“I think he ain’t as human as he pretends.Man’s evil and evil invites sick company.”
That thought hasn’t left my spine since.
I inhale deep and swing off the bike.The fog curls around my boots, thick as wool.This whole damn town feels cold lately.Not weather-cold—bone-cold.The kind that seeps into the places you don’t talk about.
And Sophie.Shit.
She cornered me before sunrise, rage under her skin like a fever.
“She’s still here,” she snapped.
“Becki hasn’t left the cell.”
“I don’t care where she is.You said she’d be gone.”
She’s right.I did say that.But the longer this missing-girl mess grows teeth, the more I see the truth.Keeping Becki locked up is safer than sending her back into the Reverend’s waiting arms.
I didn’t tell Sophie that.
Didn’t tell her I could smell real fear on Becki.The kind you don’t fake.
And now Sophie can’t look at me without thinking I’m choosing someone else.
Maybe I am.
Maybe the past claws deeper than I want to admit.
Because truth is, I remember too much.
The cemetery has always been a fucked-up kind of sanctuary.Before the club.Before power.Before my name meant anything.Back when I was still Hudson, and she was just Becki Crowley with bare feet and a stolen flask.
She used to sit beside me under the angel statue, reading psalms like secrets, not scripture.Whispered questions about the stars like she believed I knew how to answer them.
We fucked in the graveyard too many times to count.
One night, before I patched in, she lit a candle between us.Read a verse about vengeance in a voice that trembled like it wasn’t fear, but excitement.
Then she leaned close enough I felt her breath slide down my neck.“Hudson.”
No one but Sophie calls me that now.
“Someday, Daddy will pay.”
Taking a swig of bourbon from the flask, I shake the memory off and move toward the gravestones.Fog snakes around the stones.The air hums, static, faint, wrong.The ground feels too soft beneath my boots.
Then something crouched behind a tombstone snaps its head toward me.
Tall.Ragged.Skin pale like moonlit bone.Eyes glowing like a dying coal.We stare at each other, the fog thickening between us.Then the thing flickers, gone in a blink.
No footsteps.No rustle.Just absence.
My heart slams high into my throat.My knife’s already drawn, and I didn’t even feel myself pull it.
“Son of a bitch,” I whisper to the empty graves.
Too much bourbon.
Returning to the clubhouse, unease hits like a punch.
