Protected by my Hogg Daddy

The Catch

Samantha

For several seconds after Bjorn made the offer, Samantha simply stared at him.

The room seemed quieter than it had a moment before. The steady beeping of the monitor beside her bed still filled the silence, and voices still drifted through the hallway beyond the partially open door, yet everything felt distant compared to the words hanging between them. A spare room above the shop. A place to stay. A place where she wouldn't have to worry about where she was sleeping tomorrow night. The offer should have brought relief. Instead, it left her feeling strangely off balance.

The problem wasn't the room itself.

The problem was Bjorn.

Or more specifically, the fact that she couldn't figure him out.

Most people made sense once you understood what they wanted. Some wanted attention. Others wanted gratitude. Some wanted loyalty. Some wanted power. Travis had wanted control, though it had taken her years to recognize it for what it was. Once she understood what people expected from her, she knew how to navigate around them. Bjorn didn't fit into any category she recognized. The more she looked for hidden motives, the less she found, and somehow that made her trust the situation even less.

"A room," she repeated carefully, studying him as though the answer might be written somewhere on his face.

Bjorn nodded. "A room."

The simplicity of his response irritated her more than it should have. To him, the offer seemed straightforward. To Samantha, it felt enormous. Life-changing. The kind of thing people didn't casually offer to someone they barely knew. She had spent the better part of the week trying to understand why he stopped to help her, stayed overnight in the hospital her first night. Then she found out this morning that he would check on her early in the morning and late at night. The man that doesn't know her seemed genuinely concerned about what happened to her. Now he was offering her a place to stay, and somehow he was acting as though the entire thing was perfectly reasonable.

"You barely know me."

"That's true."

"And you're offering me a place to live?"

Bjorn leaned back slightly in the chair and crossed his arms. "A place to stay. There's a difference."

Samantha frowned. "How?"

"Because staying somewhere means it's temporary. Living somewhere means you've unpacked all your boxes and started arguing with the neighbors."

The answer surprised her enough that a reluctant smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Bjorn caught it immediately.

"There she is."

The smile disappeared. "What?"

"The woman who actually laughs once in a while."

Samantha rolled her eyes, though she could feel warmth creeping into her cheeks. "Don't get used to it."

"Wasn't planning to."

The easy response made her suspicious all over again.

That was the problem. Every time she thought she understood him, he did something that complicated the picture. He wasn't flirting. He wasn't pushing. He wasn't trying to make her feel indebted to him. He simply sat there talking to her as though everything about this situation was completely normal.

It wasn't. At least it shouldn't have been.

"Why me?" The question came out quieter than she'd intended.

Bjorn's expression shifted slightly. Not dramatically. Just enough that she knew he was taking the question seriously. "What do you mean?"

"I mean why me?" Samantha asked. "There are shelters. Hotels. Other people. Why are you offering me a room in your apartment?"

For several seconds Bjorn didn't answer.

He looked toward the window before returning his attention to her, and something about the pause told Samantha he was choosing his words carefully. "Because you need somewhere safe."

The answer immediately frustrated her. "That's not a reason."

"It is from where I'm sitting."

"No, it isn't."

Bjorn exhaled slowly. The sound wasn't annoyed exactly, but it was close. "Samantha, when I found you, you were unconscious in a ditch."

The bluntness caught her off guard.

"You didn't have a phone. You didn't have a wallet. You didn't have anyone with you. Since then, I've learned you don't have a place to go when you leave here. I happen to have an empty room sitting above my shop. That's the reason."

She stared at him.

The explanation sounded honest.

Too honest.

And that was exactly why she struggled to believe it.

"Nobody does that." The words slipped out before she could stop them.

Bjorn's eyebrows drew together. "Does what?"

"Helps people for no reason."

The silence that followed felt heavier than anything else they'd discussed.

Samantha hadn't meant to say it out loud. The thought had lived in her head for so long that she rarely examined it anymore. It simply existed, a truth she accepted the same way other people accepted gravity or weather. People helped because they wanted something. Sometimes they wanted appreciation. Sometimes they wanted loyalty. Sometimes they wanted control. Whatever the reason, there was always a reason.

