I thought about every morning in the garage, every riding lesson, every moment he'd stood too close and I'd felt the air between us thicken with something I couldn't name.
Now I could name it.
I just didn't know what to do about it.
The night stretched on. I heard the others return in ones and twos—Hawk's heavy footsteps, Blade's quieter tread, the murmur of voices as they debriefed in the common room. No one knocked on my door. Maybe they thought I was sleeping. Maybe they knew better.
I should shower. Should wash Ghost's blood off my hands, change out of clothes that smelled like gunpowder and gasoline. Should do something productive with the hours before dawn.
Instead, I sat on the floor and replayed the kiss.
The way Tyler had frozen, that single heartbeat of stillness that had felt like a rejection. Then the way he'd come alive—hands fisting in my cut, mouth opening under mine, that sound he'd made when I'd pressed him against the workbench.
He'd wanted it too. That much was clear. Whatever this was, it wasn't one-sided.
But wanting and having were different things. And walking away, leaving him alone after something that raw—that was a kind of cruelty I hadn't intended but had delivered anyway.
I needed to talk to him.
I needed to explain—except I didn't know how to explain something I didn't understand myself.
Eventually, I pulled myself off the floor. Stripped out of my bloody clothes and stood under water hot enough to hurt, watching rust-colored streams swirl down the drain. I scrubbed at my skin until it was raw, but I couldn't scrub away the memory of Tyler's mouth, the feeling of his body against mine.
I climbed into bed as the first gray light of dawn started seeping around the curtains. My body was exhausted, every muscle screaming for rest, but my mind wouldn't quiet.
Sleep came in fragments.
And when I dreamed, I dreamed of Tyler.
His face in the firelight. His hands on my skin. His voice, rough with want, saying my name like a prayer.
I woke with the sun in my eyes and his name on my lips.
And I knew, with a certainty that sat heavy in my chest, that nothing was ever going to be the same.
8
RADIO SILENCE
TYLER
He left me standing in the garage with the taste of him still on my lips. I didn't move for a long time after the door closed behind him. Just stood there, my back against the workbench where he'd pressed me, my hands gripping the edge hard enough to hurt. The work light buzzed overhead, casting everything in that harsh yellow glow that made the shadows deeper, and somewhere outside I could hear the distant rumble of bikes returning—the rest of the club, coming home from wherever they'd scattered after the ambush.
My lips were swollen. I could feel it—the slight tenderness, the ghost of pressure where his mouth had been. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel everything: his hand on the back of my neck, pullingme in. The desperation in the way he'd kissed me, like he was drowning and I was air. The sound he'd made, low in his throat, when I'd fisted my hands in his cut and pulled him closer.
And then the way he'd just... stopped.
Pulled back. Looked at me with something like panic in his eyes. And walked away without a word.
I'd been left before. Cross had made an art form of it—the push and pull, the moments of intensity followed by cold withdrawal, the constant reminder that I was only worth something when he decided I was. I'd spent three years learning to read the signs, to brace myself for the inevitable retreat, to build walls high enough that the fall wouldn't break me.
I'd thought I was done with that.
I'd thought—stupidly, naively—that whatever was building between me and Tank was different. That the way he looked at me, the way he touched me, the way he'd literally thrown himself between me and an explosion meant something that couldn't be taken back.
But here I was. Alone in a garage that smelled like motor oil and blood, my heart pounding against my ribs, watching the door he'd disappeared through like he might come back.
He wasn't coming back.
