"Yeah," I say. "I think they would."
She sets the coin on my chest, right over my heart.
The cool metal against my skin.
Three generations of Adkins men, and now a Mercer woman holding the weight of it in her hands like she was always meant to.
The girls are asleep upstairs.
Angelica is at the Super 8.
Garrett is somewhere between furious and accepting.
The loan sharks are circling, and the club rides tomorrow.
And Leah is in my bed with my coin on my chest and her scar pressed against my shoulder, and she knows everything now.
Every ugly, dangerous, terrifying piece of it.
Yet, she's still here.
That's the thing. That's the whole thing. She knows, and she's still here.
I close my eyes and pull her closer.
I sleep—not well, not deeply, but I sleep—with the weight of the coin on my heart and the warmth of her against my side and the sound of my daughters breathing down the hall.
Tomorrow, we ride. Tomorrow, the world comes back.
But tonight, just for tonight, I'm not alone.
CHAPTER TEN
Leah
I cannot believe my eyes right now.
Angelica is waiting for me at Ruby Memorial.
Not inside. In the parking lot, leaning against a car that's seen better days—a rental, probably, the kind you get from the budget counter at the airport when your credit cards are maxed and your life is held together with dental floss and bad decisions.
She's wearing sunglasses even though it's overcast, and her arms are crossed over a jacket that used to be expensive and now just looks like it's trying too hard.
I know it's her before I even get close.
The blonde hair, the thin frame, the way she holds herself like she's posing for a photograph nobody's taking.
I saw her across a kitchen table two nights ago and the image hasn't left me.
She pushes off the car when she sees me coming across the lot.
I'm in my scrubs, badge on the lanyard, travel mug of coffee in one hand and my bag in the other.
I just finished a twelve-hour shift.
I saved two lives, lost zero, and managed not to think about Coin for almost forty consecutive minutes, which is a personal record.
That record just ended.
