Lahat ng Kabanata ng Raven's MC Series; Marlowe & Torin -Book One of the series: Kabanata 71 - Kabanata 80

~Marlowe~I wasn’t sure how the hell my life had ended up here. Witness Protection.Even saying the words in my head felt surreal, like I’d stepped into someone else’s story and forgotten how to leave. I’d done everything they asked. Everything. New name. New address. New routines. New rules. Rachel Peters. Widow. Fresh start. No past. No attachments. It sounded simple when they explained it. It was anything but.The first few days had been brutal. Every sound sent me scrambling for cover. Tires on gravel. A door shutting too hard. Voices drifting too close to the windows. I slept in short, fractured bursts, waking with my heart racing and my hands clenched tight around nothing.They told me I was safe. I didn’t feel safe. I felt hunted.I was standing in the kitchen that morning, staring at a cup of coffee I hadn’t touched, when the knock came. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t rushed. That made it worse. Before I could move, the door opened and Casey stepped inside, her expression already se

Time moved differently in the safe house. Days blurred together, not because they were uneventful, but because everything important happened in the spaces between moments. In glances held too long. In conversations that almost went somewhere and then didn’t. In the way Torin learned the rhythm of my mornings without being invited into them.He woke before I did: always. I could hear him moving quietly through the house, like he was afraid of waking something fragile. By the time I came into the kitchen, there was coffee brewing and a plate of toast cooling on the counter, untouched. He never commented on whether I ate it. That might have been the hardest part.We settled into an uneasy truce. Civil. Functional. Careful. We talked about safe things. Weather. Meals. Which streaming service had the least terrible options. We didn’t talk about the USB. Or Casey. Or the fact that my entire life had been yanked sideways because of choices he’d made without me. And we definitely didn’t talk a

Sleep was a lie. I lay on my back staring at the ceiling, counting the slow turns of the fan as it pushed warm air around the room. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt it again—Torin’s mouth, his hands, the way his body had gone rigid just before he pulled away. Not because he didn’t want me. Because he wanted me too much.That realization twisted inside me, sharp and confusing. I rolled onto my side, pressing my face into the pillow, breathing in the faint scent of him that clung to the sheets. Soap. Leather. Something unmistakably Torin.I hated how easily my body betrayed me. How one look, one touch, unraveled weeks of carefully constructed distance. I hated even more that part of me felt… respected. Like he’d drawn that line not to punish me, but to protect something fragile between us.Trust. The word hovered in my mind, uncomfortable and heavy. I hadn’t trusted him. Not fully. Not since I’d learned how much he’d hidden, how many choices he’d made for me without my consent. Even n

The car that pulled into the drive was not subtle. It wasn’t flashy either, but it carried a weight to it, the kind that made your skin prickle before your brain could catch up. Dark sedan. Government plates. Windows tinted just enough to hide faces without looking like they were trying to.Torin felt it the second I did. He was standing near the window, arms crossed, posture loose in appearance only. The moment the tires crunched over the gravel, his shoulders went rigid, every instinct he owned snapping awake.“That’s not Casey,” I murmured.“No,” he said quietly. “It’s not.”We didn’t move right away. Safe house rules had drilled that into us. You observed first. You listened. You waited for confirmation before opening anything more vulnerable than your eyes. The engine cut. The driver’s door opened. And Brian stepped out.For half a second, my brain rejected the image outright. It tried to reshape him into something else. A neighbor. A delivery guy. Anyone but the man I knew.He st

Morning came quietly. No alarms, no pounding on the door, no voice reminding me where I was supposed to be or what name I was answering to. Just light. It crept in through the slats of the blinds, pale and tentative, brushing across the floor and climbing the wall like it was asking permission.I lay there longer than necessary, listening to the apartment breathe around me. Pipes ticking faintly. A distant car passing outside. The low hum of the refrigerator cycling on and off. For the first time in weeks, nothing felt urgent.I shifted, the couch cushions sighing beneath me, and stared at the ceiling. The faint water stain near the corner was still there, shaped vaguely like a continent if you squinted hard enough. Brian had once joked it looked like Australia, had gone on a whole tangent about kangaroos and terrible accents while I rolled my eyes and pretended not to smile. I hadn’t laughed then. I did now, quietly, the sound unfamiliar in my own ears. It lingered for a second, thin