He dropped to one knee—not smooth, not practiced, just there in the dirt, heart pounding like it wanted out.
“I don’t do this shit,” he said. “Never thought I would. But I want you to be mine. Officially. No lies, no half-measures.”
Carly’s mouth opened, then closed. She covered her face with both hands, the way someone does when they’re about to scream or cry or maybe both.
“You’re insane,” she whispered, voice trembling. “We barely know each other.”
He smiled, but his eyes were sharp as razors. “I know enough.”
She stared at him, tears making her mascara run, black rivers on her cheeks. “I don’t have anything left, Damron.”
“Good,” he said. “Now you won’t lose it.”
She laughed, the sound ragged, and punched him in the arm. “You asshole. You fucking asshole.”
He grinned, teeth bared, and pulled her close. She kissed him hard, lips bruising against his. The ring slipped onto her finger like it belonged there. He didn’t say anything else. Didn’t need to. They sat together on the log, hands locked, the flask empty at their feet. The world below them could burn or freeze, didn’t matter. In this moment, all that existed was the heat between them and the promise of something neither had ever dared before. When the sun started to bleed into the sky, they mounted up and rode back toward the city, the future unknown but finally, for once, their own.
Chapter four
The End
He came up through blackness, not like waking from a dream but more like drowning—sudden, violent, his lungs snapping open before the rest of him figured out he was alive. The hospital ceiling was yellowed with age, a light panel flickering overhead. Damron’s first instinct was to swing at the source of the pain, except his arms barely moved, and everything below the rib cage felt like it’d been torched with a cattle prod.
“Boss is up,” someone said, a voice he recognized as Augustine’s, a man who’d once killed a pit boss with his bare hands in a fight over a poker debt.
“Don’t fuckin’ crowd him.” Another voice, lower, full of iron: Nitro. Always Nitro.
Damron turned his head, which cost him a full-body flinch, and saw the shapes gathered in the room. Three men in leather, denim, and various stages of bloodstain. The sight of it made him want to laugh, but even the thought of laughter threatened to dislodge something vital in his chest.
Nitro stepped forward, arms crossed, tattooed veins bulging against the biceps. “Welcome back to hell, Prez,” he said.
Damron licked his lips. His mouth tasted like copper and old bandages. He tried to prop himself on one elbow. The room tilted; a monitor bleeped in protest. Nitro’s hand was on his shoulder, pressing him down with gentle violence.
“Doc says you need rest,” Nitro said.
“Doc can eat my dick.” Damron spat a clot of dried blood into the sheets. He forced his eyes to focus on the others. “You want to tell me what the fuck happened?” Damron said.
Nitro nodded at Junior, who started talking fast, tripping over the words. “Came outta nowhere, boss. Dire Straits. They—they rammed the bikes at the Four Corners light. Augustine got clipped, I tried to pull you back, but there was, uh… a lotta guys. I think I shot at least—”
“Three dead,” Augustine said, his voice flat. “Two in critical. Dire Straits boys. One’s at County, the other’s still in surgery. We lost none. Couple got nicks.” He gestured at his own arm, wrapped in what looked like a bar towel from the clubhouse.
Nitro’s gaze didn’t leave Damron. “You took a knife under the ribs. Lost a lotta blood, but you’re patched. They had to do something with your kidney. You got less of it now.”
Damron snorted, a dry, ugly sound. “I was using it too much anyway.”
He tried to sit up again and made it halfway before the pain slammed him back down. This time he swore and didn’t stop until the pain became background noise, just another channel in the radio static of his existence.
“Where’s my phone?” he said.
The phone had seven percent battery and a spiderweb crack through the corner. He punched in his code and scrolled to the messages, thumb stiff and dumb. No missed calls from Carly. Not a text. His stomach did a slow turn, bile coating his throat.
He glanced up. The brothers were watching him, all three, like he might detonate.
“Where’s Carly?” he said. He tried to keep it level, but there was a tremor in it. “She know I’m here?”
A silence, as palpable as a knife edge.
Junior broke first. “Uh, she hasn’t been by, boss. Not since the—uh—incident.”
