Chapter 5
The call to Timber took ninety seconds.
"Safehouse on Miller Creek," the older brother said without preamble. "Stocked last month. I'll send Grit to watch the diner—anyone shows up looking for trouble, they'll find it."
"Appreciate it."
"Don't appreciate me yet." Timber's voice carried a weight that made Splinter straighten. "You're vouching for this woman. That means something. Don't make me regret backing your play."
"I won't."
The line went dead.
Splinter pocketed his phone and turned back to Ivy, who stood behind the diner counter with her arms wrapped around herself like she was trying to hold the pieces together through sheer force of will.
The afternoon light caught the exhaustion carved into her face, the fear she was working hard to hide.
"We're moving you tonight. You and Mae both."
"Moving us where?"
"Safehouse. Remote, secure, stocked with everything you'll need." He kept his voice steady, giving her facts instead of reassurances she wouldn't believe anyway. "Club owns a few places in the mountains for situations like this. No one finds them unless we want them found."
"And my diner?"
"Brother named Grit's watching it. Anyone comes looking for you, they'll answer to him instead."
Ivy's jaw tightened. He could see her fighting against it—the instinct to refuse help, to handle everything herself, to prove she didn't need anyone. He recognized that instinct. Lived with a version of it himself.
"I need to get Mae from school."
"I'll drive you."
"I can—"
"You can ride with me." He crossed the space between them, close enough to see the gold flecks in her brown eyes, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off her skin.
"Your truck's still on borrowed tires that might not hold up on mountain roads.
My bike won't fit a car seat. So we take my truck, we get your girl, and we get you somewhere safe. That's how this works."
She stared at him for a long moment, something shifting in her expression. Not surrender—this woman didn't surrender. But maybe acceptance. Maybe the first crack in a wall she'd built out of necessity and maintained out of stubbornness.
"Fine."
The school sat on the edge of town, a squat brick building that had seen better decades surrounded by a parking lot that had seen better years. Splinter waited in the truck while Ivy went inside, watching the entrance with eyes trained by months of prospect work to notice things that didn't belong.
Nothing moved that shouldn't.
No unfamiliar vehicles. No men in suits pretending to have business near an elementary school.
Still, his hands didn't unclench from the steering wheel until Ivy emerged with Mae's small hand clasped in hers.
The girl spotted him through the windshield and her whole face changed. Fear melted into something like recognition, like hope, like the uncomplicated trust that children offered before the world taught them better.
She waved.
Something cracked in Splinter's chest.
Ivy opened the passenger door and helped Mae climb in first, settling her daughter in the middle of the bench seat before sliding in herself. The cab felt smaller with both of them there—Mae's warmth against his right side, Ivy's shoulder nearly brushing his arm every time she moved.
Her scent hit him like a fist to the gut.
Something floral underneath the diner smells—coffee and bacon grease and hard work—but beneath all that, something that was just her. Warm and female and close enough to taste if he just leaned over and—
Stop.
He gripped the steering wheel harder, knuckles going white.
She was scared and exhausted and trusting him to get her somewhere safe.
The last thing she needed was him thinking about how she smelled, how her thigh was inches from his on the bench seat, how the afternoon light caught the curve of her neck in a way that made him want to press his mouth there and feel her pulse jump.
Focus.
"Mae, you remember the nice man from the diner?" Ivy's voice had that false brightness parents used when delivering news they weren't sure how to explain.
"The quiet one who left the big tip." Mae looked up at him with eyes too serious for five. "You looked sad when you saw me."
Christ.
"Not sad," Splinter managed. "Just... thinking."
"About what?"
"About how brave you are. Watching the door like that. Keeping your mama safe."
Mae's expression flickered with something complicated. "I'm not brave. I get scared."
"Being scared and watching anyway—that's what brave means." He started the truck, needing something to do with his hands besides think about Ivy's thigh. "Brave isn't about not being afraid. It's about being afraid and doing the hard thing anyway."
In his peripheral vision, he saw Ivy's head turn toward him. Felt her gaze on his profile like a physical touch. He didn't look back. Wasn't sure he could handle what he'd see in her eyes.
"Where are we going?" Mae asked.
"Somewhere safe." He pulled out of the lot and pointed the truck toward mountain roads that wound deeper into Reaper territory. "Got a cabin that's warm and quiet, with a fireplace and enough food to last a month. You and your mama are gonna stay there for a little while."
"Like a vacation?"
"Something like that."
They drove in silence for a few miles, the road climbing as civilization fell away behind them. Mae pressed against Splinter's side, her small body gradually relaxing as the distance grew between them and whatever had been scaring her.
Then her hand found his where it rested on the seat between them.
Small fingers curled around two of his, holding on with the desperate grip of a child who'd learned too young that safety was temporary. Splinter's throat went tight. He didn't pull away, didn't acknowledge it, just let her hold on while he drove.
Ivy watched without comment.
The silence should have been comfortable.
Instead, Splinter was acutely aware of every inch of space between him and the woman beside him.
The way her breathing had slowed as the miles passed.
The way she'd shifted slightly toward him, probably without realizing it, her body seeking warmth or comfort or something she couldn't name.
