Grady glanced up from his cell phone, his gaze connecting with the plain walls of his cabin in the compound. He eyed the clock on the wall with a threatening glare. His feet were twitching, hands clenching in an effort to sit there until Callie would be heading home from work and it was time to go meet her. Every instinct was telling him to get on his bike and go watch her place, even sit outside her work until she was ready and escort her home, if necessary. He rolled his eyes. Idiot! Sitting astride his bike outside police dispatch headquarters in his club cut was the perfect way to get Callie fired, and himself possibly arrested. He couldn’t protect her from behind bars, and so until he uncovered more information about who the asshole was, he had to settle on this, as much as it was killing him.

Grady stood, pacing around the room as he ran a hand through his hair. Perhaps he could do something. What information did he already know about the guy? Was it that jerk Captain Andrews or someone else? Not every secret admirer was a stalker, but this guy even gave him the creeps. Leaving anonymous notes for a widow who lived alone was more than a little creepy, but for Callie? No way that shit was going down on his watch. Callie, of course, had tried to pretend it wasn’t worrying her, but he could see right through that. She was simply trying to protect him, in her own way. Grady didn’t need protection. He needed to atone for the horrors of David’s death, and he needed to keep Callie safe. At all costs. His soul craved it.

But what the fuck could he do when he couldn’t be with her? Callie didn’t own a gun, that he knew of, anyway, but maybe he would take her one, just in case. David had taken her to the gun range several times, each time before he deployed. Did she still have his or had she sold it after his passing, or simply given it away? He didn’t know. God, there were so many things about her that he didn’t know.

Who was he kidding? She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, and he had exactly zero chance with her. Even if he hadn’t fucked up and slept with her the week before, she was never meant to be his. It was his job to protect her, to keep her safe, and that was all. So why did even the thought of her make him rock hard? His cock swelled as he pictured her creamy skin, her body lithe and flexible as she spread out beneath him, taking his cock fully inside her.

Even the crushing guilt he felt every moment of the day couldn’t touch his arousal where Callie was concerned. She was a beautiful, giving woman, but between the sheets? Grady’s eyes drifted closed as he groaned. She’d grabbed onto him, forcing him deeper inside her, as his hands had gripped her hips so hard he was sure he’d left marks, and God, he’d loved every second of it. He was going to hell, that much he was sure of, and yet Callie had been so giving, so pure. Her willingness in giving herself to him and accepting his touch had given him more than physical pleasure. For the first time in months, long, lonely, and tormented months, he’d felt a connection with another human being.

He dropped back down onto the lumpy couch, caught in his memories. Had it felt as amazing for her? He’d tried to make it good for her, refusing to give in to his own urges until she’d come all over his dick. Her breathy moans had almost made that impossible. But no, she couldn’t be feeling so tortured with emotion as he had been, because she didn’t have anything to feel fucking guilty about.

He wouldn’t wish this on his worst enemy, but that didn’t stop him from literally twitching with need to see her again, hold her again, even if it was only until he’d found the asshole leaving her little notes. He’d held himself back from even flirting with Callie, ever, out for respect for David. Not once. Even if he’d wanted to, way back in the recesses of his mind, he wasn’t going to screw over his best friend. Never.

And now?

He grunted, shifted position to adjust his cock, and shook his head. He didn’t dare palm himself. That would just lead to him jerking off in a musty cabin with her name on his lips, and Callie deserved more than that. She deserved the whole damn world. Just because they’d had sex, doesn’t mean they were in a relationship, for fuck’s sake. He had no idea if there even was anyone else, if there had ever been since David. He doubted it, but it was possible. She wasn’t a nun.

But he also knew the pain he could see echoed in her eyes. Intimately. He knew why she worked two jobs without her having to tell him. It kept her grief at bay, and her loneliness. Her purposeful isolation from others was for protection, keeping her distance protected her heart, prevented her from thinking too much about how much she’d lost, how much she missed the life she used to have.

It was much the same reason he joined the club after he’d returned. Most of society had gone out of their way to make life difficult, especially with his dishonorable discharge and the judgment that he saw in the eyes of potential employers. With the club, he felt at home for what was maybe the first time in his life. But even then, he didn’t have peace. Lying in Callie’s arms, their naked bodies pressed together, was the only time he’d felt that in years. Perhaps in his entire life.

No. He refused to allow his memories to go back, to remember that horrible day. Every time he did, that red haze of anger returned. For just one day, he wanted peace—peace from his own nightmares, his personal hell on earth. Levi and Seth were right. He needed to get his head on straight, to move forward. But how did you move forward when you were stuck in place? How did you move forward when it felt like everything around you held you back? How did you move forward when you always felt like the outsider, the one forever looking in, a part of you wanting to be more but not knowing how to get there?

