Chapter 6
Ivy woke to the sound of whittling.
She lay still for a moment, disoriented by the unfamiliar ceiling and the quality of mountain light filtering through curtains she didn't recognize.
Then memory crashed back—the debt, the threats, the quiet biker who'd carried her daughter into a cabin hidden so deep in the hills that even the sky felt different here.
The whittling sound continued. Soft, rhythmic scrapes of blade against wood.
She found them on the cabin's small front porch, Mae perched on an overturned bucket with her chin propped on her fists, watching Splinter work a piece of scrap lumber into something recognizable. His knife moved with practiced certainty, curls of wood falling at his feet like offerings.
"What's he making?" Ivy asked from the doorway.
Mae's head whipped around, her whole face bright with the kind of joy Ivy hadn't seen in weeks. "A horse, Mama! A horse just for me!"
Splinter glanced up, and something passed between them—a look that lasted a heartbeat too long, carried a weight that had nothing to do with wooden toys. Then he turned back to his work, the knife resuming its steady rhythm.
"Found some good scraps in the shed. Oak, mostly. Should hold up to whatever she puts it through."
"You didn't have to—"
"Wanted to." Simple words. No room for argument in them.
Ivy leaned against the doorframe, watching his hands shape the wood with movements that spoke of years of practice.
He didn't look at what he was doing—didn't need to.
His fingers knew the work the way her hands knew a griddle, muscle memory and instinct combined into something that looked like magic.
Those hands.
She couldn't stop staring at them. The way they moved—confident, precise, capable.
The calluses she could see from here, evidence of a lifetime of physical work.
The gentle way they handled the blade, coaxing beauty from raw material with patience she wouldn't have expected from a man who looked like him.
A flush crept up her neck, and she forced herself to look away.
Stop it.
She was exhausted and scared and depending on this man to keep her daughter safe.
The absolute last thing she should be doing was noticing how his forearms flexed when he worked, or how his jaw tightened with concentration, or how she kept wondering what those hands would feel like on her body instead of wood.
But she couldn't stop wondering.
"You've done this before," she managed, hoping her voice didn't betray her thoughts.
"Some." The knife paused, then continued. "Learned from my grandfather, back before he passed. Built furniture, mostly. Fixed things. Wood never lies to you—tells you exactly what it wants to be if you know how to listen."
Mae scooted closer to him, her small body gravitating toward his like he was the sun and she was caught in his orbit. "Can I help?"
"You can hold the pieces while I check the fit. Think you can do that?"
"Yes." The word came out fierce with determination.
Ivy watched her daughter take a carved piece in both hands, holding it steady while Splinter examined the angles with an appraiser's eye. Mae's face was serious, focused, utterly absorbed in a task that meant something because he had asked her to do it.
Her heart did something complicated in her chest.
This man—this stranger in leather who'd walked into her diner and refused to look away—had given Mae back something the fear had stolen. Purpose. Joy. The sense that the world contained good things worth paying attention to.
Ivy hadn't realized how much she'd missed seeing her daughter smile until the smile came back.
The morning stretched into afternoon, and Mae didn't leave Splinter's side.
She followed him when he checked the perimeter. Helped him stack firewood by the hearth. Sat on the kitchen counter while he made sandwiches for lunch, asking questions that tumbled out of her mouth faster than he could answer them.
"How come your name is Splinter?"
"Club name. Earned it because I work with wood."
"How come you work with wood?"
"Because it's honest. You put in the work, you get something real back."
"How come you're helping us?"
A pause. Ivy held her breath, standing in the doorway where she'd stopped to listen.
"Because some things are worth doing whether anyone asks you to or not." Splinter's voice was quiet, matter-of-fact. "Your mama needed help. You needed to feel safe. That's enough reason."
Mae considered this with the gravity only children can bring to simple questions. "Do you have a little girl?"
"No."
"Do you want one?"
Ivy's heart stopped.
Splinter went still, the sandwich half-assembled in his hands. When he spoke, his voice had changed—rougher, like the words cost him something to produce.
"Never thought I'd be any good at it. Taking care of someone. Building something that lasts."
"Why not?"
"Never had much practice. Grew up without a lot of people around. Figured I was better at being alone."
Mae reached out and patted his arm with the solemnity of a five-year-old dispensing wisdom. "You're good at it. You made me a horse."
Something flickered across Splinter's face—surprise, maybe, or wonder, or the particular ache of being seen clearly by someone too young to know how to lie.
"Yeah," he said finally. "I guess I did."
Ivy escaped to the shower while Mae napped, needing the hot water and the privacy to get her head straight.
It wasn't working.
She stood under the spray, eyes closed, and all she could see was him. His hands on the wood. His patience with Mae. The way he'd looked at her across the porch this morning, like she was something worth paying attention to.
Stop.
But her body wasn't listening to her brain.
Heat pooled low in her belly, familiar and unwelcome. She pressed her thighs together, trying to ignore the ache building between them. It had been so long since anyone had touched her. So long since she'd even wanted anyone to touch her.
And now she couldn't stop imagining those carpenter's hands sliding up her thighs. Rough calluses against soft skin. Strong fingers gripping her hips, tilting her exactly where he wanted her.
What would he feel like?
The thought slipped through before she could stop it.
