I grunted but didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Not until we were behind the concrete barrier at the edge of the lot, not until there was something solid between us and the inferno that had been a motorcycle.
We crashed against the barrier and stopped. My arms were still locked around Tyler, his back pressed to my chest, both of us gasping for air that tasted like smoke and burned fuel. The roar of the explosion was fading, replaced by the crackle of flames and the distant sound of screaming—Ghost, maybe, or one of the prospects, reacting to the chaos.
I lifted my head.
The Sportster was gone. In its place was a crater of twisted metal and burning fuel, flames reaching toward the sky like hungry fingers. The bikes on either side had been knocked over, their chrome scorched, their tanks dented by debris. A piece of handlebar was embedded in the clubhouse wall. Asection of seat—burning, unrecognizable—had landed twenty feet away, near the gate.
Glass littered the ground. The clubhouse window had shattered, and shards caught the firelight, glittering like scattered diamonds across the steps. The mockingbird had stopped singing. Everything was smoke and fire and the ringing silence that follows catastrophe.
Tyler was shaking against me.
Not speaking, not moving—just shaking, his whole body wracked with tremors that I could feel through every point of contact between us. His hands had found my arms where they wrapped around his chest, and his grip was bruising, desperate, the grip of a man holding onto the only solid thing in a world that had just tried to kill him.
"You're okay." The words came from somewhere outside myself, some autopilot taking over while my brain tried to process what had just happened. "Tyler. You're okay. I've got you."
His breathing was ragged, harsh, each inhale a fight against lungs that had been compressed by the shockwave. But he was breathing. He was alive. We both were.
I became aware of pain—multiple sources, competing for attention. The shrapnel wound in my shoulder blade, hot and sharp. Road rash down my right arm where the asphalt had torn through leather and skin. A dull ache in my hip where I'd landed wrong. Minor. Survivable. Nothing compared to what would have happened if we'd been closer, if I'd been slower, if Tyler had turned that key.
"Tank." His voice was wrecked, barely a whisper. "You're bleeding."
I looked down at myself, at the dark stain spreading across my jacket sleeve, at the places where debris had found gaps in my armor. Blood was dripping onto the concrete behind me, pooling in the cracks, mixing with the dust and ash that was settling over everything.
"It's nothing. Are you hurt?"
"I don't—" He twisted in my arms, trying to get a look at me, his hands running over his own body. "I don't think so. You—you pushed me?—"
"Can you stand?"
He nodded, and I loosened my grip, letting him pull away. The loss of contact felt wrong—a cold space where warmth had been—but I pushed the thought aside and focused on getting my feet under me.
The world swayed when I stood. Blood loss, maybe, or the aftermath of adrenaline, or just the simple fact that I'd been thrown ten feet by an explosion and my body was still trying to understand that it hadn't died. I braced one hand against the concrete barrier and waited for the dizziness to pass.
Tyler was on his feet beside me, staring at the crater where the Sportster had been. The flames were lower now, the fuel mostly burned away, but the smoke was still rising in a thick black column that would be visible for miles.
"That was meant for me." His voice was flat, distant. Shock settling in, the mind protecting itselffrom what had almost happened. "I would have—if you hadn't seen it?—"
"But I did." I turned to face him, reached out, gripped his shoulder hard enough to feel the muscle and bone beneath his shirt. My hand left a bloody smear on the fabric, but neither of us acknowledged it. "Look at me. Tyler. Look at me."
His eyes found mine. Held. They were dark, dilated, carrying a fear he was trying desperately to contain.
"You're alive. That's what matters. That's the only thing that matters right now."
Something cracked in his expression—the careful control he always maintained, the walls he kept between himself and the world. For just a moment, I saw beneath them to the fear underneath, the raw animal terror of a man who'd just watched his own death unfold in fire and steel.
Then he was moving, closing the distance between us, and his arms were around me and his face was pressed into my shoulder and he was shaking—violent tremors that ran through his whole body like waves crashing against a shore.
I held him.
I didn't think about who might be watching. About what the club would think. About Axel and Hawk and Irish, who were probably staring at us through the smoke. About Blade and his questions and his careful observations. I didn't think about any of it.
I just held him. My arms tight around his back, careful to avoid the wounds I could feel bleedingbeneath my jacket. His heart pounding against my chest, fast and desperate, the rhythm of a man who'd just learned exactly how close death could come. His breath hot against my neck, ragged with something that might have been sobs if he'd let them out.
"I've got you." The words a low murmur against his hair. "I've got you. You're safe."
His hands fisted in the back of my jacket, pulling me closer, and I let him. Let myself be the thing he held onto while the world burned around us.
We stayed like that until Hawk's voice finally cut through—gentle but firm, telling us the fire was under control, telling us the medics were here, telling us we needed to get checked out.
