Across the yard, Savage laughs at something Ghost says, posture looser than I’ve ever seen it in forever.The compound feels different now.
Not safer but whole.And for the first time since this entire mess began ...the future doesn’t feel like something waiting to explode.
Chapter Seventeen
Where I Ask
Savage
The compound doesn’t sleep.It breathes.
Even at 2:00 in the morning, engines tick as they cool, low voices drift from the garage, someone laughs somewhere in the dark like tension has finally loosened its grip enough to allow it.
Ghost is alive, Cherry is back, and the cartel pressure dissolved into silence instead of blood.For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, no one is actively trying to kill us.
I sit alone on the back steps, whiskey resting against my knee, staring out at desert darkness that doesn’t care about wars, cartels, clubs, or men stupid enough to believe they can control any of it.
Peace feels strange in my bones.Unfamiliar and dangerous in its own way.
Footsteps sound behind me before Raven settles beside me without invitation, shoulder brushing mine like that space has long since stopped being contested ground.
“You’re brooding again,” she says.
“I’m thinking.”
“Same thing.”
I huff quietly.“You’re consistent.”
“I try.”
Silence stretches between us but it’s easy and comfortable.That still surprises me.Because Raven Blackwood was never silence I could sit inside comfortably, until somewhere along the line, she became the only silence that didn’t feel like pressure.
“They’re really gone,” she says softly.
“For now.”