He sat on the couch, unmoving as the afternoon sun ever so slowly made its way through his slatted blinds and moved the square of sunshine through the window across his small living room. He stared quietly at his kitchen, directly across from his couch at the table, then the doorway leading into his bedroom. And back again. Occasionally, he shifted position, but otherwise he remained still. He should get out of there, go for a ride, but even with all his restless energy, he couldn’t make himself move. To do anything that would take him further away from Callie, sitting right across town at work. A wave of depression surged around him, trying to embrace him. He was a mess. The nightmares, the violent rages, or the depression. No happy medium for Grady Corben. He grimaced. No rest for the wicked.

Levi had told him to think about where his loyalties should or would lie, now and into the future. He had to take care of things with Callie, to do what he could to provide her with protection, and find out if there was any viable threat from her secret admirer. At the same time, he knew that Levi and the club also had issues to deal with, primarily the Jokers and their encroachment on their territory. Tensions mounted, and one of these days, those tensions would explode into violence. Someone was going to get hurt, maybe even worse. As long as it was one of the Jokers that got hurt, he didn’t give a damn. But it was his job as Sergeant at Arms to be there, to do his job, and he couldn’t do his job properly when his mind was consumed with thoughts of Callie. He owed them his life, too, in a way.

As soon as Callie got off shift, he would go by her house, have a talk with her, and encourage her to go to the cops with a report at the very minimum of the secret admirer. The very idea chaffed him to the bones, but they could protect her in ways that he couldn’t. Likely nothing would be done without even a name, but maybe since she worked for the Oklahoma City PD, they would at least give her a drive-by once or twice a night. He would be there as much as he could, but her neighbors were also familiar with him, his bike, and the fact that he just sat there and watched Callie’s house. Maybe they had already reported him to the cops as a stalker. One of these days, when he drove up her street, maybe the cops would be there waiting for him, to separate him from his bike, throw him in jail. On what charges he wasn’t sure, but he was positive that the cops could come up with something to keep him out of the way.

That was another issue. To date, the Steel Kings had a tenuous relationship with the local cops. They didn’t cause trouble in town, and the cops pretty much left them alone. But if Grady got arrested for literally haunting Callie’s street, things would change. He could bring down a whole heap of trouble on the Kings, trouble they had nothing to do with.

He’d give it all up in a moment if he meant paying his debt to Callie, but how far would she let him butt into her life? She was a grown woman. Though David had been his best friend, it wasn’t like he’d appointed Grady to be Callie’s protector for the rest of her life. Not even in those last moments had David . . .

He purposely slammed the door on those thoughts and stood, glancing at the clock again. Yet another hour had passed while he’d been lost in his memories. Instead of sunshine, the shadows of twilight oozed through the windows. Soon, full dark would come to this side of Oklahoma and wreath his little cabin in full darkness. He rose, turned on the lamp on a second-hand end table at the far side of the couch, and then started pacing again. After only a few minutes, he grumbled with frustration, snatched his keys from the table, shoved his gun into the waistband of his jeans behind his back, tugged his jacket on, and left his cabin.

Grady climbed onto his bike, a small sense of comfort, of familiarity, surrounding him as he settled his ass into the customized leather seat. He started the bike, a sense of calm surging through him as the engine rumbled beneath him, the slight vibration soothing his flayed soul. This was where he felt contentment, sitting on his bike, riding at night, the warm air brushing against his cheeks and rifling through his hair. Riding out onto the plains, forgetting everything but the feel of the engine thrumming beneath him, the warm air rising from the plains soothing his senses. Sometimes, when he rode late at night, he would find a place to park in the dark and watch distant lightning, or the moon rise, or try to pick out constellations from the millions of stars dotting the blanket of night sky.

Invariably though, his sense of peace and contentment would be ruined. He would think that the night sky in Afghanistan had looked much the same, as did the moon and its travels across the night sky. That was the problem. Wherever he found a sense of contentment, of peace, it wasn’t far enough to blanket his memories, memories of war that had never bothered him until that day when the IED exploded, that day when David had died. After that, everything was different, not only with Afghanistan and his view of it, but his own feelings, emotions, and reactions. He had lost his buddy, his best friend, his brother in arms. But he wasn’t the only one. Why the hell couldn’t he get past it? Why did it keep coming back to haunt him, to claw at his soul, attempting to destroy him? David had been destroyed. Would he find no peace until he too was destroyed? Was he forever doomed to feel this way?

With a thrum of his engine, Grady shifted gears and left the dirt parking lot of the compound, already tucking all of his questions into a separate compartment at the back of his mind. He focused only on the feel of the warm evening air against his face, the tug of the wind against his T-shirt, and the vibration of the motorcycle beneath him.

He headed southeast toward Oklahoma City. He’d drive around a while before checking out Callie’s house to see if she was home. Hell, maybe he would just drive to her house and wait in her driveway if he had to. Plus, he wouldn’t mind being there as she drove up into her driveway. Would they hook up again? No. He wouldn’t allow himself to take any more from her, as much as every thought of her sent shivers through him. He focused on the road in front of him, laying itself out in the warm night air. This was where he belonged. It was the only place he ever would. Now he just had to learn to live with that.