His eyebrows climb toward his hairline.
"Well," he says. "This is unexpected."
"Don't start."
"I'm not starting anything. I'm just observing that you left four hours ago to help your brother with something, and you've come back with—" His gaze slides to India, takes her in with obvious curiosity. "A guest."
"She's in trouble. She's staying here until the trouble's handled."
"Uh huh." Rev sets his phone down, giving me his full attention now. "What kind of trouble?"
"The kind where someone wants to hurt her and I'm going to make sure they don't."
Something shifts in his expression. He's heard that tone before. Knows what it means.
"Need anything tonight?" he asks.
"I'll brief everyone tomorrow. Right now she needs sleep."
Rev nods and turns back to his phone, but I catch the look he gives me as I steer India toward the back hallway. Curious. Assessing.
He's going to give me shit about this later. I can already tell.
My room is at the end of the hall. I've been meaning to get my own place for years — somewhere off-site, somewhere that's just mine. But the clubhouse is convenient. There's always something that needs handling, and the weeks turn into months and months turn into years. So here I am. Still in the same room I moved into when I first patched in.
I haven't brought anyone back here in a long time. It's not a space I share. Not a space anyone sees.
I open the door and step aside to let her in.
She hesitates on the threshold, looking around. It's not much — bed, dresser, a chair in the corner. Clean but sparse. No decorations, no photographs, no personal touches. Nothing that says anything about who I am or where I've been.
"You can take the bed," I say. "I'll be right outside."
"Outside?"
"In the hall. On the couch. Whatever. Point is, no one gets through me to get to you."
She turns to face me, still standing in the doorway, those dark eyes searching my face. Looking for something. I don't know what she expects to find.
"Why are you doing this?" she asks quietly.
"Nate asked."
"That's not what I mean." She takes a breath, and I watch her choose her words carefully. "You don't know me. You don't owe me anything. You could have handed me off to someone else, set me up in a safe house, washed your hands of the whole thing. But you drove three hours in the middle of the night, pulled me out of my life, brought me to your home, and now you're giving me your bed while you sleep in a hallway." She pauses. "Why?"
Because Nate asked. That's the answer. The only answer that should matter.
But she's looking at me like she already knows that's not the whole truth. Like she can see right through the bullshit to whatever's underneath.
I don't have an answer for her. Not one I'm willing to say out loud.
"Get some sleep," I say instead. "We'll figure out the rest in the morning."
I pull the door closed before she can ask anything else. Before I have to look at her for another second and pretend I'm not feeling exactly what I'm feeling.
The couch at the end of the hall is old, worn, uncomfortable as hell. I've slept on worse. I've slept on sand and rocks and the floors of buildings that were falling apart around me. A shitty couch is nothing.
But I don't sleep.
