Chapter 3 - Quinn
Mariah's bedroom is exactly what I would've imagined if someone had given me five minutes and told me to picture a five-year-old's perfect world made real.
There's a small white bed pushed against one wall with a purple comforter covered in stars and moons, a bookshelf crammed with picture books that look genuinely read rather than decoratively arranged, a toy chest overflowing with stuffed animals and plastic dinosaurs and what appears to be an extensive collection of toy cars.
The walls are painted with a soft lavender, and there are drawings taped up everywhere—dragons, horses, houses with smoke curling from chimneys, families holding hands with smiles that take up half their faces.
It's warm. Loved. Safe.
It's everything I would've wanted for a child of my own, if I'd been allowed to have one.
I shove that thought down before it can get its claws in deep and focus instead on the drawing Mariah is currently thrusting into my hands, bouncing on her toes with excitement.
"See? That's the dragon. His name is Firecracker because he breathes fire and he's really loud. And that's me riding him. And that's Daddy on the ground being protected because dragons protect people, they don't hurt them, not good dragons anyway."
I study the picture with the seriousness it deserves.
The dragon is purple with elaborate wings that take up most of the page, breathing what I assume is fire but looks more like orange and red confetti.
Mariah has drawn herself on its back with dark curls flying behind her and an enormous smile, one arm raised in what might be triumph or greeting.
Dean is smaller, standing on the ground below, and she's drawn him with detail: the lean build, the messy hair, even what looks like an attempt at the tattoos on his arms rendered in crayon scribbles.
"This is really good, Mariah," I say, and I mean it. There's energy in the drawing, motion, a story being told. "Firecracker looks very powerful."
"He is. He could beat a hundred bad guys."
"A hundred is a lot of bad guys."
"He's a really good dragon." She says it with the absolute certainty of someone who has never once doubted the capabilities of imaginary creatures.
I hear footsteps in the hallway, and I know without looking that it's Dean. He moves quietly for someone his size, probably years of practice being aware of exactly how much space he takes up and where every piece of himself is at all times. I've moved that way myself. Still do, on the worse days.
He appears in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, "Firecracker, huh?" he says, and Mariah whips around, delighted to have an audience for this conversation.
"I showed her, Daddy. She says he's powerful."
"He looks very powerful," Dean agrees, pushing off the doorframe and crossing to where we're standing. He's close enough now that I can smell motor oil and something clean, like soap or detergent.
He’s not bulky like some of the men I served with who spent all their free time in the weight room chasing the kind of muscle that looks impressive but moves slow. He's lean, wiry, built like someone who's spent years doing physical work that requires both strength and endurance.
Dangerous, I think, and then immediately feel stupid for thinking it because of course he's dangerous, he's in an outlaw motorcycle club at war with traffickers, what else would he be?
But it's not that kind of dangerous. It's the kind where he's three moves ahead before you've figured out you're playing a game. The kind where by the time you realize what he's done, it's already over and you've lost.
I've always been good at planning. The military loved that about me, put me in logistics, in coordination, places where my ability to see twelve steps ahead meant missions succeeded and people came home alive.
But standing in this lavender bedroom watching Dean Porter watch his daughter, I get the sense I'm standing across from someone who thinks the same way I do, who's already mapped out every possible version of how this arrangement could go and is currently deciding which version he's going to let happen.
It should make me nervous. It doesn't. It makes me curious.
"I've got a guest room ready for you," Dean says, casually, but I hear the real question underneath it.
Are you actually prepared to commit to this the way you said you were?
"Down the hall from this one. Figured if you're gonna be responsible for her safety, you should be close enough to respond if something happens in the middle of the night. "
I blink, surprised by how direct he's being. "You sure? That's a lot of trust for someone you just met."
"Ranger vouched for you. That's enough." He glances at Mariah, who's now digging through her toy chest looking for something, half her body disappeared into its depths.
"And honestly, I've been running myself into the ground trying to be in two places at once.
Having you here, in the house, means I can actually sleep at night knowing she's protected. "
"Okay. Yeah. That works for me."
"Her schedule's pretty simple," he continues. "Up by seven, breakfast, usually plays or reads until lunch. Afternoon's naptime but she fights it most days. Dinner around six. Bed by eight, but good luck with that timeline."
"I don't take naps," Mariah announces from inside the toy chest, muffled. "Naps are for babies."
"You fell asleep on the couch yesterday at three PM," Dean says, fond exasperation coloring his voice.
"That was resting my eyes."
I laugh before I can stop myself, and Dean's mouth quirks up on one side in something that's almost a smile but not quite, like he's out of practice with the full version.
"She doesn't go to kindergarten?" I ask.
"Starts in the fall. Right now she goes to a pre-K program three days a week, but I pulled her out temporarily because of..." He gestures vaguely, and I understand. Because of the war. Because it's safer to keep her close than to send her somewhere he can't control every variable.
"Makes sense."
Mariah emerges from the toy chest triumphant, holding a battered copy of a picture book I recognize—Where the Wild Things Are. "Will you read this?"
She's asking me, not her father, and I feel Dean's attention sharpen on me again, watching how I handle this.
"I'd love to," I say, taking the book and settling onto the floor with my back against her bed because sitting on the floor with kids has always felt more natural to me than sitting in chairs above them, talking down.
Mariah immediately plops down beside me, close enough that our shoulders are touching, and Captain the rabbit gets arranged on her lap.
I open the book and start reading, doing the voices the way my own father used to before he stopped being the kind of father who did voices and became the kind who only knew how to communicate through violence.
That's one of the only good memories I have of him, the year or two before everything went wrong, before the drinking got bad and the anger got worse, when he'd read to me and Ranger at bedtime and do all the monster voices, growling and dramatic.
