Chapter 3
SHELBY
The lock on the door works from the inside.
That’s the last thing I checked before I went to sleep last night. Not my text messages, not if I had any more blood on my hands. The lock. Because if it locks from the outside, I’m in a cage. If it locks from the inside, I’m in a room.
It locks from the inside.
Now that it’s morning, I take in my surroundings with more discerning eyes.
The room is small, but nice, with a bed, a dresser, and a lamp. The sheets are clean, and the mattress is comfortable. The walls are thin enough that I can hear music from somewhere downstairs and the low rumble of male laughter.
I’m still in shock, but memories from last night come back in pieces. The ride. My arms around Saber’s waist. The gravel lot of this building. The rumble of bikes. Saber told me I was staying at his clubhouse.
And when I walked through the doors of the building, which looked like a converted hotel, men and scantily dressed women stared at me like I was a problem.
Saber told me to wait when he brought me to this room.
I sat on the edge of the bed with the memory of blood on the ground and gravel dust on my jeans.
Fifteen minutes later, he was back. Clean pajamas.
A toothbrush, still in the packaging. Soap, shampoo, and a few clean towels.
A change of clothes folded in a stack—a t-shirt and sweats that were too big but clean.
He set it all on the dresser and told me there was food downstairs whenever I was hungry. Said he was staying in the room next door. Then found a charger, plugged my phone in, and programmed his number.
“You need anything,” he said, “you call. I don’t care what time it is.”
Then he left. Closed the door behind him. Didn’t try to stay. Didn’t linger.
I stood in the shower until the water ran cold, scrubbed my body clean, put on the pajamas, and fell asleep with the lock turned and a sense of safety that he was close by.
I stand from my bed. My purse is on the floor where I dropped it. My phone is on the dresser, still plugged into the charger he brought.
I pick it up. Three messages from Tiffany asking if I’m alive. Apparently, the lot was a mess by the time anyone got to work this morning, and the whole town is making up stories.
I text back that I’m alive, but I won’t be in today. I don’t respond to the rumors.
And there is a text from my ex-boyfriend.
Kyle: Tell your new boyfriend I won’t be a problem. I’m done. You won’t hear from me again.
I read it twice. Three times. My hands are shaking, but not because I’m afraid.
Kyle is actually gone. A stranger in a leather vest made Kyle disappear in under a minute. And a six-year relationship ends with a single text.
Saber intrigued me for weeks. But when he made my ex-boyfriend disappear for good, that is when he earned my trust.
But tell your new boyfriend. Like I’ve been handed off. Like one man let go and another picked up, and I’m the thing getting passed.
I set the phone face down on the dresser and don’t reply.
Hunger pulls me out of the room around noon.
I haven’t eaten since my shift yesterday. My tips are in my apron pocket—forty-three dollars and a handful of coins—and my apron is in my bag, and my bag is all I have in the world.
Forty-three dollars, and whatever is left in my bank account. No job, because I can’t go back to the diner. No apartment after this month, because I can’t pay rent with the money I have left.
For now, I have to stay here. But I will not be dependent on another man. I will figure this out.
But first, I need to eat.
The hallway is dim and smells like stale beer.
I follow the noise downstairs and find a common area—a big open room with couches, a pool table, a bar along one wall, and a door that leads to a kitchen in the back.
Three men in leather vests are sitting at a table playing cards.
A woman in cutoffs and a tank top is pouring herself a drink behind the bar.
Every head turns when I walk in.
I almost turn around. My legs lock, and my chin drops—that old reflex, making myself smaller—and I have to force it back up. I’m not doing that anymore. I am not shrinking for anyone.
I walk to the kitchen. There’s bread on the counter, a jar of peanut butter, and a fridge full of beer and not much else.
I make a sandwich, go back to the main room, and eat it standing up. Because sitting down means choosing a spot, and every spot in this room is surrounded by someone who makes me feel uncomfortable.
I don’t belong here.
The woman from the bar walks over. She’s blonde, tall, and looking at me with narrowed eyes.
“So, you’re the one Saber dragged in.” She leans against the counter. “You don’t look like much.”
I don’t answer. I take another bite of my sandwich.
