His brow lifted. “You do?”
“Not all the time,” I said. “But when I’m stressed. Or if I have nightmares. I’ve done it since I was a kid.”
“Anyone ever tell you?” he asked.
I nodded. “My mom. Jenna’s heard me talk in my sleep once when I crashed on the shop couch during Mother’s Day.”
Asher’s gaze stayed on my face, focused. “You have bad dreams often?”
I hesitated. Not because I didn’t trust him, but because saying it out loud made it real. “More than I’d like,” I admitted.
He didn’t push. Didn’t ask what they were about.
He just held me like it was the most natural thing in the world.
For a minute, we stayed like that. Me pressed against his chest, his arm wrapped around me, and the morning light spilling across the room like it didn’t know it was stepping into something fragile.
Then my brain fully caught up.
The brick.
The window.
The sound of glass exploding inward.
My body went cold all at once, adrenaline jolting through me like my nerves remembered before my mind did.
I pushed myself up slightly, enough to look him in the eyes. “Asher.”
His expression shifted immediately. “Yeah.”
“Was it really Chrome?” I asked, voice quieter than I meant it to be. “Or did you just assume because of yesterday?”
His jaw tightened. Not anger, just certainty. “It was Chrome,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“I saw the cuts,” he replied. “Two bikes. Same style. Same patches. Same coward move.”
My stomach twisted. “So… they really did that.”
“Yes.”
I sank back against him, but my thoughts were spinning now, fast and sharp. “Why?” I asked. “Why would they break the shop window? I’m not a Vulture.”
Asher’s hand moved slowly up and down my back, steadying. “You’re connected.”
I huffed out a breath that almost turned into a laugh. “Connected.”
“Yes,” he said like it was the simplest thing in the world.
I stared at him for a second, then let out a humorless little laugh. “I didn’t think you were drama.”
His mouth quirked slightly. “I’m not.”
“That is… literally drama,” I said, gesturing vaguely toward the window that was not currently exploding because we were in my bedroom, but still. “Enemies. Bricks. Motorcycles flying past—”
He cut me off with a quiet, firm tone. “Juliet.”