"Watch me."
A flicker crosses her face. Not frustration. Something softer, a feeling I can't quite name.
She reaches out and puts her hand on my chest. Right over the center, where she can feel my heartbeat.
"Be careful," she says.
I cover her hand with mine. Just for a second.
Then I let go and ride back to the garage.
Because Derek Sutton is coming.
And when he does, I'm going to be ready.
Chapter 13 – Harper
Patty’s banana bread tastes like childhood—warm, safe, uncomplicated. She asks exactly zero questions about why a man on a motorcycle dropped me at her door like I was something worth protecting.
"More coffee?" she asks.
"Please."
She pours without comment. We sit at her kitchen table, floral tablecloth older than I am, and a cat called Marmalade sleeps in the window box like the world isn’t falling apart three blocks away.
"You want to talk about it?" Patty asks.
"Not really."
"Good. I hate talking." She sits down across from me with her own mug. "But I'm excellent at listening, if you change your mind."
I sip my coffee and look out the window at Copper Ridge moving through its afternoon like nothing’s wrong, mountains standing around it like they always have.
I left to escape this feeling—the waiting, the constant sense of being watched. Fourteen months building something new.
And he found me anyway.
"That man," Patty says, not looking at me, looking at her coffee instead. "Ronan. He's a good one."
"I know."
"No, I don't think you do." She sets her mug down. "I've known that boy since he came back from overseas. Judge brought himhere, said he needed space to put himself back together. Ronan didn't talk to anyone for the first six months. Just worked on bikes and rode that mountain road like he was trying to outrun something that was already inside him."
I'm quiet. Listening.
"He doesn't let people in," Patty continues. "Not easily. Not ever, really, except his brothers from the MC. So, the fact that he brought you here, that he's asking me to keep you safe..." She looks at me now. "That means something."
"We barely know each other," I say.
"Some people you know in three weeks. Some people you don't know in three years." She stands, takes her mug to the sink. "Time's got nothing to do with it."
My phone buzzes on the table. I pick it up expecting Jess, expecting Rosa—but it’s a number I don’t recognize, local area code. My stomach drops. I stare at it for three rings before I answer.
"Hello?"
Silence. Just breathing on the other end.
And then... "Harper."
