The wedding dress throws me for a second, I'll admit. Not what I expected when I clocked her coming through the side entrance twenty minutes ago. But the more I look, the more sense it makes in a fucked-up way.
Nobody runs in a wedding dress unless they're running from the wedding. And nobody runs from a wedding looking like that—makeup smeared, feet bleeding, pure panic barely held in check unless they're running from something worse than embarrassment.
I've been working the casino floor for three hours. Friday night shift, which usually means breaking up fights between drunk tourists and making sure nobody's cheating too obviously at the card tables. Easy work. The kind that lets my mind wander to places it shouldn't go.
Tonight it wandered to the book in my cut. Some thriller about a guy with a worse childhood than mine, which is saying something, and whether I should grab food before or after my shift ends at two.
Then she walked in and every instinct I've spent the last thirteen years honing started screaming.
Danger. Threat. Someone who needs help.
Not necessarily in that order.
I watched her make her way to the back corner, moving like every step hurt. Watched her collapse into that chair like her legs couldn't hold her anymore. Watched her pull out her phone with shaking hands and read whatever was on the screen with an expression that made something violent wake up in my chest.
I know that expression too. That specific mix of fear and resignation and bone-deep exhaustion.
I've seen it in the mirror.
So, I gave her space for a few minutes. I let her breathe, let her think she was invisible in the corner of a Vegas casino at eleven o'clock on a Friday night. Let her believe nobody was paying attention.
But I was paying attention. That's my job. And more than that, it's who I am. The kid who nobody protected learns to protect everyone else. It's not noble. It's just reflex at this point.
When she started crying—quiet tears that she kept trying to wipe away like they were evidence of weakness, I decided space wasn't what she needed anymore.
Hence the water. Hence the first aid kit I grabbed from the security office. Hence me kneeling down next to her chair with my hands where she can see them and my voice as gentle as I can make it.
"This is gonna sting," I tell her, holding up an antiseptic wipe. "But we need to clean them before we bandage anything."
She nods. Doesn't speak. Her amber eyes are fixed on my hands, specifically on my knuckles, which are a road map of every stupid fight I've been in since I was fifteen.
"I'm Ryan," I say, because maybe a name will help. "Everyone calls me Knuckles."
Her eyes flick up to mine. "Because of..."
"Yeah." I flex my right hand, where the scars are deepest. "Earned the name. Seemed fitting."
"Does it hurt?" she asks quietly.
"Not anymore. Hurt like hell when I was getting it, though."
I take her left foot gently like she's something fragile that might shatter if I'm not careful. She flinches when I touch her but doesn't pull away. Progress.
The bottom of her foot is torn up worse than I thought. Glass, maybe, or just straight pavement damage from running barefoot on the Strip. Either way, it's going to hurt like a bitch once the adrenaline wears off.
I start cleaning the wounds as slowly as I can. She hisses in pain but stays still.
"You got a name?" I ask, trying to distract her.
"Savannah."
"That your real name or your Vegas name?"
A ghost of a smile crosses her face. "Real name. Savannah Cross."
"Pretty name."
"My mom liked it. Said it sounded sophisticated." Her voice goes flat on the word *mom*. Interesting.