She imagined his mouth on her neck—had seen him watching her there, more than once, his eyes dropping to her pulse point before snapping back to her face. Imagined his body pressing her against the shower wall, hard and hot and there in a way no one had been in years.
Her hand drifted down her stomach before she realized what she was doing.
No.
She jerked her hand back like she'd been burned.
She was a mother. A business owner. A woman in hiding from men who wanted to destroy her. She didn't have time for fantasies about rough-handed bikers who carved wooden horses and looked at her like she was something worth protecting.
She turned the water to cold and stood under the spray until her teeth chattered.
It didn't help.
By evening, the horse was finished.
Mae clutched it to her chest like a talisman, running her fingers over the smooth curves and the carefully carved mane. Splinter had added details Ivy hadn't noticed him working on—tiny ears, a flowing tail, hooves that stood firm on flat surfaces.
"I'm gonna name her Brave," Mae announced. "Because she's not scared of anything."
"Good name." Splinter sat on the floor by the fire, his back against the couch where Ivy had curled up to watch them. The firelight painted shadows across his face, softening the hard edges into something almost tender. "Brave horses are the best kind."
Mae nodded seriously, then climbed into his lap like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like she belonged there. Like he was the father she'd never had and always wanted, appearing out of thin air just when she needed him most.
Splinter's arms came around her automatically, adjusting to accommodate her small body with an ease that made Ivy's eyes sting.
And made her body ache.
She watched his hands—those hands, always those hands—settle on Mae's back, gentle and protective. Watched the firelight play across the muscles of his forearms. Watched the way he held her daughter like she was something precious, something worth keeping.
What would it feel like to be held like that?
The thought hit her like a wave, dragging her under. She imagined crawling down from the couch, settling into his other side, letting him wrap that arm around her too. Imagined tilting her face up and finding his mouth waiting, soft and warm and wanting.
Imagined Mae falling asleep between them, and the two of them carrying her to bed together, and then—
And then.
Her thighs pressed together. Her breath came faster. She was grateful for the darkness beyond the firelight, hiding the flush she could feel spreading down her chest.
"Splinter?"
"Yeah, little one?"
"Are you going to stay forever?"
The question hung in the air.
Ivy felt it land in her own chest, felt the weight of everything that word contained.
Forever. Such a small word for such a massive concept.
Mae was asking about permanence, about stability, about whether this man who'd appeared in their lives like a guardian angel was going to stay or disappear the way her father had before she was old enough to remember his face.
And Ivy realized, with a clarity that stole her breath, that she was asking herself the same question.
Did she want him to stay?
The answer came faster than she expected. Louder than she was ready for.
Yes.
She wanted this quiet, steady man with his calloused hands and his careful words and his way of making her daughter feel safe. She wanted mornings on the porch watching him work wood into wonder. She wanted evenings by the fire with Mae tucked against him like she'd always been there.
She wanted his hands on her. His mouth on her. His body covering hers in the dark.
She wanted things she'd stopped believing in years ago, and the wanting terrified her.
Splinter's eyes met hers over Mae's head. She saw the same question reflected back at her—the same uncertainty, the same fragile hope neither of them quite knew how to hold.
And something else.
Heat.
Quickly banked, carefully controlled, but there. He wanted her too. She could see it in the way his jaw tightened, the way his fingers flexed against Mae's back, the way his eyes dropped to her mouth before snapping back to her gaze.
"Some things take time to know," he said finally, his voice soft enough that the words felt meant for both of them. "Can't promise forever when tomorrow's still figuring itself out."
Mae's face fell. Ivy felt the disappointment in her own chest, sharper than it had any right to be.
But Splinter wasn't finished.
"What I can promise," he continued, "is that I'm not going anywhere tonight. Or tomorrow. Or the day after that." His arms tightened around Mae, and his eyes stayed locked on Ivy's. "Some things you build one day at a time. And I'm not much good at walking away from things I've started building."
Mae processed this with the intensity of someone working through a math problem. "So... maybe forever?"
A ghost of a smile crossed Splinter's face. "Maybe forever. We'll see."
"Okay." Mae yawned, the exhaustion of a long day finally catching up to her. "I think maybe forever is good."
She was asleep within minutes, her small body going limp against Splinter's chest, the wooden horse still clutched in her hands. He didn't move, didn't shift her weight, just sat there in the firelight holding her like she was something precious.
Ivy watched them, her throat tight with emotions she couldn't name.
This wasn't supposed to happen. She wasn't supposed to fall for a man she'd known less than a week, a biker with a dangerous life and a club that solved problems through violence. She wasn't supposed to let her daughter attach herself to someone who might disappear when the trouble was over.
She wasn't supposed to lie awake tonight thinking about his hands, his mouth, his body—imagining him slipping into her room after Mae was asleep, pressing her into the mattress, making her feel things she'd forgotten she was capable of feeling.
But Mae was sleeping peacefully for the first time in days. And Splinter was looking at her like she was something worth staying for.
And Ivy was so tired of being afraid of wanting things.
"Thank you," she whispered.
He shook his head, just once. "Don't thank me yet. This isn't over."
"I know. But tonight—" She swallowed hard. "Tonight feels like something I didn't know I needed."
His eyes held hers in the firelight, and the promise in them had nothing to do with words.
I'm not going anywhere tonight.
For now, that was enough.
Even if her body wanted so much more.