Chapter 2 · One Bed

The brass ring was already turning my finger green.

Forty minutes ago, some county clerk behind scratched plexiglass shoved a greasy ink pad at me and muttered, *Sign here, honey.*

I signed.

Now the black ink was still embedded under my thumbnail, my mother’s ventilator was still humming forty miles north on someone else’s dime, and I was climbing into a truck that smelled like diesel, wet dog, and twenty years of stale tobacco.

"You’re bleeding," I said.

Garrett didn’t look at me. He hauled his massive frame behind the wheel, making the whole cab groan under his weight. He dragged the back of a scarred wrist across his bottom lip, checked the fresh smear of red on his skin, and shoved the key into the ignition.

"Yeah."

The starter screamed twice before the engine finally kicked over, rattling every loose bolt in the dashboard.

I kept my knees glued together and my hands balled tight in my lap. The bench seat was split down the middle, foam spilling out like guts. Hanging off the cracked rearview mirror, a cheap plastic rosary swung wildly with every vibration.

I stared at his profile in the dashboard glow. Thick jaw, three days of dark stubble, and knuckles raw from hitting someone else's face.

"You want to tell me what a guy with no boat gets out of marrying me?" I asked.

He threw the shifter into reverse with a violent clunk. One windshield wiper scraped bone-dry across the glass.

"A roof," he said, his voice like gravel under a boot. "A bed. Hot water."

"That’s it? That’s what you sold your name for?"

"You'd be surprised what a man signs away for hot water."

"I don’t buy it."

"Good," he said, cutting the wheel hard toward the harbor road. "Don’t."

My phone buzzed against my thigh.

I pulled it out. A photo from June. The Voss family marble table, the signed settlement contract spread across it, and June’s manicured pink thumb pinning down my signature like a dead bug.

*Daddy says enjoy the slums,* her text read right beneath it. *Tell Aunt Carol I said hi before the plug gets pulled anyway.*

My fingers squeezed the screen until the glass groaned. I flipped it face-down on my thigh and stared out the passenger window.

It didn't matter. June got what she wanted—the trust fund cleared, my mother sidelined, and me thrown to a harbor dockhand who didn't even bother wiping the blood off his face for city hall.

Rain started coming down in sheets, blurring Beacon Harbor into streaks of gray and grease. The old canneries sat dark and rotting. Giant cargo cranes hung over the black water like rusted skeletons.

He blew right past a chain-link gate with a crooked sign: **BERTH 4 — NO TRESPASS.**

He didn't tap the brakes. Just swung through the gap.

The place looked like a graveyard for ships. Concrete pilings chewed down to rotten teeth, rusted winches, and an abandoned drydock big enough to swallow a cathedral. Out past the edge of the slip, where the deepwater channel dropped off into total black, a shape loomed in the dark.

Massive. A sheer, black iron hull cutting into the fog. No running lights. No name painted on the side.

"What’s that?" I asked, leaning toward the glass.

"Nothing," Garrett said. His jaw clenched tight. "Don't go near the water. Don't go past the gate."

He cut the engine beneath an old timber loft.

The silence inside the cab slammed down hard, broken only by rain pounding the metal roof and the rough, steady sound of him breathing.

He popped his door without another word, circled around to the flatbed, and grabbed my scuffed suitcase with one hand. Like twenty-four years of my ruined life didn't weigh more than a sack of flour.

"I can carry my own damn bag," I said, hitting the gravel.

"I know you can."

He was already taking the wooden stairs two at a time.

The loft was freezing.

It smelled like damp canvas, sawdust, and kerosene. Warped floorboards screamed under my sneakers with every step. Stacked sail bags lined the walls like wrapped corpses. A little kerosene heater clicked in the far corner, throwing off a pathetic ring of orange heat that didn't do a thing against the draft.

And right in the dead center of the room, under a single naked bulb hanging from a cord, sat the bed.

One bed.

A narrow iron frame with black paint peeling off the rails. It wasn't built for comfort. It was the kind of cot built for one solitary, exhausted man who didn't plan on waking up next to anyone.

Ten feet away stood a shower stall made of pebbled, frosted glass. No door. No curtain. Just a rusted drain in the floor and a gap wide enough to see straight through.

I dropped my wet jacket on a wooden crate and planted my palms against the cold iron footboard. The frame shrieked.

"Okay," I said. My voice wavered, but I forced it flat. "We need rules."

Garrett dropped my suitcase by the timber post. He didn't answer. He didn't even turn around.

"I take the floor," I said. "I've slept on worse. You take the bed. We keep our hands to ourselves. In six months, when my mother’s stabilized and the trust clears—" My voice caught in my throat. I swallowed down the bile and pushed the words out. "In six months, this deal is done. You get your money. We go our separate ways."

Garrett slowly turned around.

The bare bulb hung between us, throwing sharp shadows across the planes of his face. His flannel shirt was soaked through from the rain, plastered against shoulders that looked broad enough to hold up the ceiling. Water dripped from the dark ends of his hair down the line of his throat.

He didn't look like a dockhand. He looked like an executioner who’d spent his life breaking things.

He stepped toward me.

One step. Two. The floorboards didn't make a sound beneath his boots.

I stepped backward until the back of my knees struck the iron frame. He kept coming, cutting off the air, cutting off the light, until his shadow swallowed me whole.

My balance gave. I came down hard on the damp mattress.

Before I could scramble back, his palm slammed down flat on the quilt right beside my thigh. The springs groaned under his weight as he leaned over me, trapping me against the headboard.

The heat rolling off him was suffocating—pure woodsmoke, rain, and raw adrenaline.

He reached up with his free hand. Slowly, deliberately, his blunt fingers hooked into the top button of his work shirt and popped it loose.

Then the second.

"The floor’s all yours, princess," he murmured, his mouth hovering an inch from my ear, so close his breath stirred my wet hair. "I take the bed."