I know better than that.
I know a woman like Reina should be taken somewhere bright and clean, handed to people with badges and clipboards, wrapped in a blanket, and kept far away from men like me.
Men with ghosts.
Men with guns.
Men who know how to kill a threat in under three seconds and sleep afterward.
Except the second I saw her, all I thought was mine to protect.
That word is still sitting in my chest like a live round.
Mine.
I don’t do mine.
I have a cabin in the woods because I like distance. I have a bed big enough for one because I don’t bring soft things home. I have a safe full of weapons, a drawer full of old scars that live inside my head, and a coffee mug with a crack down the side because I never remember to replace anything that still works.
That is my life.
Quiet.
Empty on purpose.
Then she wraps around me like she belongs there, and the road under my tires feels like it’s taking me somewhere I was always headed.
Dangerous thought.
I shove it down.
The bike growls beneath us. The mountain road bends around the ridge, dark trees flashing by on both sides. Lovestone Ridge sits somewhere behind us, all sleepy streetlamps and locked doors. Ahead, my cabin waits in the pines, far enough from town that a man can hear trouble coming if he wants to.
I want to.
Always have.
My mother died when I was a kid. Cancer ate her slow, and my father loved her so hard it hollowed him out when she was gone. I remember him sitting in the kitchen after the funeral, one hand wrapped around a mug of coffee gone cold, staring at the chair she used to sit in.
He never said love ruined him.
He didn’t have to.
I watched it happen.
Years later, war took him the rest of the way.
Then it took my brother too.
Different places. Same flag over the coffins. Same folded triangle handed over like that could fill the hole.
I learned the lesson young.
Love gives the world a handle. Something to grab. Something to tear out of your hands while you stand there bleeding and useless.
So I became useful in other ways.
Navy.