Chapter 1 - Bex - No Place to Breathe
The girl wouldn’t look at me, avoiding eye contact. She stared at the beige curtain of the emergency room bay as if it held all of life’s answers. Like if she kept her eyes fixed there long enough, she wouldn’t have to feel the pain of why she was here in the first place.
“I’m fine,” she said again, even though she was bleeding through the pad pressed to her ribs. “Just stitch me up. These things happen; it was a club party and I don’t belong to anyone yet.”
Yet.
Someone split her lip clean through, and there were crescent bruises along her throat where someone had grabbed too hard, bruising that doesn’t happen during dancing. The kind that comes from being held in place for too long.
I cleaned the first wound in silence, noticing a heart tattoo that looked broken by a faint old scar and now the addition of this new mark.
The ER smelled of antiseptic and stale cool air from overworked vents. The monitors hummed as a nurse wheeled a crash cart past the bay without looking up. Somewhere down the hall, a trauma team called out vitals in quick, clipped bursts.
This part of the hospital always feels like controlled chaos, movement with purpose, pain with protocol. I prefer it to chaos without accountability.
“There’s no need to make it seem less important,” I said, not looking at her face while I sutured. “You can admit that someone hurt you.”
Her fingers tightened on the sheet, and I spotted a broken nail under her dried blood.
“It’s just how it goes,” she replied, her voice so soft I almost missed it.
Just how it goes.
I tied off the last stitch, and her breathing steadied once the sharpness was over. I handed her discharge instructions, told her what signs of internal damage to watch for, and gave her my number without making her feel any more uncomfortable than she already was.
“If you want to talk,” I said. “About anything.”
She still wouldn’t make eye contact, but she tucked my card into her bra, as if she didn’t want anyone to see it.
Smart girl.
The sun was rising by the time I stripped off my gloves and signed out for the day. My body felt hollowed out, the kind of exhaustion that sinks into bone and refuses to be reasoned with. It had become far too common to treat victims from club parties, and it was really weighing on me.
I walked out into the early morning light, breathing through the tension from twelve hours of broken bones, split skin, concussions, and overdoses. Twelve hours of men who got to go home and women who had to pretend nothing happened.
And now I was driving back through iron gates.
The Dawnbreakers compound sits behind a long stretch of cracked asphalt and tall chain fencing topped with razor wire. Two iron gates guard the entrance: dark, imposing, and impossible to ignore.
The prospect assigned to gate duty recognized my car as I pulled up and opened the gate without a word. Home sweet home. The thought made my stomach ache.
The gates rolled open slowly, metal dragging against gravel. Inside, bikes lined the lot in neat rows. The clubhouse itself rose from the centre of the property, old warehouse bones converted into something halfway between home, a frat house, and a bunker.
I let out a deep-seated sigh as I pull up to where I typically park. Declan loves it here. He says the walls feel solid, that this place has history steeped in brotherhood and blood, soaked into the foundation.
I felt watched the second I drove in. It’s always like this when you live among men who built their identity on territory.
I park near the side entrance and kill the engine. For a moment, I just sat there trying to build up the energy to walk into that building. I love my husband, but I hate this building. It’s a quiet confession, one I don’t say out loud. Not directly, at least.
He wants kids. He says families belong inside the compound. That sons should grow up around brothers who’d die for them and daughters should know what protection looks like.
He wants to build a house here, on the far side of the property, near the tree line. He’s pointed out the spot more than once. Told me where the porch would face. Where the garage would sit.
I told him I wanted the house first, that I wouldn’t have a baby in a room above a bar.
He took that personally, and we fought. Him saying that I don’t understand what it means to belong to something bigger than myself, and me saying that he doesn’t understand what it means to build a family without an audience.
He hasn’t mentioned the house again; I am still on birth control and we still live in the clubhouse.
I grab my bag, take a deep breath, and step inside.
The smell hits first. Stale beer soaked into the wood, burned-out cigarettes, sweat, and something cloyingly sweet clinging to the air from cheap perfume.
The main room is a sprawl of leather couches and long tables scarred with knife marks and burn rings. Empty bottles crowd every surface. One of the older members is asleep in a chair near the bar, head tipped back, mouth open, chest rising with each snore.
Music still thumps faintly through the walls, bass without melody, as if they didn’t party enough last night and they just had to keep it going. Or someone passed out before turning off the music.
Down the hallway, a door bangs against the plaster. A woman’s laugh carries out sharp and brittle, followed by the rhythmic knock of something hitting drywall.
Two brothers, only one of whom I recognize, stand near the kitchen, talking over a half-empty bottle.
“The spare rooms are for extracurricular activities,” one of them says, dragging on a cigarette. “You don’t bring club girls to your room. That’s for ol’ ladies.”
I love how they think that means something, that they came up with a rule that separates where you fuck your spouse from where you pass around one of the club girls.
I swallow my reaction and keep walking. A pair of high heels sits abandoned near the stairs. Glitter clings to the floor like fallout.
This is the part he doesn’t see when he talks about legacy, when he talks about respect, protection, and family. This is exactly what I see when he talks about babies and families.
I make my way down the narrow hall that leads to our room. The noise dulls but doesn’t disappear. It seeps through walls, through doors, and skin.
