She flinches when I touch her but doesn't pull away. Doesn't cry. Just watches me with those dark eyes as I work—cleaning the wounds, dabbing antiseptic on the worst spots, wrapping bandages around battered feet with hands that shouldn't be capable of this kind of care.
My hands are huge next to hers. Scarred knuckles, tattooed fingers, calluses from years of things she doesn't want to know about. They look brutal. Wrong. Too rough for work thisdelicate. I've broken bones with these hands. Ended lives. Done things that would make her run screaming if she knew.
But right now, I'm gentle. So gentle it almost hurts. Like she's something precious that might shatter if I press too hard.
"Thank you," she says quietly. Her voice is softer than I expected. Warm, even through the exhaustion. "You didn't have to stop."
I don't respond. Don't know what to say to that. Keep working on her feet instead.
"I'm Fleur, by the way."
That makes me glance up. She catches the full impact of my face—hard jaw, grey eyes, the permanent scowl that keeps people at arm's length. Most people look away when I meet their eyes. Flinch. Find somewhere else to be.
She holds my gaze like it's nothing.
"Grim."
Something shifts in her expression. Lightens, almost. Like she's considering smiling even though nothing about this situation is funny. "That's not a real name."
"It's real enough."
"Well, Grim." She winces as I dab antiseptic on a particularly raw spot, her fingers curling into the sheets, but her eyes never leave my face. "Thank you. For being kind."
Kind.
The word lands wrong. Sits in my chest like a stone I don't know what to do with. I'm not kind. I'm the opposite of kind. I'm the guy they call when kindness isn't an option, when violence is the only language left to speak. Fifteen years I've been the club's enforcer. Fifteen years of blood and broken bones and making problems disappear. No one has ever looked at me and seenkind.
I finish bandaging her feet in silence. When I'm done, my fingers brush her ankle—accident, instinct, I don't know—andsomething passes between us. A charge. Electric and immediate, racing up my arm and settling somewhere in my chest.
She feels it too. I see it in the way her breath catches. The way her lips part. The way her eyes go wide and dark with something that isn't fear.
I pull back. Stand up. Put distance between us before I do something I can't take back.
"Clothes are on the dresser. Door locks from the inside." My voice comes out rough. Wrecked. "Get some sleep."
I leave before I can change my mind.
Saint finds me in the hallway ten minutes later.
He doesn't demand an explanation. That's not his style. He just appears out of the shadows like he always does and leans against the wall, arms crossed, watching me with those pale grey eyes that have seen everything I've done and never flinched.
"Is she okay?"
"Yeah."
"You going to tell me what this is about?"
I think about the wedding dress. The terror in her voice when she talked about her fiancé. The way she saidhe's not who I thought he waslike she still couldn't believe it herself.
"When I know more."
Saint considers me for a long moment. Weighing it. He's the president—he has every right to demand answers, to know why I brought a stranger into the clubhouse without warning. But we've known each other fifteen years. Bled together. Buried bodies together. Trust like that doesn't need explanations.
"Let me know," he says.
Then he walks away, and I'm alone in the hallway with nothing but the closed door and the silence and the scent of her still clinging to my skin.
I don't sleep that night.
