The Ruthless Biker's Ex-Convict Bride

Chapter 3

Wren’s Point of View

My eyes roam around his face. He can’t be serious, right? I’m sure he has somewhere to go. My eyes roam around his face when a knock suddenly pulls me back from whatever hole I had gone down.

I feel shivers down my spine, and I can’t help it because it’s from the man in front of me right now.

I push up and answer the door because I can’t stand the way he looks at me. He looks at me like I’m worth looking at.

I pull the door open and find Kara there. She doesn’t wait for me to say something before she pushes past me, already talking, same as always. Something about strangers passing through town lately, keeping your door locked, how you never know who's driving through anymore. Then she spots Ash over my shoulder and stops mid-sentence.

Her whole face changes as she looks at him, then back at me.

"About time you found somebody." She's grinning now, looking him up and down like she's sizing him up. "Maybe now that supervisor of yours will back off."

I don't correct her that he’s not with me, because Ash is covered up in one of my T-shirts, and from here, she can’t clearly see his face.

Kara never asks me much. When I got out with nothing but a record trailing behind me, I tried to find an apartment, but doors kept shutting in my face all over this town before I even finished knocking. When I got to Kara’s, she handed me a key. Just a key and a nod and rent due on Fridays.

She's still talking about the rent when her knees buckle.

I catch her before she hits the floor. "Kara."

She doesn't answer as she winces. Her eyes are glassy, and when I get her onto the couch, I roll up her pant leg and find it. An old gash, weeks old by the look of it. It should have been stitched but wasn't. It's gone bad.

The skin around it is hot and wrong under my fingers, red streaking up toward her knee, and when I press two fingers to her wrist, her pulse is running too fast for someone lying still.

Her fever is high and definitely climbing.

“What happened, Kara?” I ask, already thinking of how to help her.

“It’s nothing serious, Wren. Don’t mind it.” She waves me off, but I can’t. This looks infected, and she needs meds.

"You need antibiotics," I tell her. "And an IV. Today."

"I don't have insurance, Wren." Her voice is thin, cracked at the edges. "Nobody's going to touch me without cash up front."

I already know that. No clinic in this town moves fast enough for someone like Kara, someone with no card or money to hand them, and by the time they got around to caring for her, the infection would already be worse.

I've spent weeks keeping my head down in this town. Taking whatever it hands me without pushing back, because being noticed is the one thing I can't afford. Kara is the exception. She was always going to be the exception.

I know where to get what she needs. I can rush there and be back in time. I glance up at Ash, and he’s watching me take care of Kara.

There's a supplier who runs product outside anything legal, out near the edge of Copperhead territory. They don’t ask for ID, don’t ask questions, and don’t care who you used to be before.

"Stay with her," I tell Ash, getting up. "Watch her fever. If it spikes higher, wet cloths, keep her cool."

He's already moving toward the door, his voice gravelly and rough. "I'm coming with you."

"No."

"Wren."

"No. The fewer people who see me anywhere near that place, the better. For both of us."

He doesn't like it. I can see it in the set of his jaw, in the way his hands close and open again like he's deciding whether to argue with me.

“How do I know if her fever is too high?” he asks me, and I remember he has memory loss.

Fuck.

I quickly rush to the table.

“Anything above 38 degrees is too high. Okay?” I ask him, and he nods as I give him the infrared thermometer.

“Are you going to be okay?” I ask him as I glance over at Kara, whose head is thrown back, but her eyes wander over to us.

“Okay. I will watch her.”

“Thanks, Ash,” I say. My heart races, and the sound of his voice is like silk over my skin.

I grab my keys and go before I can think too hard about the way that felt, him wanting to come.

The place Briggs runs isn't much to look at from outside. Inside, it's worse, close and dim and smells like motor oil and something chemical underneath it. The room goes quiet and hostile the second I walk in.

I'm unarmed. I know how that reads to a room like this before I've said a single word.

Briggs is behind a folding table when I find him, and he doesn't look up right away. When he does, there's sweat on his face that has nothing to do with the heat in the room, and I clock it the way I've been trained to clock things. Something's wrong with him. An infection, maybe, judging by the color under his eyes and the way he holds his left arm.

"Not tonight." He shifts in his chair, and I watch him try to hide the wince that comes with it. Doesn't quite manage. "Not for anybody."

"I have money."

"Everybody's got money." He says it with zero interest. "Doesn't change what I said."

I try anyway. I lay out exactly what I need, dosages, quantities, and watch his eyes go somewhere else halfway through as if he's not even listening anymore.

I offer more than it's worth. Double, then more than double, enough that a week ago I'd have called it reckless, but this is for Kara.

She gave me an apartment at a price I shouldn’t have gotten. She pretends to be tough with me, but most of the time she brings meals to my room. She takes care of me.

He waves it off. Doesn't even look at the number I'm offering.

"Money's not the problem tonight, sweetheart." He shifts again, and this time he doesn't hide it, a flash of something crossing his face that isn't irritation. Pain. He keeps his left arm tucked close to his body, holding it tight. "Nothing's moving until my problem's handled. So, unless you're here to fix that, we're done."

I clock it before I can stop myself. The sweat that isn't from the heat in this room. The color under his eyes. The way he's favoring that arm. Whatever's wrong with him, it's bad enough that even money can't push past it tonight, and that tells me more about how bad it is than anything he'd say out loud.

I don't have time to work an angle around his arm. Kara doesn't have that kind of time.

I try a different angle instead.

"I used to be a doctor for the Copperheads." My voice comes out steadily. "Ro Kessler put me in that position herself. If her name still means anything out here—"

The room goes still, and he pauses as if that grabs his attention.

One of Briggs's men laughs. Short. Humorless, as if I've said something so stupid.

"You been living under a rock?" He says it like it's common knowledge, because apparently it is, to everyone in this room but me. "Ro's been in the ground three years. Same as those kids. She rolled her sleeve up first to show everybody there was nothing to be scared of."

No. I stand there, my heart racing, and tears fill my eyes. Nobody thought to tell me.

Someone else in the room is looking at me now and really looking.

"You’re that doctor. The one who killed those kids."

The room shifts, and I hear chairs scraping back, several of them starting to move toward me, and underneath the fear climbing up my throat, one thought keeps repeating.

Ro's gone. She's been gone for years.

You did this to her. I did this to her.