Page 2
Chapter Two
Sutton
In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.
The mantra seemed to rumble on repeat right out of the engine of the massive gray Harley underneath me, my arms locked tight around my father’s best friend who was taking me…I wasn’t sure where.
The idea of my father was made up of a few foggy memories and endless words of wisdom, all pilfered from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War . War. Fighting. Victory. Those were the things that mattered to Jon Brant, and because I’d wanted to matter to him in the way all little girls wanted to matter to their heroes, they became the things that mattered to me. The things I clung to as I grew up with him absent. And that was why my life was punctuated by philosophies of war, Sun Tzu being the only steady advice as the world around me crumbled.
Like it was now.
In the last twenty-four hours, my life had turned to chaos. Breaking into my missing best friend’s apartment. Getting caught by the police. My parole officer getting involved. I was sure I was going back to jail, but then Daws brought me here. I didn’t know how or why, but there had to be an opportunity here somewhere. To escape. To find Mara. To ogle Dad’s hot best friend.
Gone was the white knight from my earliest memories, and in his place, six plus feet of hewn, hardened muscle, wrapped in dark wash jeans and a worn leather cut. He was broad and strong and that silent kind of viciousness. When Tynan had towered over Officer Daws, he reminded me more of a big, bad wolf growling and snarling at Daws to leave than some fictitious, gallant protector.
The six-year-old princess might’ve preferred the knight, but now, this twenty-one-year-old parolee was definitely attracted to the beast.
The much older, off-limits beast.
Then again, being fresh out of juvie, it was no surprise that breaking societal expectations was a favorite pastime of mine. Unfortunately, this time, I’d have to pass. Maybe if I wasn’t looking for Mara…
The bike slowed, and we turned into the driveway of a townhome. Tynan stopped at the keypad in front of the gate, entering a code I couldn’t make out. The gate and the garage door underneath the house opened, and we pulled inside.
I guessed working on motorcycles paid really well.
As soon as we stopped, I slid off the bike. Being so close to his heat was like standing next to a crackling fire; the longer I remained, the hotter I became and the less I wanted to move away.
I pulled his helmet off my head, my long black hair tumbling down my back, and set it on the seat of the bike.
“Code is 0727,” Tynan grunted like he wanted me to go ahead into the house just as much as I wanted to.
From the moment we’d pulled into the gated garage underneath the townhouse, I knew the inside was going to be luxurious. Though most things were luxurious compared to the hostel I was staying at in the city.
The stairs from the garage rose into the back of the house, the sandy yellow hallway in front of me lined with modern monochrome photographs. I peered into every doorway I came across—most being brightly colored bedrooms—but it was the first room on the right that had me biting my lip with excitement. The laundry room. To not have to go to a laundromat to wash my clothes—all ten pieces of them.
By the time the hallway ended in the living room, I wasn’t surprised that the leather couch there looked more comfortable than the last however many beds I’d slept on—definitely more comfortable than the pallets in prison.
I turned, and there was a real stove in the kitchen. Damn, what I wouldn’t give to be able to boil water for ramen rather than microwaving it.
The last time I’d been in a house this nice—around anything this nice—was before my grandparents died. Mom’s parents, Lolo and Lala—the Filipino word for grandmother was technically Lola , but for some reason, I’d always called her Lala—would take me to the beach when I was little, usually right after Dad left for deployment and Mom went into one of her moods. We’d stay at their friend’s beach house, and to a seven-year-old, it wasn’t the pricey paintings on the walls or shiny appliances that gave away how expensive the house was, but the hallways that seemed endless and the bathroom floors that were always warm under my toes. I pretended I was a princess in a castle. It wouldn’t be long after that before there was no one but myself left to protect me.
My head moved on a swivel until it found him standing behind me, his folded arms making his shoulders and biceps look even bigger.
“This is where you live?”
“No. This is where you’re going to live for the next six weeks,” Tynan muttered behind me, and I shivered. I still wasn’t used to his voice, the deep, rough rumble of it affecting me like fresh coffee soaking into my veins, heating and…stimulating me.
A voice shouldn’t be hot. A voice shouldn’t be sexy. Especially the voice of a man who’d done nothing but order me around. I’d been ordered around plenty in my life, but never had a voice made me so tempted to obey.
Then where do you live, Mr. White Knight? I wanted to ask but didn’t. The less I questioned him, the less he’d think to question me. It was bad enough I’d been caught breaking into Mara’s apartment, but the last thing I needed was for him to think he actually needed to babysit me. That would be…it would ruin everything.
“All right, well, thanks for the ride. I think I can manage from here,” I said and realized he held my bag. Shit. Why had I let him carry it? And why did it look so small in his hand?
Probably for the same reason I’d felt so small in his hands.
