’m actually there.
And when he pulls me closer, just a little, it feels like he’s been waiting his entire life to be allowed to do this.
I press my face into his chest. He smells clean and warm and real, a person who exists in the world and fixes things instead of running from them.
“I was so scared,” I whisper. “I really thought they were coming after me, and that I’d never see this again.”
“I know,” he says.
My tears soak into his shirt. I don’t even try to stop them now. Zane’s chin rests lightly on the top of my head, his grip tightening just a fraction.
My breathing finally evens out. My body unclenches like it’s been holding a pose for hours.
Maybe there was never a threat at all.
Maybe the danger was just panic and exhaustion and grief stacking up.
Or maybe…
The real danger is how safe I feel right now.
And how badly I don’t want him to let go.