He puts his weights away and leans his hip against the wall, relaxed like he has all the time in the world. Like I’m not trying to outrun mine.
“Let me buy you a drink,” he says. “Tonight. Just to catch up.”
I should shut it down. Easy. Clean. I don’t do dates. I don’t do men like him. I don’t do anything that ends with me staring at a ceiling at three in the morning wondering how I got stupid again. And I have homework. Honestly, I do. I have a test. I have the one thing that belongs to me: my plan.
I open my mouth to say something sharp, something controlled. Something like,No thanks, I don’t collect problems.
Instead, my traitorous body makes the choice before my brain does — because my heartbeat is loud and that old memory is louder.
“I can’t. I have homework.”
Silence.
Evan just stares at me like I’ve grown a second head.
“Homework?” he repeats, slow.
My face goes molten. I feel it — heat flooding my cheeks, my ears, my whole damn body.
“Yes,” I snap, too fast, too loud. “I have to go study for my test now.”
I don’t even wait for him to answer. I pivot — awkward, stiff — and practically jog out of the fitness room like I’m escaping a crime scene. He opens his mouth to say something, but I’m already halfway down the hall. I hear him laugh, soft and broken, behind me. I don’t look back.
In my apartment, I slam the door and lean against it, chest heaving, while I listen to the quiet on the other side.
I tell myself I ran because I’m disciplined. Because I’m focused. Because I’m not the woman who gets flustered by a normal guy with strong shoulders and a calm voice, but my heart is still hammering, and my lips still feel hot where his eyes landed.
And the worst part is this: Evan doesn’t feel like danger.
That's the problem
Chapter Two
Evan
Rain slicks the pavement into a mirror as I cut behind the closed bait shop and park where the streetlight doesn’t reach. The air smells like river rot and old gasoline. Perfect place for men who don’t want witnesses or have a fetish for fish guts.
My phone buzzes once—one vibration, then dead. A pin drop on the map. A reminder that they always know where I am.
I walk anyway.
It isn’t far.
Five minutes down the back road, I come upon a warehouse stained the color of dried blood, its corrugated siding sagging under the weight of years. The loading dock is a ruin, ringed with busted pallets and slick with algae from seasons of rain. The sign overhead has been painted over so many times that the old letters bleed through: Sutter Mills, then something else, now nothing at all. A perfect void. The warehouse door stands half-open, like a mouth expecting prey. Inside, a single bulb swings on a chain, throwing light in slow, sickly circles that slide over the uneven concrete. Shadows leap and vanish with every movement, turning the stacked pallets and rusted machinery into hunched, watching beasts. In the center of it all stands Midnight, enforcer for the Sons of Sorrow MC, dressed head-to-toe in black, boots planted as if nothing in the world could move him. His hands are in his pockets like he’s waiting for a city bus, not holding my life by the throat.
He doesn’t smile, doesn’t blink, just tracks my approach with the cold confidence of a raptor. The only break in his silhouette is the white stitching of his cut: SONS OF SORROW, the patchwork of violence that has stitched him together.
“Evan,” he says, voice calm as a morgue. “You’re late.”
“I’m on time,” I answer, because I’m stupid enough to pretend pride still matters. My ribs tighten as I step closer. “Before I say another damn thing, show me the proof.”
Midnight lifts an eyebrow, more gesture than facial expression. He glances to the shadows behind him — a human shape stirring, silent, always at his back. Another one of the Sons, because even Midnight wouldn’t be so stupid as to meet me here alone. With the smoothness of a magician, he slides a phone from his inside jacket pocket and holds it up so I can see.
He taps the screen.
June’s face fills the screen, a ghost broadcast from another world. She’s slumped on a stained mattress—her hair tangled, her lips cracked, a bruise blooming purple along her cheekbone. Her eyes are glassy, pupils blown wide, and there’s a strip of duct tape on her wrist where she must have fought them and lost. When she blinks at the camera, the sound that comes out of her is barely a whisper.
“Evan… please…”
