I like her. Instantly. The kind of immediate, bone-deep understanding that happens so rarely it catches me off guard when it does.
This girl is fierce. This girl has been through something—I can feel it in the way she holds herself together, like she learned a long time ago that falling apart isn't an option.
I'm checking her vitals when the curtain rips open.
Not parts. Rips. Like whoever is on the other side doesn't have time for the gentle swoosh of hospital curtain etiquette.
And the man who comes through is not the kind of man who does anything gently.
I know him before I see his face.
The leather cut, the compact frame, the way he moves like every step has already been calculated three moves ahead.
Coin. My brother's club brother.
The quiet one who sits in the corner of the clubhouse and clocks everything with those pale blue-gray eyes—never the loudest man in the room, but somehow always the one who knows exactly what's happening in it.
I've seen him at the clubhouse a handful of times when I visit Garrett and Vanna.
He's always in the background, steady and still, the kind of man you'd overlook if you weren't paying attention. I've never been good at not paying attention.
But I've never seen him like this.
He's not tall—not compared to the men my brother runs with, the ones who wear leather and patches and fill doorways like they were built to block them.
He's average height, maybe six foot, or six-one, but there's nothing average about the way he carries himself.
Compact. Solid.
Like every ounce of him has been pressed down and hardened into something unbreakable.
Dark hair—black or close to it—and those eyes I've only ever seen calm and watchful are wild right now with a terror so raw it makes the air in the room change.
His whole world has narrowed to the girl on that gurney, and everything else—me, the monitors, the beeping, the blood—has ceased to exist.
He crosses the room in three strides and his hands find Wrenleigh's face, rough palms cupping her cheeks with a gentleness that doesn't match the panic in his eyes.
The girl on my gurney is Coin's daughter. Wrenleigh.
The same girl whose Sweet 16 the club threw a few months back—the one I watched him toast with a voice so steady and so full of love that every woman in the room went quiet.
"Baby. Baby, look at me. Are you okay? Where does it—" His voice is low, steady on the surface, but I can hear the fracturesin it. The hairline cracks running through every word. "They said compound fracture. They said?—"
"Dad." Wrenleigh's voice is different now. Softer. The armor she wore for me falls away and she's just a kid, just a sixteen-year-old girl who's scared and hurting and needs her father. "Dad, I'm okay. It's just my leg."
"Just your—" He chokes on it. His eyes drop to the splint and I watch the color drain from his face. He swallows hard, jaw working, and I can see him forcing himself to hold it together. Not for himself. For her.
That's when I notice the second girl.
She's standing just inside the curtain, small and still, dark hair falling around a face that's all sharp angles and wide eyes.
Blue-gray eyes. His eyes.
She's maybe thirteen, and she's got one hand fisted in the back of her father's cut like if she lets go, he'll disappear.
Her other hand is clutching a pair of crutches that the paramedics must have handed off.
Sadie Jo. I've never met her—she wasn't at the party—but Garrett mentioned both girls by name once, the way club brothers talk about each other's families.
