Page 25 of Malachi (Outsiders MC #1)

Candace

I lie curled on my side, my back a stubborn wall between me and Malachi, eyes fixed on the real one a few feet away.

It’s blank, cold, and solid. Everything I’m trying to be.

One arm props beneath my head, the other clenches the edge of the blanket as if it’s the only thing keeping me from unraveling, even with my back turned.

The pillow does nothing to block out his scent.

Soap, leather, and something darker that threads through the air and sinks into my skin.

A heat that isn’t fire but memory. I tell myself I’m imagining the way his body heat creeps across the mattress.

The way it wraps around me as though a tide I’m too weak to fight.

He offered to sleep on the floor or the couch downstairs, but I’d shrugged it off. Said I was fine. Big girl, I told him.

I don’t know who I thought I was fooling.

He smirked when I dropped the pillow down.

That slow, crooked one that makes me want to punch him and kiss him in the same breath.

It crawled beneath my skin and rooted there, smug and sure.

I’ve been stiff ever since, as if holding perfectly still might just let me vanish into the drywall.

My shoulders haven’t unclenched once. My body is all knots and fire, braced and brittle.

My breath shudders out, too shallow. Every time I shift, my body reminds me it’s a battlefield.

Every inch of me aches. A dull, relentless throb in muscles I didn’t even know existed.

My throat feels scraped raw, as if I spent the night screaming into a void, and my wrists still carry the ghost of things I don’t want to remember.

The sting. The pressure. The betrayal. But it’s my chest that hurts the worst. Hollowed out.

As though someone scooped out the insides and left the shell behind.

Because you’re one of us. Whether you like it or not.

Those words loop through my mind on repeat. I can’t tell if Malachi meant them as comfort or warning. Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe I’m the one who’s both.

I don’t know what I believe anymore.

My fingers curl unconsciously against the pillow. A faint, steady rhythm taps out beneath my thumb; a silent beat only I can hear. Not quite a song. Just a way to stay anchored. Just enough to say I’m still here.

I feel his gaze long before I hear him move. He’s quiet, still, but I know he’s awake. Watching me. Wondering if I’m asleep.

I’m not. I haven’t drifted off for even a second. My mind’s been busy unraveling the last twenty-four hours. Every brutal, blurry second of it. Like film unraveling from a reel. Torn images. Flashbulbs of violence. Breathless, soundless, aching.

My dad sold me. Actually tried to sell me. It should’ve broken me. Hell, maybe it did.

But what wrecked me worse, what really carved something out of me, was how Malachi showed up when everything else fell away. He carried me upstairs. Laid out clothes. Called Nash. Held me without asking for anything in return.

He chose me.

The weight of that choice presses heavier than the bruises. I don’t know how to carry it without fracturing. I don’t know how to believe in it without cracking open completely.

And I have no idea how to hold that kind of weight in my chest without it splintering everything I’ve built to survive.

Eventually, Malachi shifts. Gets up and leaves the room without a word. His footsteps are quiet, almost careful, as if he doesn’t want to wake something fragile. I don’t breathe until the door clicks shut behind him.

Then I roll to my back with a hiss of pain, muscles protesting. My spine scrapes against the tension that’s rooted itself beneath my skin. My ribs creak the way old floorboards do.

The mattress dips where he’d been, warmth fading. An absence too loud for the early morning hush. I press my palm into the sheets. They’re still warm. Still him.

The air is thick with him—clean soap, cracked leather, and something darker. Cedarwood. Gasoline. A thread of something masculine and dangerous that should feel suffocating, but instead feels... grounding. A scent that clings to my skin the way a secret does, one I don’t want to wash off.

I scan the room as if I’m seeing it for the first time. It’s neat, surprising considering the man. No clutter. Just order. Discipline hidden behind chaos.

The place is more suite than bedroom. Organized, functional, stripped down. He’s lived here forever, long before he was president. All I know of his past are whispers. Cornelius took him in young. Gave him something to belong to when no one else did.

My gaze flicks toward the dresser. Empty space where my guitar should be. My throat tightens. I don’t dare ask if it’s gone. Not yet. I’m not ready to find out which part of me didn’t survive the night.

Cornelius didn’t just die. He was taken.

And it happened not long before the old sheriff disappeared.

The new one’s decent. People say he’s trying, but this town still has shadows that run deep.

With Donovan’s name being whispered again as a bad omen, it’s hard not to connect the dots.

Maybe I’m being paranoid. But this town doesn’t do coincidence. Not really.

There’s a knock at the door.

“Candace?” Sloane’s voice is gentle, but it cuts through the fog in my brain. It’s soft, careful, as if she already knows I’m fraying at the edges. As if she knows the shape of broken and isn’t afraid of it.

