The ride back to the clubhouse feels heavier than it should.The sun is barely rising over Hell, Kentucky, but the yard is already alive with patch members buzzing like hornets.Word travels fast.Whispered curses.Fists clenching.Rage simmering in the morning air.
Inside, Sophie is pacing.Her cheeks are flushed, her pretty green eyes tired, fists tight enough her knuckles bleach white.When she sees me, it’s pure fire.
“You said she’d be gone.”Her voice shakes.“You promised.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Working on it?”She stalks toward me like she’s ready to swing.“Legend, Becki threatened my family.My father.My home.And you locked her up instead of getting rid of her.She’s still here.Still breathing.Still watching me from behind those stupid eyelashes like everything she wants should belong to her.”
“She ain’t leaving until I figure out what Crowley’s hiding.”
Sophie steps closer, voice low and deadly.“If she’s here tomorrow, I ain’t.”
My chest cracks open like she reached in and pulled something out.Sophie doesn’t bluff.She doesn’t storm off lightly.When she leaves, it’s final.
“Princess…”
“Don’t say it.”Her voice breaks.“Not while she’s still under what you swore was our roof.”
She turns and walks away, heels sharp against the concrete, back straight, hair swinging like a final warning.I watch her go, guilt burning behind my ribs like someone lit a match inside me.
But my feet betray me.
I go back down the hallway to Royal’s door.
I stand there.
Listening.
Not knocking.
Not unlocking.
Just breathing in the silence on the other side.
She’s in there.
Becki.
The liar.
The girl who looked at me once like I hung the damn stars.
The girl who looked at Sophie like she wanted to rip them all down.
And God help me, I feel it again.The echo of something I should’ve buried.The ghost of a girl sitting on a graveyard bench with wet hair and a cigarette glowing between her fingers.
Sixteen-year-old me was a fool.
Thirty-three-year-old me is worse.
I remember her twirling barefoot in the summer rain behind Pearly Gates, dress sticking to her skin, laughter breaking across the headstones.The air smelled like honeysuckle and wet dirt.She looked like sin with a heartbeat.
“You’re gonna catch a cold,” I told her.
“I’m already burning,” she said.
Then she climbed onto my lap right there in the preacher’s graveyard.My hands on her waist.Her breath on my mouth.The storm steaming around us.
