Protected by my Hogg Daddy

The Struggle

Bjorn

The last customer left Davidson Cycle Works a little after six.

For several minutes afterward, the shop remained busy despite the closed sign hanging in the front window. Mechanics finished paperwork. Toolboxes rolled across concrete floors. Air compressors hissed one final time before being shut down for the night. The familiar sounds had marked the end of thousands of workdays, yet tonight Bjorn found himself lingering longer than usual.

He stood behind the front counter reviewing invoices while the rest of the crew slowly filtered toward the parking lot. Normally he was one of the first people out the door. After spending ten hours surrounded by engines, customers, and problems that needed solving, he usually welcomed the quiet waiting upstairs. Tonight, however, he seemed incapable of focusing on the stack of paperwork sitting in front of him.

The problem wasn't the invoices, the repair orders, or even the customer complaints waiting to be returned the next morning. Every time he looked at a page, his thoughts drifted back to the same conversation: Rook's offer. The kid had meant well, and nobody doubted that.

If anything, Rook's willingness to open his home to a woman he barely knew said something good about the kind of man he was becoming. Most people would have offered sympathy. Most people would have wished Samantha luck and moved on with their lives. Rook had immediately started looking for a solution.

So why couldn't Bjorn stop finding reasons it was a bad idea?

The question had followed him around the shop all afternoon, surfacing while he helped customers, rebuilt a transmission, and argued with a supplier over a delayed shipment. Every time he thought he had finally put it aside, it came back again.

She'll be safe there.

The statement should have settled the matter once and for all. Instead, it only seemed to spark a new round of arguments in his head. By the time the last mechanic headed home, Bjorn still hadn't found an answer that satisfied him.

"You gonna stare holes through that paperwork all night?"

Bjorn glanced up to find Diesel standing near the front door with his jacket slung over one shoulder.

"Thought you left."

"Nah. Thought I'd make sure you weren't having a stroke."

"I'm fine."

Diesel looked unconvinced.

Bjorn returned to the invoices. "Go home."

The younger man studied him for another moment before shaking his head. "Whatever you say, boss."

A few seconds later the door closed behind him, and the last traces of activity faded from the building. Bjorn waited until he heard Diesel's motorcycle disappear down the road before finally setting the paperwork aside. Silence settled over the shop, familiar and usually welcome after a long day. For years he had enjoyed these quiet moments, but tonight the stillness felt different.

The empty shop seemed larger somehow. The service bays stood dark and still. Shadows stretched across the concrete floor. The smell of oil, rubber, and metal lingered in the air long after the mechanics had gone home.

With nobody left to distract him, the thoughts he'd spent all day pushing aside returned in full force, circling back to the same person they always seemed to find.

Samantha.

Bjorn leaned back in his chair and rubbed a hand across his jaw.

It had only been five days since he'd found her lying in a ditch beside the highway, already discarded like she meant nothing, and five days since he'd seen firsthand just how much damage one man could inflict on another human being.

Five days shouldn't have been enough to matter.

Yet somehow, it did.

That was the uncomfortable truth he kept running into no matter how hard he tried to avoid it. He didn't know why he kept checking on her. He wasn't family. He wasn't a friend. Hell, most days she probably didn't even know he'd been there.

For the past two mornings he'd arrived at the hospital before sunrise. He'd spend a few minutes talking with the nurse, checking on Samantha's condition, and making sure there had been no setbacks overnight. Then he would leave before she woke up and head to the shop.

At night he did the same thing in reverse.

After closing Davidson Cycle Works, he'd stop by the hospital one last time. By then Samantha was usually asleep. He would stand quietly in the doorway, listen to the nurse's update, and leave again without saying a word.

Nobody knew about those visits—not Tank, Diesel, Bones, or Rook. As far as the club was concerned, he'd only checked on Samantha once, and he intended to keep it that way. The nurse was the only person who knew otherwise, and lately she'd started giving him a look he didn't particularly appreciate, the kind that suggested she thought she understood something he didn't.

The woman was wrong.

At least he hoped she was.

Because if she wasn't, then he'd have to admit he was becoming emotionally invested in a woman he barely knew. And that was a conversation he wasn't interested in having with himself.

Bjorn pushed away from the counter and began his nightly closing routine, more out of habit than necessity. He checked the back door, shut off the remaining lights in the service bays, and walked the length of the shop to make sure every tool had been returned to its place. Order mattered to him. It always had. Maybe because too much of his childhood had been shaped by chaos he couldn't control, or maybe because the Army had drilled discipline into him until it became instinct. Either way, a clean shop meant a clear head.

Tonight, even that didn't help.

By the time he locked the front door and turned off the last light, the argument in his head had become louder than the silence surrounding him. Rook's spare room was a good answer. Any man with sense would acknowledge that. Samantha would have four walls, a bed, and a club brother nearby if she needed help. It was more than she had right now. More than the world had offered her after Travis left her for dead.

