Wrecked By Rev (Sons of Ruin: Tucson Chapter #8)

1. Angel

ANGEL

The alarm goes off at four-thirty, and I’m already awake.

I’ve been awake since three, staring at the ceiling, running through prep lists in my head because that’s easier than thinking about anything else.

Bacon. Eggs. The sourdough that should be ready for its final proof.

Whether I remembered to order more half-and-half or if I’m going to be making apologetic faces at the morning regulars again.

I swing my legs out of bed and plant my feet on the cold floor. Deep breath. Another day.

Sunrise Café opens at six. I’m usually there by five, because the bread won’t bake itself and the coffee won’t brew itself, and nobody else is going to do it. That’s the deal I made when I opened this place three years ago. No loans. No investors, and no one to answer to but myself.

It cost me everything I had saved and about two years off my life expectancy from stress, but it’s mine.

The drive is quiet this early. Tucson is still sleeping, the streets empty except for delivery trucks and the occasional jogger who’s either extremely dedicated or regretting their choices.

I park in the back lot, check my mirrors twice—habit now, four months of the same habit, and I scan the shadows before I get out.

Nothing. No one.

I hate that I have to check.

Inside, the café smells like yesterday’s coffee and the ghost of cinnamon rolls. I flip on the lights, tie my apron, and get to work. The sourdough needs attention. The espresso machine needs warming up. The bacon needs to hit the flat-top by five-forty five if I want it ready for the first rush.

This is the part I love. The quiet before the doors open. Just me and the hiss of the grill and the rhythm of prep work. I built this. Every tile, every menu item, every stupid decision about what colour to paint the walls. Sunrise Café is proof that I can make something good out of nothing.

I needed that proof, after Jonah.

By six, the first regulars are trickling in.

Marta, who’s been coming every morning since I opened and always orders the same thing—two eggs over easy, wheat toast, black coffee.

She takes the same stool at the counter, unfolds her newspaper, and settles in like she owns the place.

In a way, she does. She was my first customer.

Showed up on opening day, ordered coffee, and told me my prices were too low and my portions were too big.

Then she came back the next day. And the next.

Dave from the hardware store two blocks over. A couple of nurses from the hospital on night shift, looking for breakfast before they crash. They order pancakes and coffee and talk in the kind of quiet, exhausted voices that come from twelve hours of keeping people alive.

I pour coffee. I crack eggs. I smile and chat and pretend everything is fine.

I’m good at pretending. Three years of running this place has given me a customer service mask so convincing I almost believe it myself some days. Today is not one of those days.

During the seven o’clock lull, I realize I left my phone charger in the car. Stupid. I’ve been running on four hours of sleep, and it’s starting to show.

I slip out the back door—and stop.

There’s a note on my windshield.

It wasn’t there when I arrived. I would have seen it. I checked, the way I always check now, scanning for anything out of place before I got out of the car. The windshield was clear at five this morning.

It’s not clear now.

My feet feel heavy as I cross the parking lot.

The paper is folded neatly in half. Tucked under my wiper blade with care, positioned exactly in the center of the windshield.

He does everything with care. That’s the part that gets me—the precision of it.

The patience. The fact that he was here, in this parking lot, sometime in the last two hours, while I was inside pouring coffee and cracking eggs and pretending everything was fine.

I unfold the note.

Thinking of you.

No signature. No name. Just those three words in neat handwriting on plain white paper.

My stomach drops. I look around the lot, scanning the street, the alley entrance, the cars parked along the kerb. Nothing. No one. He’s already gone.

That’s almost worse.

Four months. Four months of this, and it still hits me fresh every time. The notes. The texts from numbers I don’t recognize. The way he shows up at the café and orders coffee and looks at me like we have something, like I owe him something, when all I ever did was say no.

His name is Niall Garrett. He owns a landscaping company. Coaches youth soccer. Volunteers at the food bank. Everyone in this neighborhood thinks he’s a great guy.

I know better.

I crumple the note in my fist and go back inside.

“You okay, honey?” Marta asks when I refill her coffee. She’s eighty-two and sharper than anyone gives her credit for.

“Fine. Just tired.”

She gives me a look that says she doesn’t believe me, but she lets it go. That’s the thing about regulars—they notice things, but they also know when not to push.

The rest of the morning blurs by. I’m on autopilot, smiling when I should smile, making small talk when small talk is required. But underneath it all, there’s this low hum of dread that never quite goes away. It lives in my chest now. A permanent tenant.

Around eleven, Pete Dominguez comes in for his usual late breakfast. He’s a landscaper too—works for a different company, competes with Niall for contracts. Nice guy. Talks too much about his fantasy football team, but harmless.

“Hey, Angel.” He grins as I set down his plate of huevos rancheros. “So you and Niall Garrett, huh? He’s been talking about you non-stop lately. Says you two have really hit it off.”

The plate nearly slips from my fingers. “What?”

“Yeah, we were at the same job site yesterday. Wouldn’t shut up about you. How great you are, how happy he is.” Pete shrugs, still smiling, completely oblivious to the way my stomach just turned inside out. “Honestly, I didn’t even know you were seeing anyone. You two official now, or what?”

“No.” The word comes out harder than I mean it to. “We’re not together. We’ve never been together. I’ve spoken to him maybe five times, and every single one of those times I told him I wasn’t interested.”

Pete’s smile falters. “Oh. Shit. I just assumed—he made it sound like—”

“Well, he lied.”

The silence stretches. Pete looks down at his plate, clearly wishing he’d never opened his mouth.

“Sorry,” I manage. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know.”

He nods, still uncomfortable, and focuses on his food. I retreat to the kitchen and press my hands flat against the stainless steel counter, breathing slow.

