Elias shakes his head. “Nope. I can handle a couple of spineless worms if it comes down to it.”
“It won’t,” I assure them. “My dad is anti-gun. He hates the motorcycle clubs running these towns and the violence they bring home.”
“I’ll have Jack pull the Hellcat up front,” Elias says with a grin. “They’ll hear us coming.”
“They’re gonnahatethat,” I confirm.
We clear the carnival grounds in Elias’s ostentatious ride, carnival workers turning to nod or wave. The engine growls low and predatory beneath us as Elias drives one-handed, relaxed, the other resting possessively on my thigh. The vibration of the road hums up through the leather seats and into my bones, matching the nervous tremor already there.
Graves County rolls past in stretches of farmland and trees. Familiar roads. Familiar fields. I haven’t been here in years, not since my stint with the Wicked Sinners MC, but my body recognizes the curves automatically—the shortcut past the old grain silo, the dip in the asphalt where the county never bothered patching it right.
“You okay?” Elias asks quietly, not looking at me.
“Yeah,” I lie.
He squeezes my leg once, firm and grounding.
The closer we get, the smaller everything feels. The houses shrink from wide-spaced farmland to cookie-cutter subdivisions with manicured lawns and decorative mailboxes. The Hellcat’s engine echoes off brick facades and vinyl siding as we turn onto Maple Ridge Drive.
My street.
The houses haven’t changed much. Same beige siding. Same tidy hedges. Same desperate attempt at suburban perfection.
Elias slows deliberately, letting the engine rumble loudenough to rattle windows. Curtains twitch in at least three houses.
And then there it is.
My parents’ house.
Two stories. Cream siding. Green shutters. The oak tree out front feels bigger now, branches stretching over the driveway like claws.
Elias eases the Hellcat to a slow crawl, then pulls straight into the driveway instead of parking on the street. The engine idles loudly, vibrating through the quiet neighborhood as I look at my childhood home.
“Well,” Elias says softly, killing the engine at last. The sudden silence feels enormous. “Showtime, Little Sapphire.”
I exhale slowly.
“Yeah,” I say, opening the door. “Showtime.”
The front door opens before we take two steps up to the porch.
“How dare you show yourself here?” my mother hisses. My father shoots glares first at me, then at Elias by my side.
“Why not?” I ask, glad that my voice doesn’t waver under their hatred. “It’s my house too, isn’t it?”
“It stopped being your house when you left in the middle of the night,” my dad snaps. “After everything we did for you?”
My blood boils at the words.
“What exactly did you do for me, Dad? Did you protect me when Rick was raping me? I’d barely started wearing a training bra!”
Mom’s face turns scarlet. “Stop being so vulgar! And stop yelling, the neighbors will hear you.”
“Oh, the neighbors will hear me,” I scoff. I turn to Elias. “What will the neighbors think?I must have heard that every day growing up.”
Mom seems to notice Elias for the first time, eyeing his tattooed neck with distaste.
“Who is this… ruffian, Juliane? Is he the one who turned you against your family?”
