When I wake up, the loneliness follows me.
The club is enough, I tell myself. My brothers are enough. I don't need anything else. Don't need softness or comfort or someone waiting for me when the nightmares come. I've built a life on hard edges and sharp purposes, and it's enough.
It has to be enough.
Because the alternative… Opening myself up to someone, letting them close enough to matter, that's a vulnerability I can't afford. I only know how to fight, survive, build. I don't know how to be with someone. Don't know how to let my guard down or trust someone with the parts of me that are still bleeding.
The string of one-night stands that litter my past are proof enough of that. Women whose names I barely remember, whose faces blur together in my memory. I end things before they can begin, before anyone gets close enough to see the damage underneath the ink and muscle.
It's better that way. Safer.
Lonelier, but safer.
"You're doing it again," Judge observes.
"Doing what?"
"Disappearing into your head." He taps his temple. "The brooding thing. I was joking before, but you're actually doing it."
I shake my head, trying to clear the thoughts. "Sorry. Long night."
"They all are lately." His eyes are sharp, seeing too much. "You need to talk about it?"
"No." Yes. Maybe. I don't know anymore. "I'm fine."
"Phoenix—"
The knock on the front door cuts him off.
We both freeze. It's four-seventeen in the morning. No one knocks on the clubhouse door at four-seventeen in the morning unless something's wrong.
Judge's hand drops to his waistband, where I know he keeps a gun even in the middle of the night. Old habits from old wars. I move toward the door, every sense suddenly focused.
Another knock. Softer this time. Almost hesitant. Not a threat, then. Threats don't knock hesitantly. I flip the locks and pull the door open.
A woman stands on my doorstep.
She's small. Shorter than me by almost a foot with auburn hair cut short in a choppy style that looks recent and self-done. Green eyes that are currently wide and locked on my face, and curvy in a way that makes me think beautiful, though I shove that thought down immediately.
She's also covered in bruises.
Her jaw is purple-yellow. Her wrists show finger-shaped marks that make my hands curl into fists. She's wearing a jacket despite the warm night, and I'd bet money there are more bruises hidden underneath.
Someone did this to her. Someone put their hands on this woman and hurt her, and the violent thing that lives in my chest wakes up with a roar.
"Can I help you?" My voice comes out harder than I mean it to.
She flinches. Barely, but I see it. And that tiny movement, that evidence of fear, does something to me I don't have words for.
I take a breath. Soften my stance. Try again.
"Are you okay?" Better. Gentler. The voice I use with victims, not threats.
"I'm—" She stops. Swallows. Tries again. "I'm looking for Eli Blake."
"You found him."
Her eyes widen slightly. She's looking at me like I'm not what she expected, though I don't know what that means. I'm exactly what I look like: a six-foot-three biker covered in ink and scars, built like someone who's been fighting his whole life.
