Chapter 5
SHELBY
A week in, I stop eating standing up.
Duke is at the kitchen table with a plate of eggs and a deck of cards, dealing himself a hand of solitaire. I walk in, and he kicks the chair across from him out with his boot.
“Sit down. You’re making me tired.”
I sit. He doesn’t look up from his cards.
That’s it. That’s the whole moment. But it cracks something loose, because the next morning I sit again, and the morning after that, and by Thursday, I’m eating at the table like I belong here.
I don’t belong here. But my body is starting to forget that.
The clubhouse has a rhythm, and I’m learning it.
Mornings are quiet. Most of the men don’t surface before ten. Trapper—the prospect, the one who makes coffee that could strip paint—is always up first, sweeping the bar and restocking bottles.
He’s young, maybe twenty-two, with a mop of sandy hair and the nervous energy of a dog who wants to be pet but isn’t sure he’s allowed on the furniture.
“Why do they call you Trapper?” I ask him one morning.
He grins. “Set a snare for a raccoon that was getting into the trash behind Bones and Bucks. Caught Razor’s dog instead. He didn’t talk to me for two weeks.”
“Did the dog survive?”
“The dog survived just fine. My dignity didn’t.”
The sweetbutts come and go. I’ve learned to read which ones are hostile and which ones are indifferent. The blonde from my first day—her name is Crystal—gives me a wide berth now, ever since Duke shut her down. The others glance at me and look away.
Other women are here sometimes, and they’re treated differently. They seem to be the wives or girlfriends of the club members. Old Ladies, that’s the term. But they aren’t old, and I don’t quite understand it.
They’re not looking to make friends. I’m nobody’s wife or girlfriend. And I’m not a sweetbutt. I don’t fit in anywhere. Story of my life.
The men are easier. Duke is dry and blunt and plays cards at the kitchen table every morning. Razor is quieter, all sharp edges, but he nods at me when we cross paths.
I don’t ask about club business. That rule I figured out on my own, watching how conversation dies when I enter a room where the men are talking low.
Doors close. Voices drop. There are parts of this building I’m not invited into, and the biggest one is the room at the end of the first-floor hallway with the heavy door and the padlock.
Church. That’s what they call it. Where the club votes, makes decisions, and handles whatever needs handling. No women allowed. No prospects unless called.
I asked Duke about it once. He dealt a card and said, “Don’t.”
So I don’t.
But I’m learning the rest.
Trapper taught me about the vests. But the leather vests aren’t vests; they’re cuts.
Short for cutoff, because the sleeves are cut from the jacket.
Every patch on a cut means something. The big one on the back—crown and skull—is the club.
The top rocker says HELLBORN KINGS. The bottom rocker says ASH VALLEY.
The patches on the front are rank—President, Vice President, and Sergeant at Arms. There are other titles, but I’m still learning.
There’s a small diamond-shaped patch on the front, too. A one-percenter patch, Trapper told me, which means the club operates outside the law. He said it like he was proud. I filed that away and didn’t ask a follow-up question.
Saber’s cut has PRESIDENT on the left chest, and I’ve spent more time staring at those letters than I’ll ever admit.
Not because of what they mean in the club.
Because of what they mean about him. Every man in this building answers to him, follows him, would bleed for him, and he carries that on his shoulders every single day.
I work up the courage to ask Trapper one morning what exactly a one-percenter patch means, beyond operating outside the law. He lights up like I’ve asked him about his favorite subject.
“Trapper.” Razor looks up from his breakfast.
Trapper shuts his mouth so fast his teeth click.
“She doesn’t need a history lesson.”
Trapper mumbles an apology and goes back to sweeping.
Razor looks at me, and his face isn’t unkind, but it’s clear.
There’s a line. I can live here, eat here, and exist here. But there are rooms I don’t enter, questions I don’t ask, and a world operating ten feet from my bedroom door that I am not part of.
I’m okay with that, for now.
I’ve spent my whole life on the outside of things. At least here, the walls are honest.
Day nine. Saber finds me in the bar.
I’ve been cleaning, because the bar was filthy. Not because anyone asked, but because I was losing my mind in that room, with nothing to do, no money, no job, and no way to earn my keep.
Saber sits there and watches me.
I’m wiping things down, then organizing the bottles by type. I’m on a step stool reaching for the top shelf because someone had shoved a half-empty bottle of whiskey behind a layer of grime.
My fingers close around the neck of the bottle. The stool shifts. My foot slides off the edge, and for one stupid second, I’m airborne.
Hands land on my waist. Big, rough fingers dig into the soft skin above my hips as Saber catches me and pulls me back against his chest.
