I exhale slowly.Sophie doesn’t understand.I’m afraid she never will.No matter how many times I explain the deal with Crowley.I find something new.“Because she knows something.Something we need before another girl gets buried.”
“She’s manipulating you,” Sophie whispers.“She always has.”
“Becki didn’t make those girls disappear.”
“She sure as hell didn’t stop it.”
“She ain’t the enemy,” I repeat.
Sophie laughs, but it’s not humor.It’s heartbreak sharpened into a blade.“Then who is, Legend?Because you’re acting like you don’t see the way she looks at you.Like she didn’t keep us apart.Like she didn’t almost get me killed.”
My heart breaks because I know she’s right.
“That little preacher princess has been circling you since we were teenagers,” Sophie says.“And I’ll be damned if I let you fall for it again.”
“I ain’t falling for anything.”
“Then why is she still under our roof?”
I don’t answer.Because I can’t.Because Sophie is right in ways, she doesn’t want to be.And wrong in ways she’ll never admit.
“If she stays,” Sophie whispers, voice cracking, “I go for good.”
Those words land like a hammer.
Sophie.My Horse Princess.The woman who just took my ring and promised to stand beside me through shootouts and secrets and the kind of nights that leave scars you can’t see.Be my ol’ Lady.
She’s giving me an ultimatum.Not just going back to the farm where, honestly, she’s safer.But gone for good?And she already knows I can’t meet her demands.
She turns and walks out before I can respond.
I stand there, silent, remembering.
We were young.Stupid.Burning slow under the Kentucky stars.Becki leaned against me outside the church, her blue dress sticking to her skin from the heat.
“You ever think about burning it all down?”she whispered, breath warm on my throat.
“Sometimes.”
“I think you were born to lead.”
She wasn’t wrong.
She leaned in then, lips brushing my jaw.Not a kiss.Not yet.Just a promise.A warning.A spark waiting for oxygen.
I didn’t kiss her then.But I wanted to.And maybe that was the first mistake.Second was setting the damn church on fire that night.Reverend’s men stopped the blaze quick.
Reverend set Royal’s ass on fire.He took the fall.
Back in the now, I grab my keys and walk out of my room.Sophie needs reassurance I can’t give.The Becki situation needs answers I don’t have.The club needs a leader who doesn’t flinch.
I ain’t sure I can do all three.
Night falls in Hell, Kentucky.Dark comes fast here.Faster when it knows it has work to do.We go without patches, without the swagger we normally wear.Without noise, on foot.Oaks takes the west side of the property.Rye and Vandal sweep the storage sheds.
Royal and I move toward the old church basement.The same basement Becki took Royal to.The same one Royal found that scrap of glitter-pink cloth in.He has the key.The doors groan open.The air hits us in a wave, damp, stale, holding the weight of things that were alive once.
We move room to room.I find chains sunk into brick.Old.Rusted.Used.Royal finds a rusted bedframe with restraints still bolted to it.We give each other a disgusted look.