He could feel the heat of her through his jeans.
Stop thinking about it.
But he couldn't stop. His mind kept circling back to her—the strength in her jaw when she'd told him about Messer, the vulnerability in her eyes when she'd admitted she had no one else to call. The way she'd looked at him like he was something solid in a world that kept trying to knock her down.
He imagined pulling the truck over. Imagined Mae asleep between them—which she nearly was, her grip on his fingers loosening as exhaustion claimed her. Imagined turning to Ivy in the dim cab, cupping her face, tilting her mouth up to his.
Imagined her lips parting on a gasp. Her fingers fisting in his shirt. The sounds she'd make when he kissed down her neck, found the pulse point he'd been staring at since she climbed into the truck.
Christ.
He shifted in his seat, grateful for the darkness outside the windows. His cock was half-hard, pressing uncomfortably against his zipper, and the last thing he needed was for Ivy to notice and think he was the kind of man who got off on vulnerable women.
He wasn't.
He'd never felt this pull before—this immediate, bone-deep wanting that had nothing to do with opportunity and everything to do with her.
"Tell me about the debt."
The question came out rougher than he intended, but Ivy didn't flinch. He needed her talking. Needed something to focus on besides the fantasy of her spread out beneath him, gasping his name.
"My grandmother took out a loan twenty years ago. Roof repairs on the diner—it was leaking bad enough to ruin the kitchen ceiling." Ivy's voice was quiet, careful not to wake Mae. "Eight thousand dollars, which was a fortune back then. She paid on it for years, thought she had it almost cleared."
"Thought?"
"I went through her records after she passed.
Found statements, receipts, canceled checks.
But somewhere along the line, the original lender sold the debt to someone else.
And that someone sold it again. By the time this man showed up at my door, the paperwork didn't look anything like what my grandmother signed. "
Splinter's jaw clenched. "Debt collectors who buy old accounts and inflate them until people can't fight back. Seen it before."
"You have?"
"Club's dealt with predators like that. They target people who can't afford lawyers, who don't know how to push back through legal channels. Squeeze them until they break or give up everything they have."
Mae stirred against his side, mumbling something in her sleep. Her fingers tightened on his briefly, then relaxed again.
"The amount he named," Ivy continued, her voice barely above a whisper now, "is more than the diner earns in a year.
More than my house is worth. Even if I sold everything, I couldn't pay it.
And he knew that. He wasn't there to collect—he was there to scare me.
To make me understand that I'm helpless and he's not. "
"You're not helpless."
"I was." She turned to look at him, and even in the fading light he could see the steel underneath the exhaustion.
"I'm not anymore. I don't know what it means, trusting you—trusting your club.
I don't know what this is going to cost me.
But I know what doing nothing costs, and I can't pay that price either. "
The road curved ahead of them, the safehouse appearing around a bend like it had been waiting for exactly this moment. Small, solid, hidden in a fold of the mountain where no one could stumble on it by accident.
"Here."
Mae was fully asleep now, her head heavy against his arm, her hand still wrapped around his fingers. Splinter eased the truck to a stop and cut the engine, the sudden silence broken only by the girl's soft breathing.
"I'll get the door," Ivy said. "You—"
"I've got her."
He didn't know why the words came out so firm, so final, like a claim he wasn't entitled to make. But Ivy didn't argue. Just nodded once and slipped out of the truck, moving toward the cabin with the key he'd handed her.
Splinter looked down at Mae's sleeping face. The tear tracks had dried on her cheeks, faint traces of nightmares she was too young to carry. Her fingers stayed curled around his even in sleep, like she knew somehow that he wouldn't let go.
Some things you can't unsee. Some wrongs you can't walk away from.
Timber's voice echoed in his memory, and Splinter understood now what he hadn't quite grasped before. This wasn't about the club handling a problem. This wasn't about prospect duty or earning his patch.
This was personal.
This woman and her daughter had crawled under his skin in the space of a week, made themselves essential in ways he didn't have words for. And whoever was threatening them—whoever had put this fear in a five-year-old's eyes and carved those shadows into Ivy's face—was going to pay for it.
Not because the club demanded it.
Because he did.
Ivy appeared in the cabin doorway, warm light spilling out behind her, and something in her expression made his chest tight. Not fear anymore. Not exhaustion. Something softer. Something that looked almost like hope.
And God help him, looking at her silhouetted in that warm light, he wanted things he had no right to want.
Wanted to carry Mae inside and tuck her into bed, then carry Ivy to a different bed entirely.
Wanted to peel those worn clothes off her body and learn every inch of her with his hands and his mouth.
Wanted to hear what sounds she made when she came, whether she'd say his name or just gasp wordlessly, whether she'd dig her nails into his back or fist them in the sheets.
"It's warm inside," she said quietly. "And there's a bedroom in the back where she can sleep."
Splinter gathered Mae carefully, cradling her against his chest with hands that knew how to be gentle even when gentleness didn't come naturally. She weighed nothing. Felt fragile and precious and his in a way that made no sense and all the sense in the world.
He carried her inside without waking her.
And tried not to think about how badly he wanted to stay.