Tynan Bates was a big man. Big hands. Big shoulders. Big muscles. Big boots. Probably other big things that I shouldn’t have let myself think about on the ride over here, but I couldn’t help myself. Having to ride behind him, hold onto him, and breathe in the scent of him lingering in his helmet that he’d unceremoniously dumped on top of my head, leather and oil and cedar, those fifteen minutes on the back of his bike had been a crash course in the physicality of Tynan Bates.
I walked over and plucked my duffel from his hand, his deep growl bringing my attention to his face.
“I have questions,” he said, his dark eyes crackling with ungrounded energy.
“Good for you.”
A shot of anger rushed through me, recalling the way he’d first looked at the bag and asked if this was all my things. It took everything I had not to kick him again. I didn’t want his pity. Not when he’d learned Mom died. Not when he realized I’d been in juvie. Not when he’d learned my entire life was distilled into a gym duffel.
Instead of kicking him, I settled for squeezing his middle extra tight as we rode on his motorcycle. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure it had the effect I was hoping since his middle felt like a stack of bricks against my arms. All of him, really, felt carved from hot stone even through my leather jacket and his as we rode into picture-perfect Carmel Cove.
Mom had brought me to the beach here once on vacation—a rarity; she’d wanted to “paint by the sea .” Which meant it wasn’t a vacation for me, her thirteen-year-old daughter, who was left responsible for her and myself, for food and safety, while she “chased her muse.” That was her PC—parentally correct—phrase for getting too high to do anything but dredge her hands in paint and smear it over a canvas.
I was pretty sure no one else had vacation memories of Carmel Cove quite like I did, having to pretend to be a cat and crawl on my hands and knees back to our motel because Mom refused to leave the beach unless a black cat was going to lead her to more magic. Maybe magic was supposed to be more drugs, but it didn’t matter once we were back in the room and she passed out on the bed.
I’d had to use all the vacation money Dad sent me to pay the motel for all the paint and sand damage she’d caused. But of course, Dad never knew. I didn’t want him to think I was weak. I didn’t want him to think he had to worry about me.
“Where have you been living?”
I didn’t want this man to think he had to worry about me either. “In the city,” I clipped and went to walk by him.
“Sutton.”
He grabbed my arm, and I yanked it away with a hiss.
“I’m fine. I’m going to shower,” I said and notched my chin higher. “You can go.”
I was the first one to walk away, heading directly into the first bedroom on my left. It had sliding glass doors that led onto a small outdoor patio, which was a perfect exit to slip out of, if needed; I hadn’t missed the security system protecting the garage nor the alarm panel just next to the front door.
I stilled, hearing the door in the hall and then the thud of boots descending into the garage. Good, I thought, because there was no reason for me to feel disappointed.
The icing on the cake was the massive soaking tub in the bathroom. I didn’t think twice before going straight to it and flipping on the faucets. A hot bath . The last time I’d taken a bath…well, that went even farther back than the comfortable bed.
While the tub filled, I turned and caught sight of myself in the mirror. “Damn,” I muttered.
My hair was wind-tangled. The dark circles under my eyes competed with my coal-black eyeliner. And it was amazing what a little bit of good lighting could do to reveal how pale and scrawny I looked.
Don’t get me wrong, even scrawny, I could still knock a man out with a single kick, but shit. I stepped up to the mirror, wincing when I could not only see the distinct outline of my collarbone but also the blue of my blood running through my veins.
I returned to the bedroom, wordlessly eyeing the bed that I’d forsake in a minute for that living room couch if it didn’t live up to my expectations.
I slid open the closet door, looked down at my duffel bag, and then dropped the whole thing inside and shut the door. All moved in.
Hot bath first, and then hopefully, I’d find some frozen food in the freezer. If not, I’d survive on the sandwich Daws gave me earlier in his office until tomorrow—I stilled, my head whipping to the side.
The sound of a pot or a pan—something clanged in the kitchen. In an instant, I’d unzipped my bag and pulled my knives from inside. What the hell— and then the low, rough curse released all the adrenaline from my body.
He left.
He was supposed to leave.
“Shit ,” I muttered right back, another stamp of anger branding my chest.
What was Tynan still doing here?
Stay calm, Sutton. You need him to think you’re calm.
I forced out a long breath, knowing I needed to keep calm as I set my knives on top of the bed and went back out to the kitchen. The sounds of paper tearing, knife sharpening, and bottle popping led me right to him.
“What are you doing?” I stopped right in the doorway, dumbstruck by the sight in front of me.
The teal-colored tiled kitchen had one entrance. The fridge, stove, and microwave were lined along the left-hand side, and on the right, the sink and dishwasher faced a half-wall counter that windowed into the living room.
