“Good,” I whispered, “please do.”
“Will you?”she asked.
I glanced back toward the motel, toward the silhouettes of my brothers, toward the life that had shaped me.“I always am,” I reaffirmed.
And when we hung up, I stood there in the dark with my phone in my hand and my gut screaming one message over and over:
Someone knew.
And if someone knew, then the week of peace I tasted in her apartment was already under threat.I pulled up the feed.Her hallway was empty.
Too empty.I watched it anyway, jaw locked, mind already moving through possibilities.
Workplace comment.Saints mention.Outlaw.
That wasn’t random.
That was a probe.
And I didn’t like who might be holding the stick.
Chapter18
Loco
Ididn’t tell her I was coming.
Didn’t call.Didn’t text.Just packed a small bag, checked the bike, and pointed myself north like my body already knew the way even if my head pretended it didn’t.
DC rose up out of the road the same way it always did—hard edges, clean lines, a city that didn’t care who you were as long as you kept up.I had sworn off this place once.Told myself it was better left behind with the versions of me that had bled here.
Turns out I was wrong.
I parked a block from her building this time, killed the engine, and walked the rest of the way.Allowing the sound of traffic and footsteps and life drown out the noise in my head.
I stood at her door longer than last time.
Not because I was unsure.
Because I was aware.
Aware that this—whatever this was—had shifted.That the calls, the worry, the quiet way she’d started to take up space in my thoughts had changed something fundamental inside me.
I knocked.Footsteps.A pause.The door opened and her eyes went wide.
“Dante?”No shock this time.
Just something softer.Something warmer.Maybe even happiness.
I didn’t even get a chance to say anything before she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me.Tight.Immediate.Like the decision had already been made somewhere inside her.
I froze for half a second.
Then I held her.Really held her.
Her face tucked into my chest, my chin resting on the top of her head, the city falling away again because that was what seemed to happen when she touched me.She pulled back just enough to look up at me, eyes searching, vulnerable in a way she rarely let anyone see.
“You came,” she whispered her shock.