I push that memory away and focus on the page in front of me, on the wild things with their terrible teeth and terrible claws, on Max in his wolf suit making mischief of one kind and another.
Mariah leans heavier against my shoulder as I read, her breathing evening out, and by the time I get to the part where Max sails back home, she's warm and completely relaxed against me like she's known me her entire life instead of twenty minutes.
When I finish and close the book, I glance up and find Dean still in the doorway, but he's not watching Mariah anymore. He's watching me, and there's something in his expression that makes my breath catch slightly in my chest.
"She doesn't usually warm up to people that fast," he says.
"I'm pretty good with kids," I say, which feels inadequate but is also true.
Mariah leaning against me like this, trusting me completely within minutes, is both the highest compliment I could receive and the most likely thing to break my heart wide open if I let it.
I can't let it.
Dean crosses the room and crouches down beside us, gently scooping Mariah up even though she's clearly awake and just pretending she's not. "Naptime, baby girl. No arguments."
"Not tired," she mumbles into his shoulder, but she's already wrapping her arms around his neck, Captain dangling from one hand.
"Sure you're not." He carries her to the bed, settles her under the purple comforter, tucks Captain in beside her. "Quinn's gonna be here when you wake up. She's staying with us now. In the room down the hall."
"Really?" Mariah's eyes crack open slightly, checking my face like she needs visual confirmation. "She's staying forever?"
"For a while," Dean says, and I appreciate that he's not making promises he can't guarantee. "But yeah, she'll be here every day."
"Good," Mariah says, satisfied, and closes her eyes again.
Dean straightens slowly, jerking his head toward the door. I follow him out into the hallway, and he pulls the door behind us, leaving it open just a crack.
We stand there for a moment in the quiet hallway, and I'm suddenly very aware that we're alone now, no five-year-old buffer between us, just two people trying to figure out what they've agreed to. Living in the same house changes things. Makes this more intimate somehow, more complicated.
"Guest room's this way," he says, moving down the hall.
I follow, and he pushes open a door near the end, revealing a simple but clean space.
Full bed with a gray comforter, nightstand with a lamp, dresser against one wall, small closet.
There's a window overlooking the backyard, bars on it like every other window I've seen in this house, decorative-looking but functional.
"Bathroom's across the hall. Shared, but it's just the three of us so it shouldn't be an issue. "
"This is great," I say, and mean it. I've slept in much worse. Deployed, I slept in tents and temporary structures and once in an abandoned building with half the roof missing. This is practically luxury. "Thank you."
"You can bring your stuff in whenever." He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, and I recognize the posture now as his default thinking position.
"There's food in the kitchen, help yourself to whatever.
I'm usually up early, gone to the clubhouse by eight most mornings for a few hours, back by lunch.
You'll have her mornings and evenings, I'll cover afternoons when I can. "
"What about nights? If something happens at the club?"
His jaw tightens slightly. "Then you're the first line of defense. Gun safe's in my room, code is—" He rattles off six numbers. "If anyone comes through that door who isn't supposed to be here, you get Mariah into my room, lock the door, arm yourself, and call me. Don't try to be a hero."
"I spent six years in the military, Dean. I know how to handle a threat."
"I'm sure you do." His eyes are steady on mine. "But this isn't the military. This is my daughter. Protocol is you keep her safe first, yourself second, everything else distant third. Clear?"
"Crystal."
He's trusting me with the most important thing in his world. I'm accepting that responsibility knowing exactly what it might cost.
"She's great, by the way," I say, because it seems like the thing to say and because it's true. "Mariah. She's really great."
"She is." His voice has gone softer. "Her mother said she was too much. Too loud, too demanding, too exhausting. Said motherhood wasn't what she signed up for and walked out when Mariah was barely two."
The anger that rises in me is immediate and familiar, the same anger I felt when Ranger first told me this story yesterday on the phone. "She was wrong," I say flatly. "About all of it."
Dean looks at me for a long moment, and I watch something change behind his eyes, some decision being made in real-time.
"I need you to understand something," he says.
"I don't do anything halfway, especially not when it comes to her.
If you're gonna be in her life, living here, seeing her every day, you're gonna be in it for real.
She'll get attached. That's who she is. And if you decide a month from now that this is too much, that she's too much, and you walk away—"
"I won't," I interrupt, and there's more force in my voice than I intended. "I'm not her mother, Dean. I don't make promises I'm not going to keep, and I don't walk away from kids who need me."
He studies my face like he's searching for cracks in the foundation, places where my certainty might crumble under pressure. I let him look. I've got nothing to hide on this front.
What I can't tell him is that I'd give anything to be someone's mother, that every child I protect or care for or teach is me trying to fill a hole that can't actually be filled, that sometimes when I hold other people's kids I have to actively fight back the grief of knowing I'll never hold my own.
That's mine to carry. Not his. Not Mariah's.
"Okay," he says finally, and something in his shoulders releases. "Okay. Welcome to the chaos, Quinn Nash."
"Happy to be here," I say, and realize with some surprise that I mean it.
He pushes off the doorframe, runs a hand through his already messy hair. "I'll let you get settled. Come find me if you need anything. I'll probably be in the kitchen pretending I know how to cook dinner."
He disappears down the hallway, and I stand alone in my new room, looking at the bed I'll sleep in, the window I'll watch for threats, the door I'll guard with my life if it comes to that.
I've fought wars. I've survived things that should've killed me. I've learned to live with the nightmares; the scars and the permanent absence of a future I thought I'd have.
Protecting one five-year-old girl in a house with her father down the hall should be simple.
So why does it feel like I just signed up for something infinitely more complicated than any mission I've ever done before?