CHAPTER 4
753 Words
She blinks. Swallows. Then nods like she’s convincing herself.
“Yeah. Yeah, I just—slipped.”
She kneels down to pick up the broken ceramic, but I beat her to it.
“I got it,” I say. “Go get some air.”
“But—”
“Go.”
She hesitates. Then disappears out the back, shoulders trembling just enough to crack the armour she wears so tight.
I return to the table. The presidents are watching me carefully.
“You need to handle something, Lincoln?” one of them says. It’s not a real question.
“I already am.”
Because that car wasn’t from around here. And Sadie? She recognized it.
Which means the past she’s running from just found the road into my town.
And now, whoever she’s hiding from just became my problem.
And in Talon’s territory, we don’t run from problems.
We ride toward them.
CHAPTER 4: FRESH AIR AND CIGARETTES
The second the kitchen door swung closed behind me, the morning air hit like a slap. Not a breeze—no, this was a full-on punch from the universe, cold and cutting. I fumbled the pack of cigarettes from my apron pocket, hands trembling so bad I nearly dropped it. My lighter finally sparked, and the first drag burned like it was dragging my nerves back into place.
I was shaking. Not from the crash, not from the spilled coffee—but from that car. The one that looked exactly like his.
It couldn’t be. It shouldn’t be.
I changed towns. Names. My hair. My goddamn soul.
But fear has a memory longer than any trail I’ve run. And shadows? They always find the cracks. Crawl under doors. Wait.
I exhaled a shaky breath, watching the smoke twist into the sky like a prayer I didn’t believe in.
Then I heard it—footsteps. Heavy. Measured. Unhurried like he already knew I wouldn’t run.
Lincoln.
Shit.
“Sadie.”
His voice—low, rough like gravel and midnight promises—scraped along my spine. He stepped into view, leaning against the brick wall like he belonged there. Like he belonged anywhere he decided to stand. The kind of man who didn’t ask for space. He took it.
“You wanna tell me what that was about?”
I turned slightly, kept my eyes on the empty street, the cigarette burning between my fingers. “Just clumsy. Long shift. Early morning.”
“You’re a bad liar.”
I huffed out a humourless laugh. “I’m a great liar. Just out of practice.”
His jaw tightened, but he didn’t flinch. Just crossed his arms over his chest like a judgment wrapped in leather. His eyes, all steel and fire, raked over me—not lecherous, not soft. Calculated. Like he was counting the bruises beneath my skin.
“You saw something.”
“I saw a car,” I said flatly. “It startled me. That’s it.”
“And you looked at it like it crawled straight out of hell.”
I went still. The kind of still that only comes when the past grabs you by the throat.
He didn’t move closer. Didn’t soften.
“I don’t care who you used to be,” he said. “But if something’s after you, this town won’t stay quiet long. And I don’t like surprises in my backyard.”
“Excuse me?” I turned then, really looking at him. “You don’t know me. You don’t get to come out here and—what? Play protector? Drag answers out of me because you don’t like being left in the dark?”
His eyes flared, and for a second I thought he might actually yell. But Lincoln didn’t yell. He burned.
“I don’t play anything,” he said, voice low and even. “I’ve seen what it looks like when someone’s living in fear. I’ve seen what comes after them. You think this is me flexing? It’s not. This is me warning you: whatever you’re running from, if it gets here, people could get hurt. You could get hurt.”
I clenched my jaw. “And what, you care?”
He took a step forward, just enough to make the hairs on my neck stand up.
“Yeah. I f*****g care.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Just silence. A bitter, awful silence filled with things I’d spent too long burying.
“You always white-knight broken women behind diners?”
- Writer