My shoulders hit him first. Then my spine. Then the back of my head tucks under his chin, exactly the way I imagined it would, and his body is a wall of heat and muscle behind me. His hands are still on my waist, and neither of us is breathing.
His thumbs press into my back, just above my ass. His fingers span the front of my ribcage. I’m wearing a tank top, and the cotton is thin enough that I can feel the calluses on his palms through the fabric.
His cock is hard. Pressed against my lower back, thick and unmistakable, and the knowledge of it sends a pulse between my legs so sharp my knees almost buckle.
I turn my head. His jaw is right there. The stubble, the hard line of bone, and when I look up, his blue eyes are looking down at me, and everything in them is barely held back.
His hand comes up. His thumb traces my jaw. Tilts my chin. My lips part, and his eyes drop to my mouth.
The distance between us shrinks to nothing.
Then… he lets go. He steps back.
His hands drop to his sides, and his jaw goes tight, and he puts three feet of space between us.
“Don’t stand on that stool. It’s got a cracked leg.” His voice is raw. Scraped down.
He’s looking at the shelf behind me like the whiskey bottles are the most interesting thing in Arizona.
My skin is on fire everywhere he touched me. My waist, my jaw, and the strip of neck where his breath landed. I’m gripping the edge of the bar because I don’t trust my legs.
I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
What am I supposed to say?
That I want him to kiss me. That I love having his hands wrapped around my body. That I loved feeling his hardness through his pants.
I don’t say any of that.
“I’ll get you a ladder.” He’s already walking away. “A real one.”
He disappears through the kitchen, and I stand there in the empty bar with my pulse hammering and my hands shaking and the ghost of his thumbs pressed into my back.
He was going to kiss me. The second his control slipped, his mouth angled toward mine, and every inch of him wanted to close that gap.
Then he pulled back.
Not because he didn’t want it. I’d have to be blind to miss that.
But he put three feet between us, anyway. Because I can tell he thinks I’m broken.
He’s looking at me and seeing damage. He’s looking at me and deciding I don’t know what I’m choosing.
And if he kisses me now, he’ll be another man who took something from a woman who wasn’t ready to give it. He’d rather starve than be that man.
He’s wrong. But I don’t know how to tell him that without proving him right. Everything I wanted to say would sound like the desperate girl who latches onto the first man who shows her kindness, because she doesn’t know the difference between safety and love.
But I do know the difference. And I know what I want.
That night. Eleven o’clock. The knock.
I open the door. He’s in a clean t-shirt and jeans, boots still on, cut still on. He always comes to my door in his cut. Like he’s reminding both of us what he is.
“Need anything?”
“Tell me something,” I say.
He leans against the doorframe. Crosses his arms. “What?”
“Something about you. Not the club. You.”
He’s quiet long enough that I think he’s going to walk away. His eyes move over my face, and then he looks at the wall past my shoulder.
“I own a ranch. Thirty acres, east of town. Inherited it from my grandfather. I’ve got two horses, a barn that needs a new roof, and a little sister at college in California who calls me once a week to make sure I haven’t burned the place down. Nothing but desert in every direction.”
“That’s where you live? When you’re not here?”
“That’s where I live.”
“Why aren’t you there now?” I ask.
His blue eyes come back to mine, and that tells me everything. He’s staying at the clubhouse because of me.
“Tell me something about you,” he says. “Not the ex. Not the running. You.”
I lean against my side of the doorframe. We’re mirroring each other—arms crossed, shoulders against the wood, barely any space between us.
“I can draw. Charcoal, mostly. Portraits. I used to fill sketchbooks when I was a kid in foster care. I’d draw every family, every house, and every kid I shared a room with. I drew so I wouldn’t forget them when I had to move.”
Something shifts behind his eyes, and it’s not pity. Pity would make me close the door. This is closer to recognition. Like he understands what it means to hold onto people in the only way you can.
“You still draw?”
“I don’t have supplies.”
He nods. Once. “Get some sleep, Shelby.”
“Goodnight, Saber.”
He pushes off the doorframe and walks down the hall. I watch him go.
He stops. Doesn’t turn. “The stool is in the dumpster.”
Then he’s gone.
I close the door. Turn the lock. Press my back against the wood and slide down to the floor, same as every night.
But tonight my fingers go to my jaw, where his thumb traced the bone, and I hold them there until the warmth fades.
I’m not afraid of the Crimson Warriors.
I’m not afraid of this clubhouse or the men in it or the locked doors I don’t open.
I’m afraid of eleven o’clock. I’m afraid of the knock. Every night he stands in that doorway, I want him to step through it. And I’m afraid that every night, he won’t.