He’s telling people we’re together. Building a story. Making it so that when I say he won’t leave me alone, everyone will think I’m the crazy one. But Niall said you were dating…Niall said you were happy.

Four months.

The cops won’t help. I’ve tried. He hasn’t technically done anything illegal—no threats, no trespassing, no physical contact. Just a guy who’s interested, they said. Just a guy who doesn’t take no well, they said. Give it time, they said. He’ll move on.

He hasn’t moved on.

My friends think I’m overreacting. He seems so nice, they say. Are you sure you’re not misreading things? Like I don’t know the difference between interest and obsession. Like I haven’t felt him watching me from across the street, patient and smiling, waiting for me to come around.

I’m not going to come around. And he’s not going to stop.

I close up at three, same as always. The lunch rush was steady—sandwiches and salads and the soup of the day, which was tomato basil because I didn’t have the energy for anything more complicated.

I count the register. Wipe down the tables.

Sweep the floors. All the tasks I’ve done a thousand times, in the same order, because routine is the only thing holding me together.

Check the parking lot twice before I walk to my car. No white truck. No Niall. Just the crumpled note still sitting on my passenger seat, a reminder that I’m never quite alone anymore.

I get in my car and ready myself for the drive home. But it’s also when I slow down long enough to let myself think.

I can’t keep living like this. Checking over my shoulder constantly. Jumping at every engine that sounds like his truck. Lying awake at night wondering if tonight’s the night he finally crosses a line that someone besides me will take seriously.

I need help. The kind of help that can’t come from the cops or my friends or anyone who looks at Niall Garrett and sees the nice guy everyone else sees.

I need someone who looks dangerous.

The thought surfaces fully formed, like it’s been waiting. And with it comes a name I haven’t let myself think about in five years.

Rev.

He’s Sons of Ruin. The mechanic. Jonah used to mention him—the guy who was always in the garage, quiet and intense, the one you went to when something needed fixing and you didn’t want to explain why.

He does side jobs for cash. Not advertised, just word of mouth.

I heard about it through my brother, back when my brother was still alive.

Back when I could stomach being around the club at all.

I haven’t been to the Sons clubhouse since Jonah’s funeral.

Haven’t talked to any of the brothers. Haven’t even let myself hear a Harley engine without flinching.

Five years of carefully constructed distance, because every time I saw that patch—the Sons of Ruin reaper grinning from a leather cut—all I could think about was my brother’s casket.

Blown tyre on the highway. Dead before the ambulance arrived.

The club sent flowers. Sent brothers to stand in the back of the church.

Sent food and condolences and offers of help I couldn’t accept because accepting would mean staying around the club, and I couldn’t bear it.

I had to get out of their circle and be around something that didn’t smell like engine oil and leather and loss.

And now I’m thinking about walking back in.

I sit in my parking spot for ten minutes, keys in my lap, trying to talk myself out of it.

There has to be another way. Hire a private investigator. Move to a different city. Buy a gun and learn how to use it.

But I know Niall. He’s not going to stop because I changed my locks or learned self-defense. He’s going to stop when he sees something that scares him more than losing me does.

A patched biker might do that.

Before I can overthink it any further, I start the car.

Rev works out of a garage on the east side of town.

I remember the address from Jonah—he got his bike serviced there, used to drag me along sometimes when he needed a ride home while his Harley was in pieces.

I’d sit on a folding chair in the corner and watch him talk shop with the other guys, pretending to be annoyed but secretly loving that he wanted me there.

That was Jonah. Always wanted me close, even when I had nothing to contribute to the conversation.

I haven’t been back since. But the route is still burned into my memory, like a scar that won’t fade.

The closer I get, the harder it is to breathe.

The garage looks the same. A little more weathered, maybe. The paint peeling in a few new places. Same hand-painted sign, same row of bikes parked outside, chrome catching the afternoon sun, and the same smell of grease and metal that hits me the second I open my car door.

The smell is the worst part. It brings back everything—the cookouts, the parties, the way Jonah used to smell after a long ride. Like freedom, he’d say. Like the road.

My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.

I almost turn around three times.

But I think about the note on my windshield. About Pete asking if we’re dating. About four more months of this, or four years, or however long it takes for Niall to get bored or for me to fall apart completely.

I walk inside.

The garage is dim after the afternoon sun. It takes my eyes a second to adjust. And then I see him.

Rev.

He’s bigger than I remember. Broader through the shoulders, arms thick with muscle and ink, hands covered in grease. Dark hair kept short, stubble along his jaw. He’s bent over an engine, focused, and when he hears my footsteps, he straightens up and turns.

His eyes find mine.

Something shifts in his face. Recognition, but more than that. Something I can’t read.

“Angel.”

He says my name as if he’s been waiting to say it. Like it means something.

I wasn’t expecting that.

I open my mouth to explain why I’m here. The words catch somewhere between my brain and my tongue. The cut on his chest keeps pulling my eyes—that same reaper, grinning up at me. Jonah’s patch. Jonah’s club. Jonah’s brothers.

I can’t do this.

“I’m sorry,” I hear myself say. “This was a mistake.”

I turn and walk out before he can respond. My legs feel like they belong to someone else. The sunlight is too bright. I make it to my car, slam the door, and grip the steering wheel with both hands.

My hands are shaking.

I can’t go back there. I can’t look at that patch and not see my brother’s funeral. I can’t—

But I can’t keep living like this either.

I’m going to have to go back. Tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever I work up the nerve again. Whatever this costs me, it’s better than another four months of Niall.

I pull out of the parking lot and head home, still shaking.

But there’s something else now. Underneath the grief and the fear and the frustration. Something I don’t want to examine too closely.

The way Rev looked at me. The way he said my name, like it had weight.

I shove the thought down hard.

This is business. An arrangement. That’s all it can be.

That’s all I can afford to let it be.