Behind him, the sky has a strange, pre-storm shine, tinged with orange where it should be blue. A gust of wind lifts, carrying the scents of resin and rain.
Ryder’s still asleep inside, sprawled in the cabin’s only bed, out so cold he didn’t even stir when I got up. I found Damian outside unloading the truck with bags from a Walmart two towns over. Four bags of groceries, a door sensor and motion detectors, soap, shampoo, and a stack of cotton clothes and towels. I helped him put it away, thinking it looks like they plan to stay for a while, but I didn’t ask.
Then I followed him out to chop wood, eager to keep my hands busy and my mind quiet. There’s this constant crawling feeling under my skin that I can’t shake. A need for physicality and release. I think about the beach, about Ryder’s body moving over mine, and it already feels like a dream, too far out of reach to ease the clawing restlessness inside of me now.
We fall into a rhythm—heave, split, stack, switch. The sound of the axe echoes down to the lake and back again with every strike like a boomerang. It’s easy work for Damian but he lets me take my turn, as if he knows that I need to feel the muscles in my arm burn and break out into a sweat.
After we’ve gone back and forth a few times, and a good pile has started to build up, he plants the axe in the stump to take a break and stretches his wrists, then his neck, and looks at me—serious this time.
“You probably feel like shit after the Narcan.”
It’s the first real thing either of us have said. We’ve spent the morning riffing on the fashion merits of being dressed in identical cotton basics from Walmart and pretending that chopping wood is a contest.
“Like a bad hangover,” I agree. “Headachey and tired. But also kind of jittery all over.”
“Yup.” He nods, rubbing his palms together. “It takes a while to work out of your system.”
“How come you know so much about it?” I ask, perching on a half-cut piece of wood. “You said it happened to you before?”
“Yeah. Once. Maybe twice. Long time ago. Army days.” He reaches for the axe again and heaves it out of the stump. “Got into some bad habits overseas. Uppers to stay sharp, downers to sleep. There are always some guys who know how to get stuff, doesn’t matter where you’re deployed.”
He lifts another log onto the stump and lines up his swing.
“My commanding officer pulled me off rotation when he figured it out. Could’ve tossed me out, but he sent me to rehab instead. I saw it as an opportunity and committed to getting clean. A lot of guys don’t. Army took me back and ended up recommending me to Ryder’s ops team. I was lucky.”
He cracks the log in two and looks over at me, fresh sweat darkening his collar. “Best thing that ever happened to me, getting clean. It teaches you to want to stay alive.”
It occurs to me that I don’t know Damian as well as I thought I did. I know his body, his moods, the serious core of him hiding underneath all his joking and banter. But there’s so little I know about his actual history. His life.
Just like there are things he doesn’t know about me.
He holds out the axe for me and I take it. The weight feels good in my hands, the way it pulls the muscles, wakes them up. I take a moment to brace myself, and then heave it down with all the strength I can muster, like I’m driving it into the padlock around the kennel Silas locked me in. Like I’m caving in the little cabinet where Maze kept all his drugs.
The axe goes right through the log in one go, jamming into the stump, and the two halves bounce apart cleanly.
“Fucking hell, Finch,” Damian says in surprise, and then lifts his hand for a high-five. “Knew you had it in you.”
The rain starts as a thin, needling drizzle. We carry the split logs onto the covered porch and stack them in uneven towers, and then the sky opens up in a sudden downpour. Water sheets off the eaves. We stand shoulder to shoulder, watching the storm tear across the lake, shaking the pines.
I stood under an awning in pouring rain just like this the day Billy secured the club’s future. I was sixteen and had just met the senator for the first time. We stood outside of some fancy condo building after the meeting, me and Billy, waiting for Cipher to bring the car around.
“You fucking nailed it,”Billy said, smacking my palm in a high-five that stung, and I didn’t understand what I had done to contribute to anything. I didn’t understand then that I’d been an offering. Only that the old man watched me kindly—warm, paternal smiles and gentle endearments that somehow made my stomach twist.
“Did you see how he looked at you?”he asked, eyes lit with the promise of power.“You know what this deal means? We’re legit now. A clubhouse, land, a real future. And you—”he tapped my cheek—“you’re the old lady of a real motorcycle club. O.D. for life.”
A flash of lightning rips across the lake, and I flinch. Damian chuckles softly and presses a hand to my back.
“I gotcha,” he murmurs.
I lift my eyes to him and catch the way the gray light lines the angles of his face, the spark and the gravity in his eyes. God, this man has been so many things to me: a friend, a lover, chaos and comfort, heat and hurt, someone I wanted and someone I lost and someone I never stopped wanting back.
I draw a slow breath, my pulse loud in my ears. One by one I have to tell them all. That’s my penance.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” I say, my voice coming out rough.
He tilts his head, smile faltering. “Okay.”
Deep breath. “They came for me because I belonged to them.”
