“You think you’d have made it without Viktor to worry about?”
“Nope.”
Nash shivered. “That’s a tangent I don’t fucking need.”
“Leave it where it belongs then. Say what you were gonna say.”
His gaze drifted to Orla, her face hidden under my good arm. “It was after the river. We were riding like maniacs and we came up on this random on a Sportster, just some dude riding to work, but I was so sure it was Priest—that it had to be—I nearly killed him anyway. Saint had to stop me. Put a phone to my ear to calm me the fuck down. Five minutes later, Alexei saw you on the road cameras and I knew how fucking wrong I’d been, but this doesn’t feel like that.”
“What does it feel like?”
Nash finally relaxed his whole body, laying his head on the pillow next to mine. “It feels like God’s gonna let us keep you forever.”
He shut his eyes, nowhere near sleep, but letting it all go, for me or for him, it didn’t fuckin’ matter.
Goddamn, he was so beautiful. I was tripping from the meds he’d been so sure wouldn’t kick the shit out of me. Heavy. Loose. His music filtering into my good ear. Even my mind was starting to slow. To quiet. But I had to know. “Nash?”
His baby blues flew open. “Yeah?”
“You gonna be here when I wake up?”
He gave me a long look, one that promised to never lie to me, in spite of the clusterfuck that had torn us apart for the last week. “I’ll be here.”
I didn’t make him say it twice. Couldn’t stay awake long enough, my head spinning from the combination of opiates and the magic of what we’d shared tonight.
I love them.
And they knew it.
My back was killing me. Shifting onto my side felt like a dream—one hazy enough that I couldn’t tell where I landed. Which half of my soul was gone when the warmth in my arms disappeared.
Logic told me it was Nash.
My heart said it wasn’t.
18
ORLA
Embry’s bike was like him. Smaller than the others but faster. More agile. Better built for a high-speed chase through the wilderness than guzzling up and down motorways.
Mine was slower, relegating me to the flats of the dirt track, the wind at my back urging me on, the throttle at the mercy of my heavy hand.
“Easy,” Cam cautioned in my ear. “I can hear you nuking it from two miles away.”
I ignored him, both his growled order and the clipped worry in his tone as a gunshot rang out, his fear of a fight he couldn’t see blanketing the radio connection in thick O’Brian waves. Instead, I soaked in the roar of engines breaching the quiet of the forest. I let it take me and revved my hog harder.
Up ahead, Embry landed a jump that should’ve floored him, gaining ground on his mark, leaving a third bike—a Softail on the ground between him and me—in the dust, showing off now. He had to be. The good father was from the carnivals and fairgrounds of the showmen people. Stunt-riding scouts on the wheel of death. Dirt-biking in the woods, lawless and free.
It was the damnedest thing that club life had tamed him.
It was the best thing ever that he was ours.
He made another wild jump, a crazed leap in the dark, and I pictured Cam wringing his hands, lighting a cigarette, of course, and pacing in front of his bike. He was alone, which bothered me, but he wouldn’t be for long. If my instincts were right, we’d land at his feet before Cam reached the end of his Marlboro.
Another shot whipped the air, whistling through the trees too far from my head to truly worry me. I leaned forward on my hog, enjoying the feel of her between my legs, torn between the thrill of the chase and counting the stars in the sky as we reached a clearing, appreciating the soreness in my body for what it was. For the love that had put it there.
Locke fucked me.