“He gave you a room and his protection.” She looks me up and down. “I’ve been here two years, and I sleep wherever they tell me to sleep. But you walk in and get the princess treatment.”
My mouth is full of peanut butter, and I have no idea who this woman is or what I did to earn this. I take a deep breath, because I am one sentence away from crying in front of a room full of strangers.
A man at the card table stands up. He’s tall, broad, and has dark hair past his collar. His vest has a patch I can’t read from here.
“Don’t pay attention to her.” He doesn’t raise his voice, but the blonde goes rigid. “She’s only a sweetbutt.”
The blonde opens her mouth, closes it, and walks away. The man watches her go, then turns to me.
“Duke,” he says, introducing himself. “Treasurer for the Hellborn Kings.”
“What’s a sweetbutt?”
He doesn’t laugh. “A woman who hangs around the club and fucks whoever wants her. She does what she’s told and doesn’t get a say in anything. She’s here because she wants to be, and nobody’s chasing her if she leaves.”
The bluntness should bother me. It doesn’t. After six years of Kyle’s manipulation, I appreciate a man who says an ugly thing plainly.
“And what am I?”
Duke pulls his chair out and sits back down at his card game. “You’re under Saber’s protection. He told the club this morning. Nobody touches you, nobody speaks to you wrong, and you don’t leave this building without a King at your back.”
I put the sandwich down.
Nobody touches me. Nobody speaks to me wrong. I don’t leave without permission.
I’m under a man’s control again. Different building, different man, but the structure is the same. Someone decided what’s best for me and announced it to a room I wasn’t in, and now I’m living inside rules I didn’t agree to.
“Does Saber know I can make my own decisions?”
Duke looks at me over his cards. “You hit a fucking Crimson Warrior in the head with a water bottle last night. There’s a dead man because of it. They know your face now. So yeah, you can make your own decisions. But if you walk out that door alone, that decision will kill you.”
I pick the sandwich back up. Eat it.
And I hate that he’s right. My life will never be the same.
I spend the afternoon in my room, doing the math.
I don’t have enough money to survive. That is abundantly clear.
My car is in the lot downstairs. Someone drove it over from the diner. I spotted it from the hallway window this morning.
I guess that’s a good thing.
But my rent is due in nine days, and since I can’t work, I won’t have enough to pay it.
Every piece of independence I scraped together after Kyle was erased in one night because I swung a water bottle at a man with a gun.
I’d do it again.
That’s the part I keep circling back to. I saw the gun come up toward Saber’s chest, and I didn’t think. My body moved.
After weeks of watching this man drink bad coffee and leaving too much money, he never once asked me for anything. He protected me from Kyle. He made me feel safe.
And when someone pointed a gun at him, I cracked that someone in the skull.
I don’t know what that makes me. Brave or stupid or falling for the most dangerous man in a town full of dangerous men.
Probably all three.
He comes to the door at eleven p.m.
I’m in bed with the lamp on, staring at the ceiling, when I hear the knock. Two knocks. Low. Not demanding. Not tentative. Like he’s letting me know he’s there, not asking me to open.
I open anyway.
Saber fills the doorframe. He’s wearing a t-shirt and his vest, like he always does.
His blue eyes trail down my body and back up.
He’s checking me for damage, but not looking at me the way I want him to.
He doesn’t step inside. His boots stay on the hallway side of the threshold like there’s a line drawn there that only he can see.
“You need anything?”
I need my job back. I need my car. I need to not owe my survival to a man I’ve never had a conversation with that lasted more than four sentences.
“No.”
He nods. His eyes drop to the doorframe, then back to mine.
“Saber.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you. For the clothes. For the room. For—” I don’t know how to finish that sentence. For making Kyle disappear. For not being what I’m afraid you are.
One corner of his mouth rises. “Get some sleep, Shelby.”
He turns and walks down the hallway. I close and lock the door. Not to keep him out. More than anything, I wanted to invite him in, but he’s keeping his distance. I’ll respect that.
I turn, press my back against the door, and slide to the floor.
He said my name. He’s never said my name before.
I pull my knees to my chest and sit there in the dark, listening to his boots fade down the hall, and I don’t know if I’m safe or if I’m falling, and I don’t know which one scares me more.