Still, Bjorn didn't like it.

He told himself there were practical reasons. Rook was young. Rook worked unpredictable hours. Rook lived alone in a small house outside town with a driveway that stayed half-washed out every time it rained. He was loyal, but he was still learning how to think past the first decent idea that entered his head. None of that made him a bad choice. It simply made him an imperfect one.

The trouble was, all choices were imperfect.

Bjorn walked toward the stairwell at the back of the shop, the one that led to his apartment above the building. His boots sounded heavy on the metal steps, each one echoing against the narrow walls. He'd climbed those stairs thousands of times without thinking about them. Tonight every step felt deliberate, as if some part of him already knew where this argument was headed and was trying to reach the conclusion before his pride could catch up.

The apartment door opened into the small living room he had called home for years. It wasn't fancy, but it suited him. A worn leather couch faced a television mounted on the wall. A heavy wooden coffee table sat in the center of the room, scarred from years of boots, drinks, and the occasional heated card game with the brothers. The kitchen was small but clean, with dark cabinets, a simple table, and a window overlooking the shop parking lot. Everything had a purpose. Nothing was there simply to look nice.

That was how Bjorn preferred it.

He hung his keys on the nail sticking out next to the door and stood there longer than necessary, letting his gaze move through the apartment. Most nights the place felt peaceful. Quiet. Private. It was the one space in his life where nobody needed him to be president, boss, mechanic, or problem solver. Tonight, however, the apartment felt less like a refuge and more like an answer he had been trying not to see.

Two bedrooms sat down the short hallway.

His was at the end.

The other was to the left.

Bjorn stared at the closed door.

For years, that room had been little more than extra space. Sometimes a brother slept there after drinking too much. Sometimes out-of-town friends used it when they came through. Mostly it held a queen bed, a dresser, a nightstand, and a closet full of things he never bothered sorting through. It had never felt important. It was just a room.

Until Rook offered his.

Bjorn opened the door.

The bedroom was dark until he reached inside and flipped the switch. Warm light filled the space, revealing exactly what he expected. A neatly made bed. Plain gray comforter. Dresser against the far wall. Empty nightstand. No pictures. No clutter. Nothing personal. It was the kind of room a man kept when he never expected anyone to stay long enough to care what it looked like.

He stepped inside slowly.

The air smelled faintly of dust and laundry detergent. He crossed to the window and looked down at the parking lot below. From here, he could see the front entrance of the shop, the row of bikes parked near the fence, and most of the gravel lot beyond. Anyone coming or going would be visible before they ever reached the stairs.

That mattered.

He wished it didn't.

Bjorn rested one hand on the windowsill and looked out into the darkness. If Samantha stayed here, she would have privacy. She would have a lock on the door downstairs and another on the apartment. She would be close to the shop during the day and above it at night. The club came through often enough that she wouldn't be alone unless she wanted to be. If she needed help, someone would always be close.

Those were practical reasons.

Good reasons.

Reasonable reasons.

So why did admitting them feel like stepping over a line?

Because this wasn't just a room. It was his home. Offering it meant inviting Samantha into the one place he kept separate from everything else. It meant she would hear him moving around in the kitchen in the mornings. It meant he would know when she couldn't sleep. It meant his private life would no longer be private, and hers would exist just down the hall from his.

Bjorn turned away from the window and looked at the bed.

A woman like Samantha didn't need confusion right now. She didn't need a man offering help while secretly wanting more than he had any right to want. She didn't need to look at him and wonder whether kindness came with a cost.

That thought stopped him cold.

Because wanting had no place in this.

And he did want.

Not in the simple, careless way men noticed beautiful women. He wasn't blind. Samantha was beautiful, even bruised and exhausted and dressed in a hospital gown that swallowed her whole. He had noticed her eyes first because fear lived there, but that didn't mean he had failed to notice the rest of her. The softness in her face when she forgot to guard herself. The stubborn lift of her chin when she was trying not to cry. The way her voice changed when she gathered enough strength to challenge him.

He noticed.

And he hated himself a little for it.

Bjorn ran a hand through his hair and let out a slow breath. Love at first sight was nonsense. He had lived too long and seen too much to believe in fairy-tale bullshit. People didn't fall in love with strangers in ditches. They reacted. They protected. They felt compassion. Attraction could happen fast, sure, but love was built through time, trust, and choices made when nobody was watching.

Whatever this was, it wasn't love.

That didn't make it simple.

The pull toward Samantha felt inconvenient, unwanted, and impossible to ignore. It wasn't only attraction. If that were all it was, he could have dismissed it easily enough. He had spent most of his adult life walking away from temptation when it was smarter to do so. What made Samantha different was the way she reached into parts of him he'd spent decades keeping sealed.

She reminded him of someone.

Not in appearance.

Not in voice.

In damage.