3. Angel
ANGEL
He shows up at seven the next morning.
I’m behind the counter, refilling Marta’s coffee and half-listening to her complaints about her neighbor’s dog, when the door opens and Rev walks in.
The café goes quiet. Not completely—forks still scrape plates, the coffee machine still hisses—but there’s a shift.
People notice. Of course they notice. He’s six-two and built like he’s spent his whole life hauling engines, covered in ink, wearing a leather cut with a grinning reaper on the back.
He doesn’t belong here, surrounded by elderly regulars and nurses coming off shift and moms grabbing lattes before school drop-off.
He belongs here anyway. Something about the way he moves—unhurried, certain—makes it seem like he belongs wherever he decides to be.
He took a seat at the counter. End stool, back to the wall, facing the door. I’m not sure if that’s instinct or habit, or if he even knows he’s doing it.
“Coffee,” he says. “Black.”
“Coming right up.”
I pour it. Set it down in front of him. Our fingers brush against the ceramic, and I feel it all the way up my arm.
It’s an act, I remind myself. This is all an act.
“Thanks for coming,” I say quietly.
“Said I would.”
That’s it. That’s all he says. He picks up his coffee and drinks it, and I go back to work, and the café slowly returns to normal around us.
Except it doesn’t. Not really.
Marta catches my eye from her usual spot.
Raises one silver eyebrow in a way that says we’re going to talk about this later.
I pretend not to notice. Dave from the hardware store walks in, does a double-take at Rev, and suddenly finds something very interesting to study on his phone.
The nurses at the corner table are whispering to each other, stealing glances at the counter.
This is what I wanted. People seeing. People talking. Word spreading through the neighborhood like wildfire.
So why does my stomach feel like it’s full of bees?
I feel him watching me the entire shift. Not in a creepy way—not like Niall, whose gaze always felt like fingers crawling over my skin. Rev’s attention is different. Steady. Present. Like he’s making sure I’m okay without needing to ask.
Around eight-thirty, Linda McKenna comes in with her kids. She’s a regular—two boys, both under six, both capable of destroying a stack of pancakes in under ten minutes. She clocks Rev immediately, her eyebrows climbing toward her hairline.
“New friend?” she asks when I bring her the usual.
“Something like that.”
She glances at him again. At the cut, the tattoos, the way he takes up space just by existing.
“Huh,” she says. And then, lower: “Good for you.”
I don’t correct her. That’s the point.
By the end of the breakfast rush, half the neighborhood has seen Rev sitting at my counter. By tomorrow, everyone will know. That’s how it works in this part of town—news travels fast, and a Sons of Ruin biker hanging around the café is definitely news.
When the lull hits, I refill his coffee without him asking.
“You don’t have to stay all morning,” I say. “You probably have work.”
“Danny’s Sportster can wait.”
“Rev—”
“I’m staying until you close.” His eyes meet mine. Dark, steady, unreadable. “That was the deal.”
I want to argue. I don’t. Something about the way he’s looking at me makes the words dry up in my throat.
“Fine,” I managed. “But it feels like I’m paying you in coffee.”
“Works for me.”
He goes back to his cup. I go back to work. And the hours slide by faster than they have in months.
Three days later, I realize I’m in trouble.
Not the kind of trouble I expected—not Niall trouble, not danger trouble.
That part feels like it’s actually working.
His white truck has crawled past the café twice since Rev started showing up, but he hasn’t come inside.
Hasn’t left any notes. Hasn’t done anything except look, and even that feels different now. Less confident. More wary.
He sees Rev. He sees the cut, the size, the ink. And for the first time in four months, he’s keeping his distance.
It’s working. The plan is working.
The problem is everything else.
I’m starting to look forward to Rev showing up.
Starting to listen for the rumble of his bike, the creak of the door, the low scrape of the stool as he settles onto it.
Starting to notice things I have no business noticing—the way his hands wrap around the coffee cup, the scar across his knuckles, the way his jaw tightens when someone raises their voice on the street outside.
The way he says thank you when I refill his cup. Quiet, genuine, like he means it. The way he notices when I’m stressed and doesn’t try to fix it, just stays. The way he remembers how I take my own coffee—cream, no sugar—even though I only mentioned it once.
He doesn’t talk much. That should make it easier to keep my distance, but it doesn’t. The silence between us feels full somehow. Charged. Like there’s a conversation happening underneath the surface that neither of us is willing to have out loud.
And then there’s the touching.
It started small. His hand on my elbow when I walked past. A brush of fingers when I handed him his coffee. Little things, easy to dismiss, easy to chalk up to performance.
But yesterday, he put his hand on the small of my back when a customer got too loud and too close.
Just rested it there and a somehow comforting, possessive way, warm and heavy, while I handled the situation.
And I felt it for hours afterward. The phantom weight of his palm.
The heat of him seeping through my shirt.
I’m falling for him. That’s the truth I don’t want to look at.
I’m falling for a man who wears the same cut my brother wore when he died.
Jonah’s face flashes through my mind. The funeral.
The closed casket because there wasn’t enough left of him to show.
The way I couldn’t breathe for weeks afterward, couldn’t hear a motorcycle without wanting to scream.
The sound of Harleys still makes my chest tight—that low rumble that used to mean Jonah was coming home and now just means he’s never coming home again.
I swore I’d never do this. Never let myself care about someone who rides.
The risk is too high. The loss would break me.
I’ve seen what this life does to people.
