We race down the highway, the spray of water under the tires hissing, and then the rain starts in earnest, hitting the windshield with fat drops. He flicks the wiper switch and they move faster. The gray sky looks like it’s dissolving in tears. There’s no delineation between the clouds and the rain.
“You were in Wyatt’s bed last night,” he says finally. It’s not a question. He darts a look over to me, face unreadable.
“Yeah.” We had woken up later than the others and come out of the room yawning. Everyone knows. “I heard him coughing inthe night and went in to check on him. We talked for a bit and I fell asleep.”
He nods once, jaw working. I can practically see the wheels turning behind that still expression.
“Guess you two went through a lot together in the clubhouse,” he says at last.
The words are calm but there’s something underneath, the kind of control Ryder uses when he’s holding back fire.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “We did.”
I keep my eyes trained on the window. For a moment I’m not in the truck anymore. I’m back in the clubhouse. The noise, the fear, the smell of oil and smoke and sweat. “I wouldn’t have survived in there without him. He saved me.”
He looks over again, brow creased with a mix of tenderness and sorrow.
“I’m glad he was there for you. What you went through…” He shakes his head. “I can’t even imagine…” He trails off.
“Yeah,” I whisper.
Memory flashes—seeing Wyatt in that place for the first time, realizing that I wasn’t completely alone. That somehow, there was a thread back to them. To this.
Ryder’s voice pulls me back. “You two must’ve become close.”
The understatement of the century. My throat goes dry. I can hear what he’s not saying, what he doesn’t want to demand outright.
“We did,” I admit. “Closer than either of us planned to.”
The first night we got here, Ryder and I talked for hours. I told him how Billy claimed me, then tired of me. How Wyatt stepped in, how he kept me alive. But we only covered the facts, the surface, the important bits. I didn’t tell him that Wyatt and I were lovers because we didn’t go deeper. And because it’s hard to tell him.
“Ryder,” I say finally. “I thought you were dead. Wyatt did too. We took refuge in each other, in a place that was nothing but dark.”
He nods once, slowly, already braced for it. “So you slept with him.”
His tone is neutral, but there’s a trace of grit under it.
“Yes.”
He presses his lips together, eyes still fixed on the road. I don’t fill the silence. I’ve learned not to. He has to chew on it, find his footing.
“That’s…kind of fucking with my head,” he admits after a while.
I nod. “I can understand that.”
He glances over, quick, then back to the road. “Did you sleep with him last night?”
The question takes me by surprise. “No,” I say, startled. “Ryder, the man can barely breathe.”
“Oh, so you didn’t because you couldn’t?”
Fuck.Ryder and I have been here before. When the temperature rises between us it turns snippy quick. I take a breath to resist my own temptation to snap back at him, inhaling through my nose and then blowing it out.
“Come on. That’s not fair.”
He exhales hard, scrubs a hand over his jaw. “I know. I just—” The words break off. “It’s hard to picture. Harder not to.”
The truck hums through the rain, wheels hissing over wet asphalt. I stare out at the blur of trees, waiting for the storm in him to settle.