I keep my eyes down, but still see a brother fucking Kori, one of the club girls, up against the wall down the hall.
This is where he wants to raise a family.
Our room is halfway down on the right. I pause long enough to unlock the door and step inside. It’s barely bigger than a college dorm.
The bed is pushed against the wall, with a dresser with a cracked mirror framed on top and a small television mounted crooked near the ceiling.
His locked drawer bolted under the nightstand for weapons and cash.
That is pretty much it: no kitchen, no couch…
no living space for us to exist separately from the club.
Just a mattress and the ache of everything we could be, but still aren’t.
Declan is sitting on the edge of the bed when I enter, shirtless, ink winding down his shoulders and arms. Scars layered into muscle like footnotes. His cut hangs on the back of the one chair in the corner of the room. His boots lay kicked off near the wall.
His hair is mussed, jaw dark with stubble, eyes still heavy from the night. He doesn’t look like he’s slept yet.
Declan looks up, and something in him softens. “There you are.”
His voice holds that quality that he only shares with me: lower, softer, and stripped of bravado.
He stands and closes the distance fast. His hands settle on my waist before I can put my bag down, pulling me into him as if he’s anchoring himself. His mouth finds my neck.
“Missed you,” he murmured.
I close my eyes, not because I’m melting, but because I’m tired… on so many levels. He smells of whiskey, smoke, and the inside of this building.
His hands move under my shirt, fingers rough and sure.
“Declan,” I start.
He hums against my skin in response.
“I just worked twelve hours in trauma.”
“Then let me take care of you.” His tone is confident in what he wants. Like this is simple, like what I want or need right now is secondary.
I step back, putting space between us, and his hands pause mid-motion.
“I treated a sexual assault survivor from a club party tonight,” I say. “And then I walked through your brother’s screwing girls, who aren’t their ol’ ladies, in the spare rooms. I’m not in the mood.”
The softness drains from his face, replaced by his pride.
“You married an enforcer for a motorcycle club,” he says. “You know what this life is.”
“I know exactly what this life is.” I repeated to him.
He studies me. I know what he thinks he sees. He hates that I work at the hospital, hates that I see the ugly side of this life day in and day out. He has asked me to quit more times than I can count, but my job… what I do is the only thing that I have that is just mine.
“I’ve got options,” he adds, “If you will not satisfy my needs, maybe I will go spend some time in one of the spare rooms.”
I try to hide my reaction, a flinch at his words.
Sex is currency here. Loyalty is measured by who you do and don’t touch.
But Declan, or I guess I am talking to Clutch right now, has never said something like that to me before.
It was a concern when we first started dating, and he reassured me there would be no one else.
I cannot believe he just said that… I swallowed the hurt, trying to reply without the pain showing through, “And you know that I’m not the kind of woman who’d stay if you ever decided to use them.”
His jaw flexes, and I know he knows he fucked up.
I’ve never pretended to be easy. I made all my concerns known from the get-go.
The first time he proposed, I said no. We were in this room, the same sparse surroundings. Same walls vibrating with noise from down the hall. We had a fight when I told him I didn’t want to live here and he thought a ring would fix everything.
I told him I’d marry him when he was ready to build something outside of here, when I knew I would be a priority in his life. He was mad, but I thought maybe I got through to him.
Six months later, he tried again, on his knees in front of half the club like a spectacle.
Like if he made it public, I couldn’t refuse.
I said yes because he promised we’d make our own space, we would have a life that didn’t just revolve around the club.
Something of our own… but that never happened, and we are still stuck in this room.
“You’re tired,” he says, trying to fix what he just broke.
But there’s a difference between tired and dismissed. And I am tired of being dismissed. I grab a towel and head into the bathroom before the conversation tips into something uglier.
The bathroom is narrow enough that my elbow brushes the tile when I turn. I twist the shower knob and let hot water beat against my shoulders.
The girl’s face flashes in my head.
I don’t belong to anyone yet.
I brace my hands against the wall and breathe. I never wanted this life; it was everything I knew to stay away from and yet… Declan. He made it seem like no matter what it would always be me and him. I wanted that.
But I also want a house with a door that locks because it’s ours, not because it’s guarded.
I want quiet mornings and slow evenings.
I want to come home from a hard day at work and not walk through what I just walked through to get to my room.
I want to decide when we have children, not be cornered into it because this is what men here do when they feel their wives pulling away.
He thinks I don’t trust him.
I think he doesn’t see what this place does to women.
When I turn the water off and step back into the room, it’s empty. His boots and cut are gone.
I stare at the empty space as the faint vibration of music travels through the floorboards and a bottle rolls somewhere down the hall. I hear a bang that makes me jump, and then a woman gasps.
I stand there for a moment wrestling with going out there and checking to see if...
He wouldn’t.
But the fact that I even consider it? That’s the crack in our foundation that I don’t know how to fix.
So I climb into bed alone. The sheets are still warm where he sat, smelling like smoke and the cologne he uses occasionally.
From the hallway, a door slams, and a man’s voice rises in laughter thick with alcohol. Springs squeal against a wall somewhere down the corridor, steady and unembarrassed.
I curl in on myself as I stare at the ceiling, the light cutting through the blinds in thin blades.
Love is supposed to feel bigger than the room it lives in. But right now, this room feels too small for both of us.