What if it's already too late to walk away?
I look at my phone one more time.Angelin my contacts. Such a simple word for something that's about to complicate everything.
The Chevelle needs new spark plugs. The carburetor needs adjusting. The transmission needs work. All things I can fix with these hands that know how to break but never heal.
Unlike whatever this is with her, which feels like something already broken that we're both choosing to shatter completely.
Tomorrow can't come fast enough.
Chapter seven
Voice Notes
Lena
Seventeen seconds of his voice made me come harder than any man had in person.
But I'm getting ahead of myself like I always do, like my brain's a trauma bay at 3 AM—everything happening at once, no time for proper triage, just react and hope nobody dies.
It's Wednesday, my first day off in twelve days, and I'm doing what any normal person would do: running a ghost clinic out of my converted mobile van in a Home Depot parking lot. My scrubs today are the ones with tiny cacti on them because apparently, I think whimsy will distract from the fact that I'm slowly losing my entire mind.
The morning started normal—well, my version of normal. Two construction workers with "ladder falls" (sure, Jan), a teenager with road rash, and a woman whose "I walked into a door" story makes my chest tight with recognition. After she leaves, I'm cleaning up when my brain decides now's a good time to research the man whose voice has been living rent-free in my head.
I pull up Iron Talons MC on my phone.
The logo appears and my blood turns to ice water. Actual ice water, like someone's injecting liquid nitrogen directly into my veins.
Iron Talons.
Iron fucking Talons.
My phone slips from my hand, clatters on the van floor. I'm seventeen again, Miguel coming home at 3 AM, knuckles split, blood on his Coyote colors—not all of it his. "Iron Talons killed Carlos," he'd said, voice flat as a flatline. "At the strip mall. Execution style. So we—" He'd stopped, looked at me like he just remembered I was still a kid. "Just stay away from anyone wearing skulls, Lena. Promise me."
And here I am, fourteen years later, screenshots folder full of their bikes, their clubhouse, saved right next to photos of Miguel at Carlos's funeral, jaw clenched so tight I thought his teeth would shatter.
My phone vibrates on the floor. Bad Decision. The Iron Talon I've been having phone sex with while my brother cleans guns in my living room.
I should delete his number. Block him. Move to another state. Get a new identity. Become someone who makes better choices.
Instead, I pick up the phone with shaking hands.
Bad Decision:[Voice note attached]
Seventeen seconds. A seventeen-second audio file from someone my brother would dismember on principle.
My finger hovers over play like I'm about to detonate a bomb. Which, metaphorically, I am. I'm about to blow up fourteen years of Miguel's protection for seventeen seconds of a stranger's voice.
I press play.
"Angel." His voice is rougher than usual, morning gravel or whiskey or both. "I've been thinking about your hands. About what they'd feel like on my skin. Gentle at first, the way you'd check for injuries. Then harder, when you realize I like the pain."
I sink onto my rolling stool, the one with the squeaky wheel. My body's having a complete systemic response—fight, flight, or fuck—and apparently, we're going with option three despite myprefrontal cortex screaming about family loyalty and not dating people your brother would murder.
"I want to watch those hands work. Want to see them shake when you're close. Want to feel them in my hair when I'm between your thighs, making you forget everything except 'please' and 'fuck' and my name—if I ever tell you what it is."
The van suddenly feels like a sauna. Phoenix in November is still Satan's armpit, but this heat is internal, spreading from my core like contrast dye in a CT scan, highlighting every bad decision I'm about to make.
"Touch yourself for me, Angel. Right now. Wherever you are. And send me proof."
