As I follow him into the common room, the entire world seems to stutter to a halt. The music from the jukebox, the clack of pool balls, the laughter—it all dies. Every pair of eyes in the bar snaps to us, a sea of silent judgment and confusion. I catch up to him in the center of the room, grabbing his arm, desperation flooding my veins. “East, please, listen to me.”
He yanks his arm free with so much force I stumble a step before his vicious snarl slices through the thick tension. “Get your hands off me.” Finally, he turns to face me, and the pain in his eyes is so profound it manifests as pure, unfiltered rage.
“Seven years,” he hisses, each word a hammer blow that makes me flinch. “Seven. Fucking. Years. You let me believe he died in some random crossfire. You let me carry a promise I thought was for his girl. And you knew this whole time?”
“I was protecting you!” My voice cracks, desperation clawing at my throat. “He was trying to kill you! If I had told anyone, hewould have come after you again! I couldn’t… I couldn’t lose you, too.”
His laugh is a harsh, ugly sound that echoes in the dead silence, a sound that feels like a dagger twisting in my gut. “Protecting me? You let me live a lie! I mourned him the wrong way! I carried a promise for a man who died saving my life, and you never said anything.”
He doesn’t shout the last part, but the force of his words hits me like a physical blow, leaving me gasping for breath. The betrayal in his eyes is a blade twisting deeper, raw and unforgiving. He turns away from me, his back a rigid wall of rejection, and stalks toward the main entrance. I call his name, but he doesn’t look back.
The clubhouse door slams shut behind him with a finality that sends a shockwave through the air. Moments later, the roar of his Harley shatters the silence like a gunshot, tires screeching as he tears away, leaving nothing but the echo of his departure hanging in the air.
I’m left standing in the middle of the room, the focal point of a dozen shocked, confused stares. The silence is absolute, like a suffocating blanket that presses down on me, making it hard to breathe. My knees are shaking, threatening to buckle beneath the weight of what I’ve just unleashed. The room itself seems to spin, and the edges of my vision go gray. I look up, my eyes searching for something, anything, and they find Nash. He stands by the bar, his expression devoid of anger or judgment. Instead, it’s grim, filled with a deep understanding that cuts through the chaos. He gives a single, almost imperceptible nod—not of forgiveness, but of duty. He knows. Without a word, he turns and heads for the door, going after East.
The spell breaks. Frankie is the first to reach me, her hands warm on my arms, steadying me against the storm brewinginside. Candace, Ruby, and Sloane close in behind her, their worried faces a circle of concern surrounding me.
“Darla,” Frankie says, her voice a soft anchor in the tempest of my thoughts. “What happened? What did you tell him?”
I look into their faces, at the family I’ve found among the Outsiders, and the full weight of what I’ve just done crashes down on me like a tidal wave. The secret I kept to protect him has just shattered him, and now I stand amidst the ruins of our trust.
My voice emerges as a wrecked whisper, the last puff of air from my collapsing lungs. “I just ruined everything.”
Chapter 29
East
Theworldisared blur of taillights and fury. The Harley’s engine is a raw, guttural roar, but it’s not loud enough. It can’t drown out the words echoing in my skull, a relentless, pounding drumbeat:He was aiming for you. He was aiming for you, East.
My hands are numb, my grip on the handlebars so tight my knuckles ache. The wind rips at my cut with a cold, indifferent slap, but all I feel is the volcanic, sick heat coiling in my gut. Seven years. For seven fucking years I’ve carried the weight of Declan’s last words, the phantom feel of his blood on my hands, a memory so visceral I can still smell the metallic tang of it in the back of my throat. Seven years of holding his memory as a sacred, broken thing, defining my entire goddamn life by a promise made to a ghost.
All the while, she knew.
She’s been walking around with this truth, this jagged, poisonous secret, clutched tight in her chest. A shield. Not for herself. Forme.
Betrayal twists like a knife in my gut, so sharp and hot it makes me want to vomit. It battles a fierce, terrifying awe that threatens to consume me whole. I don’t know which emotion will rip me apart first. I just know I’m coming undone.
Nash is a steady shadow in my rearview mirror, a silent, loyal anchor. He’s giving me space to run, but he’s not letting me run alone. My house, once a quiet sanctuary, now feels like a lie, so I can’t go back there either. I push my bike past the town limits, veering down a long-abandoned dirt road, its tires spitting gravel, then I dive into the deep, dark woods. A place to bleed. A place where no one can hear me shatter.
I kill the engine. The sudden, oppressive silence feels like a slap to the face. It’s the silence of the warehouse lot. The ringing in my ears starts up, high and shrill.The silence after the shot.
My body moves, stiff, each joint protesting. I stalk to the back of my saddlebag, my hands trembling as I retrieve my Glock. The cold steel is a familiar, grounding weight in a world that has just crumbled beneath me. I slam a magazine in; theclick-clackis a small, satisfying sound of order in the chaos of my head.
I don’t aim. I just fire.
The first shot is a flash of orange fire in the dusk, a brutal violation of the quiet. The crack echoes, followed by the sound of splintering wood.She knew.Another shot.She let me mourn him the wrong way.Another.She watched him die saving my life.Another. I empty the entire magazine into an old oak tree, the recoil slamming against my palms in a welcome, rhythmic punishment. But it’s not enough. The noise, the violence, the acrid smell of gunpowder filling my nostrils—none of it silences the storm.
I stand there, chest heaving, the empty gun hanging uselessly at my side. My heart is pounding a furious, trapped rhythm. I’m teetering on the edge of something dark and dangerous, ready to plunge into the abyss.
“You done?”
Nash’s voice cuts through the ringing in my ears, steady and unyielding. He hasn’t moved from the bikes, his arms crossed over his chest, a silent sentinel.
My first instinct is to tell him to fuck off. To leave me here to rot. Instead, the words rip out of me, raw and jagged like broken glass. “She knew. The whole time, Nash. He wasn’t aiming at Declan. He was aiming atme. And she stood there, watched him die saving my life, and never said a damn word.” The betrayal feels like a fresh, gaping wound. “The promise I made… it was all built on a lie. I’ve been honoring a ghost while she was protecting the truth.”
I finally turn to face him, the weight of the gun heavy in my grip. “And the entire time… she was protecting me. She carried that burden alone for seven years, all to keep me safe.” The awe and the anger clash, a violent storm in my chest, and I can’t breathe.How could she? And how could she not?
Nash walks over, his boots crunching on the gravel, his expression grim. “Makes sense now, doesn’t it?” he murmurs in a gravelly voice. “Why she pulled away. Why she always looked at you like you were a ghost she was trying not to see.” He stops a few feet from me. “What would you have done, East? If you had known a secret that big, one that could put a target on her back? You would have done the same damn thing.”