Nobody gave away something valuable without expecting a return.

At least that was what life had taught her.

Bjorn watched her for a long moment before speaking again. "That's what he taught you?"

The question hit harder than she expected. Not because he said Travis's name. Because he didn't need to.

Samantha looked away.

Outside the window, a family crossed the parking lot carrying balloons and flowers. Somewhere down the hall, someone laughed. The ordinary sounds of the hospital continued around them while an uncomfortable silence settled inside the room.

"He didn't exactly teach it," she said eventually.

"No?"

Samantha shook her head. "It was more like..." She searched for the right words. "Every favor came with strings attached. Every nice thing became something I owed him for later. After a while you stop believing people do things because they want to. You start assuming they do things because they expect something."

The confession left her feeling exposed.

She wasn't used to talking about Travis.

She especially wasn't used to talking about him honestly.

Most of the time it was easier to focus on the obvious things—the betrayal, the abandonment, the injuries. Those things were easier to explain than the years of smaller damage that had come before them.

Bjorn remained silent for several moments.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than before. "That's not how everybody works."

"I know that." The answer came automatically.

The problem was that she didn't really know it. At least not in a way that mattered. Knowing something and believing it were two different things entirely.

Bjorn seemed to understand that. "You don't actually know it," he said.

It wasn't an accusation, more like an observation. And the worst part was that he was right.

For a few moments neither of them spoke. Samantha found herself studying the man sitting across from her, wondering how someone she barely knew had managed to understand something she'd spent years avoiding. There was no judgment in his expression. No impatience. No pity. Just understanding.

The realization unsettled her. Not because understanding was unpleasant, because it felt dangerous.

Trust always started with understanding. It was how people got close enough to hurt you.

Eventually Bjorn pushed himself to his feet. The movement surprised her. She hadn't realized how much time had passed. For some reason, the thought of him leaving created an unexpected sense of disappointment.

"That's it?" she asked before she could stop herself.

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "What were you expecting?"

"I don't know."

"Well, that's all I've got." He slipped his hands into his pockets and nodded toward the door.

"Think about it."

Samantha blinked. "That's it?"

"That's it."

"You aren't going to try to convince me?"

Bjorn looked genuinely confused by the question. "No."

"Why not?"

The smile widened slightly. "Because you're an adult." For the first time in the conversation, Samantha laughed without thinking about it first. The sound surprised both of them. Bjorn looked entirely too pleased with himself.

"Don't start." She retorted.

"I didn't say anything." He smiled.

"You didn't have to."

The warmth lingering from the laugh remained long after the sound itself faded. Bjorn glanced toward the clock on the wall. "I need to get back to the shop."

The reminder that he had an entire life waiting outside this hospital felt strangely important. For the past week, Bjorn had existed almost entirely inside these walls. He appeared in conversations. He appeared in visits. He appeared in thoughts she didn't want to examine too closely. Sometimes it was easy to forget that he had a business to run, employees depending on him, and responsibilities that had nothing to do with her.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she asked, "What's it like?"

Bjorn paused."The apartment?"

She nodded.

Something softened in his expression. "It's quiet."

The answer made her smile. "That's your sales pitch?"

He shrugged. "It's honest." Then, after a moment, he added, "You've got your own room. Your own bathroom. Nobody's going to bother you unless you want them to. And the coffee downstairs is terrible."

The image formed before she could stop it.

A room with a door she could close. With silence and safety. The picture settled somewhere deep inside her chest.

Bjorn nodded once before heading toward the door. "Think about it." Then he was gone.

Samantha sat quietly for a long time after he left.

Outside the window, the afternoon sun drifted lower in the sky while cars continued moving through the parking lot below. The fear about tomorrow hadn't disappeared. She still had no job. No car. No real plan. Her life remained a mess she couldn't begin to untangle.

Yet for the first time since the doctor mentioned discharge, tomorrow didn't feel quite as impossible as it had that morning.

The realization crept up on her slowly.

When she pictured leaving the hospital now, she no longer saw uncertainty. She saw a room above a motorcycle shop.