I sit up slowly, body aching in places I didn’t know could hurt. My legs swing off the bed, bare feet meeting cool floor, and I crack the door open. She’s standing there alone, a canvas bag slung in one hand, her face open and steady. She doesn’t smile, but she doesn’t look away either. Just waits.

I let her in without a word.

She walks in as if she belongs, as if this is normal.

She’s dressed down—dark jeans, a hoodie, her hair pulled back—but something about her feels composed.

Balanced. She carries herself as someone who’s used to holding people together.

As someone who’s probably held herself together more times than she can count.

As someone who’s learned how to be the net instead of the one falling.

“Malachi asked me to check on you,” she says. “I’m a nurse. Clinic in town.”

She says it as if it’s no big deal, but I feel the weight behind it. Not just in her tone, but in the fact that she’s here. That she came. That she saw someone wrecked and didn’t flinch.

I sit on the front of the bed, heart thudding a little too loud in my chest. My walls go up out of habit, brick and mortar laid so fast I almost don’t notice it. But something cracks when she sets the bag down beside me. Not loud. Just a quiet fault line beneath my ribs.

Toiletries. Clean clothes. Nash must’ve brought them from my house. My throat tightens at the thought of him in my room, maybe stepping over the pieces I left behind. The shattered frame. The emptiness under the floorboard. My grief, my failure, spread out like laundry I never meant to air.

The image flashes sharp. Nash’s heavy boots on the rug, maybe noticing the scattered notebooks, the picks from my guitar. My music. My mess. A private world laid bare.

I want to ask if my guitar was there. If the notebooks survived. But the words wedge behind my ribs, a splinter I can’t dig out.

Sloane doesn’t press. She doesn’t hover, doesn’t ask about things I’m not ready to give. She just moves around me, a tide. Steady, quiet, sure. As if she’s always been here. As if she will be.

When her hands skim my forehead and her fingers brush the bruises along my ribs, I brace out of instinct. Muscles twitch. My jaw locks.

But she’s gentle. Practiced. Her touch is clinical without being cold. As if she knows how to patch people up without making them feel broken. When she sees the raw scrapes on my arms and the swelling along my wrist, she doesn’t flinch.

“What’s this from?” she asks.

I swallow. “I took a bat to my dad’s dresser,” I mutter. “Then a lamp.”

Her mouth twitches, almost a smile, but she reins it in. Just nods, a quiet agreement. A knowing. The kind that understands survival sometimes wears the face of destruction.

She finishes checking me over in silence, and I let her. I don’t know why. Maybe because she’s not pretending I’m fragile. Maybe because she didn’t bring pity through the door with her. Just presence. Steady and unfazed.

It hits me then, how rare this is.

No one’s ever come to check on me before. Not like this. Not without asking for something in return.

My throat tightens. Fingertips dig into the blanket beside me. I want to turn away, but I hold still. Let myself feel it. Just this once. The pressure of care. The weight of being seen.

Ruby doesn’t count. She decided I was hers in seventh grade and never gave me a choice. She’s chaos wrapped in sunshine, and I love her for it. But this? This is different. This is someone I barely know showing up just because I was hurting.

I blink hard, chasing the sting from behind my eyes.

Sloane coils her stethoscope into her bag, then straightens and meets my gaze.

“You’re going to be okay,” she says.

Soft. But certain. She’s seen enough to believe it—and dares me to believe it too. The words feel both like a balm and a dare.

The words pull tight against the lyric I almost whispered earlier: “I’ll believe it when I sing it.” But I bury it. Not ready. Not yet. I’m still hoarding my truths the way someone hoards currency. Still waiting to feel safe enough to spend them.

I don’t answer. I just nod, swallowing around the lump in my throat.

Then she adds, almost as if it’s nothing, “Girls’ night. Tonight. Me, Frankie, Darla. You in?”

I blink. “What?”

“You’ve earned it,” she says, already zipping up the bag. “And Ruby’s invited too.”

That yanks something loose in my chest. Ruby. Of course she’d be there. I don’t think I’d survive the idea of being surrounded by all of them without her. But even so…

A girls’ night?

People don’t invite me to those. I’ve never been anyone’s plus-one to wine and trash talk. Never painted my nails while laughing over exes or split tequila shots with women who actually wanted me there.

I’ve always been the outsider. Even here. Even among them.

But they want me there. Sloane does. She said it without hesitation. No pity. No pressure.

Just a quiet offer I didn’t know I needed.

“I might come,” I say, voice barely above a whisper.

Sloane pauses at the door, hand on the knob. Her eyes soften.

“No pressure,” she says again. “Just know we want you there.”

I believe her.