And Tynan…he filled the space between the counters, standing next to the sink with a long knife in his hands and fresh salmon laid on a cutting board in front of him. His wrist and arm moved in a circular motion as he cut through the deep orange fillets. He’d removed his jacket, the black leather cut draped over one of the counter stools, and for a second, all I could focus on was the flex and pulse of his bicep as it moved—and the tattoos there that moved along with it.
Two strings of numbers, both partially obscured by his shirt. But the second line…my mouth parted. I didn’t need to see the whole number to know what it was. I had the same number tattooed on my left rib cage. Dad’s dog tag number.
My breath whooshed out, and then his answer delivered another blow.
“Making dinner,” Tynan said, my attention snapping back to his face.
There was the hard cut of his jaw. The scruff of a day-old beard broken up by a handful of scars that you had to be close enough to see. The bridge of his nose was rocky from being broken too many times to ever be straight.
He was making me dinner.It was obvious— would be obvious to a normal person, but not to me. I was turning into a broken record, but I couldn’t remember the last time someone had made me dinner. I wouldn’t count juvie because that food was manufactured, not made. The last time had to be when I was really little and Lolo and Lala had lived with us. That lasted for a few years before Lolo got cancer, and then Lala couldn’t take living with Mom anymore; they’d both passed within a year of each other before I was ten.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said through tight teeth. “I’m fine.”
The simple gesture slipped right past my defenses, just like the way he’d thrown me over his shoulder earlier had. It wasn’t the effort required that made my stomach flutter, but the intent. It was the audacity of someone to care enough about me to stop me from doing something reckless—and it was the way that audacity attracted me to him as equally as it frustrated me.
Tynan let out a low sound. A laugh, I realized a beat later. It was warm and unfamiliar the way it made my skin tingle. When was the last time I felt safe enough to laugh? When I’d had something happy enough to laugh about?
I blinked, and he was looking at me, his sea glass green eyes moving right through me like the whip of a winter wind.
“What?” I demanded.
He shook his head. “That must be the Brant motto.”
“What is?”
“That you’re fine—that you don’t need anything. Can’t count how many times Jon—your dad said that to me.” He returned his attention to the fish, carefully finishing cubing the fillets. “It’s all right to let someone help you.”
I stiffened and frowned. I didn’t need anyone interested in me or my emotions. Especially not him.“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you took your bag from my hand like the act of me holding it for you was the equivalent of a gun held to your head. I know you use defiance as a shield to deter anyone from getting close, especially someone who only wants to help,” he said, and as he grabbed the cutting board and took it over to the stove, he added, “And I know you kick like a fuckin’ freight train moving at full tilt.”
I swayed a little, my hand gripping the doorframe harder to steady myself. Was I that transparent?
Mara always said I didn’t know how to be taken care of. One time, she showed me this stupid slideshow on social media about being a parentified daughter. The one who grew up believing it was her role to fix everything and everyone around her. Who had to fill the role of an adult before she even knew how to be a child. The one who hid her own depression for having an absent father and an unstable mother and told herself it wasn’t that bad because her dad was a hero and her mom was brokenhearted.
Mara warned me that one day, all the martial arts classes in the world wouldn’t be enough to help me hide my anger any longer. And she was right. But then again, the man who killed Mom deserved what I’d done to him. Pig.
Coldness doused my spine, and I packed it down on all the warmth Tynan stoked to life. I needed him to go away—to not care. I needed to be able to focus on finding my childhood best friend. Mara’s life depended on it.
“And I know you like to play the hero like my dad, swooping in to save anyone and everyone in need,” I said, letting just a drop of all the bottled bitterness inside me leach into my voice. Dad was a soldier— a knight, he would tell me until I was old enough to realize what it really meant: a goner. “But if there’s one thing Jon Brant taught me, it’s how to save myself.”
His absence hadn’t given me a choice.
Tynan’s jaw tightened, and he slid the salmon into the fry pan that was spitting oil. Whatever I’d said clearly hit a pain point for him, but he buried it with a speed I found impressive.
“It’s just dinner, Sutton. Saving you from an empty stomach isn’t going to win me any medals,” he said, and then let out a sigh. “But if you don’t want it, then don’t eat it. Don’t worry, I’ve got no plans to shove anything down your throat.”
I sucked in a breath, and he heard it. I saw when he heard it. I saw the whole of him stiffen when he heard how I couldn’t help but run away with the last thing he’d said.
Heat burst into my cheeks, not from embarrassment but from ache. Suddenly, dinner became the least dangerous thing that could happen in the kitchen.
No.
I straightened my spine and tore my eyes away from him—from his tower of muscles and spice and aged sexiness. This attraction wasn’t to him, but to the danger of wanting him. To the risk of wanting something off-limits, of wanting someone who was old enough that it should be illegal. This attraction was nothing more than another mark of defiance to prove I wasn’t society’s prey.
“Fine. Make dinner. I’m going to take a bath.”