At some point, the cold in the room crawled in under my shirt. I reached down the side of the mattress and snagged the spare blanket that was left for me that had been kicked half under the bed. I then got up and carefully draped it over her.
She didn’t wake. Just shifted a fraction, curling into the warmth, making a small, unconscious sound that hit me harder than any punch.
I stood there a long minute, looking at her.
Somewhere beneath our feet, buried in steel and concrete, a ledger sat in the dark, full of names and routes and rot that could crack the spine of the whole East Coast if it ever got loose.
Somewhere out there, men in suits and soldiers in other people’s colors were circling the fences, trying to smell where their power had gone.
In here, a woman who’d already survived her own private war had fallen asleep three feet away from me, trusting my patch and my presence enough to let her guard drop for the first time since I’d met her.
The ledger in the basement might burn the world.
The woman in the bed might burn me.
For the first time in a long damn time, I wasn’t sure which one scared me more.
I laid back down, eyes on the ceiling, listening to her breathing and the distant thrum of the compound around us.
War was coming. You didn’t need a book to tell you that. You could feel it, in the way people checked their guns twice instead of once, in the way Liberty’s voice had gone from sharp to surgical.
When it hit, I didn’t know if I’d die for my club, for that ledger, or for the woman sleeping a hand’s reach away.
All I knew was this.
That whatever fire was on its way; I was already standing in it. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to walk out.
Twelve
Valkyrie
The knocking dragged me out of sleep like a punch.
For a second everything was a smear—the low lamp glow, the dark walls, the line of knives on the shelf—and my brain tried to insist I’d only closed my eyes for half a heartbeat.
Then my neck ached, my spine popped, and I realized I’d actually been out.
Fuck.
The blanket over me was the next thing I felt. Warm. Tucked more carefully than I ever bothered with myself.
I turned my head.
Jersey Boy was on the air mattress, one arm flung over his chest, boots off, breathing slowly. No blanket. Just leather, ink, and exhaustion.
Yeah. It didn’t take a genius.
The pounding hit the door again. Sharper.
I shoved the blanket off like it had burned me and pushed up, bare feet hitting the floor. My body protested the sudden movement; yesterday’ssleepless night and adrenaline had sunk its teeth in deep.
By the time I yanked the door open, my scowl was fully awake.
Rosé stood in the hall. Ponytail high, cut on, phone still in her hand. Her gaze flicked over my face, down to the bed I’d just vacated, then to Jersey on the floor, then back.
She didn’t leer. Didn’t smirk about the sleeping arrangement she already knew about. But something in her eyes shifted—like she’d just watched two planets wobble a little closer in their orbit.
“Weird seeing a man in your room,” she said. “What took so long to answer the door? Is he fake sleeping and just jumped onto that thing?”
