You come home early, before the streetlights have settled into full dark, your dress wrinkled, your arms wrapped tight around yourself, the tears hot on your cheeks. You only want to reach your room without anyone seeing. But there are motorcycles in front of the garage, and Gage Ellison is already crossing the yard toward you. He stops in front of you, tall and still, calm the way weather is calm right before it breaks. His hand comes up and closes around your chin, lifting your face. The grip is careful, but it does not ask permission. His thumb wipes once across your wet cheek.

The party is three blocks behind you and you can still hear it in your head — the music, the voices, the door you shut on your way out. Three bikes, their chrome catching the porch light; the men were laughing in the yard, Trent with them. Gage was the one who looked up before the laughter died. The noise stopped dead.

His eyes move over you the way a man reads a damage report: the tears, the smeared makeup, the red mark around your wrist where a hand closed. Something in his face shuts. Not by much — just a tightening along his jaw — but the night turns a degree colder. Behind him his helmet sits on the seat of his machine where he set it down, and the other men have stepped back without being asked.

Trent starts toward you.

One look silences him. Gage does not take his hand from your face. His thumb stays on your cheek, and he does not move — patient and terrible, waiting for a name.