The animals settle around us like this is the most normal thing in the world. Daisy leans against my leg. Moose flops onto the floor with a heavy sigh.
Cole keeps rubbing slow circles across my back, steady and patient, the kind of touch that makes the tight knot in my chest loosen little by little. It’s comforting in a way I didn’t realize I needed, grounding me when my thoughts are still spinning from everything that happened tonight. Then something shifts. I feel it before I fully understand it. His hand pauses against my spine for just a second, and the air between us changes, heavier somehow. My head lifts from his chest at the same moment his chin tips down, and when our eyes meet the room seems to fall quiet around us. Suddenly the space between us feels charged, thick with something neither of us is saying, like a fuse has just been lit and we’re both standing there waiting to see what it’s going to ignite.
THIRTEEN
GHOST
I haven’t seenher in four days. Four days of deliberately staying away, telling myself distance was the smart play, that keeping my head clear meant keeping her out of my sight. Four days of club business, late-night rides, and Riot feeding me updates that never quite answered the only question that mattered. Is she safe?
I should have been there tonight. Should have known the second she didn’t text back that something was wrong. Should have ridden to that fucking warehouse myself the minute Wayne mentioned she’d asked around about Voss. Instead I gave her space. Again.
Because apparently I’m still the kind of idiot who mistakes standing back for respect when what it really is is standing by while the woman who’s been living rent-free in my head for weeks walks straight into a meat grinder wearing nothing but attitude and a bad plan.
Her cheek presses harder against my chest, damp and warm, and the bruise on her face is so close to my collarbone I can feel the heat radiating off the swollen skin. Purple-black, ugly,spreading like spilled ink. The split at the corner of her mouth is still weeping, a thin red line I want to erase with my thumb and can’t.
Every shiver that moves through her lands in me like a blow.
I should have dragged her out of whatever stupid, brave, reckless thing she thought she had to do the second she decided Voss needed a personal visit. Should have thrown her over my shoulder like I’ve imagined doing more times than I’ll ever admit and hauled her straight out before any of those bastards laid a finger on her.
I’m going to kill someone.
I know exactly who dies first. The two meatheads who pinned her arms while she fought, twisting her shoulders until she couldn’t move. Then the one who threw the punch that split her lip and left blood on her teeth. And finally Voss himself, slow and deliberate, so he has time to feel the cold press of the barrel against his forehead, time to see the certainty in my eyes before I pull the trigger and paint the wall behind him with everything he used to be.
Killing is what I do. What I’ve always done. Clean contracts, quiet exits, bodies that vanish before the sun comes up and anybody notices they’re gone. I’ve never lost sleep over it, never second-guessed the math. One life for the paycheck, or one life because the client paid extra for certainty. It was just work. Just another job in a long line of jobs that kept the lights on and the past buried.
Until now. Now it’s personal.
Voss put hands on her. His men held her down while he did it. He marked her face, made her bleed, left her shaking in myarms with those helpless little aftershocks that keep hitting me like punches I should’ve taken instead. The second that realization settles in, the last thread of restraint I’ve been clinging to snaps clean.
No more playing nice. No more waiting for church votes or Riot’s intel or Mason’s measured timeline.
They touched what’s mine.
So they die.
My hand moves on its own, sliding up her spine to cup the back of her head, fingers threading into her hair. I rub slow circles against her scalp the way my mom used to when I was a kid and the world felt too big. She doesn’t pull away. If anything, she leans in harder, like she’s trying to crawl inside my ribcage and hide there.
Good.
Stay.
Her head tips back just enough for our eyes to lock, and the room shrinks to nothing. Just her. Just that bruised mouth and the stubborn fire still burning behind her eyes even now. The want that’s been simmering under my skin for days goes taut.
My hand slides from her hair to the uninjured side of her jaw. Careful. Thumb brushing the corner of her mouth, staying away from the split as much as I can. Her breath hitches, and that tiny sound is what undoes me.
“Rae,” I rasp. It comes out half warning, half surrender.
She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to. Her gaze drops to my mouth, then lifts back to mine, dark and certain, and that’s it.
Gravity takes over.
I lean down the same second she pushes up. We collide carefully at first, mindful of the bruise, the cut, the fact that she’s still raw from everything that happened. But the second her lips part under mine, restraint burns away.
She tastes like copper and salt and the faint edge of whatever cheap whiskey she’d been sipping earlier. I lick into her mouth slowly and deliberately, swallowing the sound she makes. My arm locks around her waist, hauling her tight against me until there’s no space left, until I can feel every uneven breath she drags in.
Her fingers twist in the front of my shirt, clutching like she thinks I might disappear if she lets go.
Not a fucking chance.
