Page 6 of Brick’s Anchor

Chapter 3 - Brick

She's digging her nails into her arms hard enough to leave marks.

I can see it from the corner of my eye. She thinks she's being subtle about it, thinks nobody's paying attention, but I notice everything. It's how I'm built. How I've stayed alive this long. You learn to see the small things, the tells that mean someone's about to break, about to snap, about to do something desperate.

The way her fingers curl into her own flesh, the pressure she's applying, she's trying to ground herself. Trying to feel something real. I've seen soldiers do the same thing after firefights, after watching friends die, after coming back from places they left pieces of themselves behind.

I want to tell her to stop. Want to reach over and pull her hands away before she breaks skin. But I don't. Can't. She already flinched when I moved earlier, already made it clear she doesn't want to be touched, doesn't want help from any man. Forcing physical intervention would just prove her right about all of us.

So, I sit here like a useless piece of shit and watch her hurt herself because the alternative is worse.

The SUV rolls through empty streets. It's past midnight. Most of Millhaven is asleep, unaware that six women just got pulled from a Viper trafficking warehouse. Unaware that war is happening in their backyard. That's how it always works. Normal people sleep while men like us do the violent necessary things that keep the world turning.

Judge sits across from me, his green eyes cataloguing each woman with the same attention he applies to everything. Ex-military shows in every line of him, the way he positions himself to have clear sight lines to all exits, the way his hand rests near his weapon, the way he's calculating threat levels and escape routes without conscious thought. He catches my eye and I see the question there. I shake my head slightly. Not yet. Let them breathe. Let them process. They've been through enough without us demanding answers.

The blonde girl in the middle seat hasn't stopped crying quietly. The girl next to her, dark hair, maybe twenty-two, keeps whispering to her, words too soft for me to hear. Comfort between survivors. The other three have gone silent, staring at nothing, processing trauma in real time.

And the girl beside me, the one with brunette hair and blunt bangs who threw a cup at my head and told me she doesn't need help from anyone, is slowly destroying her own arms while trying to pretend she's fine.

I pull my cut off and hold it out to her.

She looks at it like it might bite her.

"What are you doing?" Her voice is sharp. Defensive.

"You're cold," I say. It's not entirely a lie. She's been shivering since we got in the vehicle, though I don't think it's from temperature. Shock does that. Makes your body forget how to regulate itself.

"I'm fine."

"You're shaking."

"I said I'm fine."

I keep holding the cut out. "It's warm. It's clean. You can give it back when we get to the clubhouse."

She stares at me. Those dark eyes are trying to find the trap, the angle, the hidden cost. I keep my expression neutral. Show her nothing that looks like expectation or demand.

"Why?" she asks finally.

"Because you're cold and I'm not."

"That's not a reason."

"It's the only reason I've got."

She looks at the cut again. At the Iron Phoenix patch on the back. At the leather that's worn soft from almost three years of wear. Then she looks at her own arms, at where her nails have left red crescents in her skin.

Slowly, she reaches out and takes it.

The cut swallows her. She's small enough that it hangs past her hands, drapes over her shoulders like a blanket. She pulls it tight around herself, and I watch some of the tension leave her spine. Not much. Just a fraction. But it's there.

"Thank you," she says it like the words hurt to say.

"You're welcome."

She goes back to staring out the window. But her hands aren't digging into her arms anymore. They're wrapped in the leather of my cut, holding it closed, using it as armor between herself and the world.

Something in my chest does that thing again. That movement I don't understand and don't want. I force it down, force myself to focus on the practical. We're fifteen minutes from the clubhouse, and we have medical supplies ready.