The wives who wait up wondering if tonight’s the night.
The girlfriends who learn to sleep alone because club business doesn’t keep regular hours.
The sisters who get a phone call in the middle of the night and their whole world collapses.
I was that sister. I buried that brother. And I promised myself I would never put myself in a position to feel that kind of pain again.
And yet here I am, counting down the minutes until Rev shows up, feeling my chest get tight when he looks at me, wanting things I have no right to want.
It’s not real, I tell myself. He’s doing you a favor. He thinks of you as family. Wheels’ sister. That’s all.
The reminder should help. It doesn’t.
Friday night, I close up late.
There was a rush around two—some church group renting out the back room for a meeting—and by the time I’ve cleaned up after them, it’s almost seven. Rev left around noon, said he had a job to finish, but he’d be back to walk me to my car.
I told him that wasn’t necessary.
He showed up anyway.
He’s leaning against his bike when I lock the front door, arms crossed, watching the street. The sun is starting to dip, throwing long shadows across the parking lot, and he looks—
I stop that thought before it can finish. I shouldn’t be noticing him like that.
“You didn’t have to come back,” I say, walking toward him.
“Didn’t ask your permission.”
“Rev—”
“It’s not up for debate, Angel.” His voice is flat. Final. “I walk you to your car. Every night. Until this is over.”
I should argue. I should tell him I’ve been walking to my own car up until now and I don’t need a babysitter. But the truth is, I feel safer with him here. And I’m tired of pretending I don’t.
“Fine,” I say. “But you’re going to get bored of this eventually.”
“No. I’m not.”
Something about the way he says it makes my stomach flip.
We start walking toward my car. It’s parked in the back lot, same as always, next to the dumpster and the chain-link fence that separates the café from the alley. Rev falls into step beside me, close enough that our arms almost brush.
And that’s when I see it.
The white truck. Parked across the street, engine off, windows down.
Niall is sitting in the driver’s seat. Watching.
I stop walking. Rev notices immediately.
“What?”
“He’s here.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Across the street.”
Rev doesn’t turn to look. His jaw tightens, almost imperceptibly, but he doesn’t turn.
“Keep walking,” he says.
“Rev—”
“Trust me.”
I don’t know why I do. But I keep walking, hyper-aware of the truck in my peripheral vision, of Niall’s eyes on my back. My skin crawls. Four months of this and it still gets to me.
We reach my car. I fumble for my keys, hands shaking just slightly. Rev steps closer—close enough that I can feel the heat of him, close enough that anyone watching would see exactly how little space is between us.
“He’s still looking,” Rev says, low. “We need to sell it.”
“What do you—”
He kisses me.
One hand cups the back of my head. The other settles on my hip, pulling me against him, and then his mouth is on mine and I stop thinking entirely.
It’s supposed to be for show. I know that. He’s making a point—showing Niall that I’m taken, that there’s someone in the picture now who isn’t going to be scared off by notes and parking lot surveillance. It’s theater. Performance. Just like everything else we’ve been doing.
Except my body didn’t get that memo.
His lips are warm and firm and he kisses like he does everything else—intense, focused, like I’m the only thing in the world that matters. I grab fistfuls of his shirt just to stay upright, and when his tongue sweeps against the seam of my lips, I open for him without even meaning to.
He groans. Low, rough, barely audible—but I feel it vibrate through his chest into mine.
His hand tightens on my hip, fingers digging in, and he angles my head to kiss me deeper.
I’m pressed against the side of my car and I don’t care.
I’m in a parking lot where anyone could see and I don’t care about that either.
All I care about is his mouth and his hands and the heat building between us like a fire that’s been waiting for a spark.
When he finally pulls back, we’re both breathing hard. His eyes are dark, pupils blown, and he’s looking at me like—
Like it wasn’t an act for him either.
“He’s gone,” Rev says. His voice is rougher than usual. “Drove off about ten seconds ago.”
Ten seconds. We’ve been standing here, kissing, for ten seconds after the audience left.
“Right,” I manage. “Good. That’s—good.”
I should step back. Put some distance between us. Laugh it off, maybe, make a joke about method acting. Something to break the tension that’s crackling in the air like static before a storm.
I don’t move.
Neither does he.
“Angel.” The way he says my name—low, heavy, like it means something. “I should—”
“Yeah.” I finally make myself step back. The loss of his warmth is immediate. “I should go. It’s late.”
He nods and doesn’t say anything.
I get into my car. Start the engine. Pull out of the lot without looking back, because if I look back, I’m going to do something stupid.
My lips were tingling the entire drive home. My hands are shaking on the wheel. And there’s a voice in my head—Jonah’s voice, maybe, or just my fear dressed up in his words—telling me that this is a mistake. That I’m setting myself up for the worst kind of heartbreak.
He was just selling it. That’s all. He saw Niall watching, and he did what he had to do.
It didn’t mean anything.
I almost believed it.
That night, I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling and try very hard not to think about how he tasted. How he felt. The sound he made when I opened my mouth under his.
I fail completely.
It’s not real, I tell myself again. It can’t be real.
But my body doesn’t care about logic. My body remembers his hands, his heat, the way he looked at me after. Like he wanted to do it again. Like it took everything he had to let me walk away.
Jonah’s voice is in my head again. Don’t do this, Angel. You know how this ends.
But there’s another voice too. Quieter, but just as insistent.
What if you’re wrong?
I’m in so much trouble.
And the worst part is, I don’t want to be saved.