He swallows hard and turns his head toward me, eyes dark. “Molly, just do what I ask, okay?”
“Don’t,” I warn, but my voice breaks on it. “That’s a stupid fucking idea, Evan. They’ll shoot you down and then it’ll be just me here. Do you want to fucking ditch me a third time?”
“Fuck no.” He doesn’t flinch. “If I die here… I need you to know that…”
“Shut up,” I snap. “You’re not dying.”
Boots scrape closer again. Two sets. Three. They’re almost at the end of the bar.
I rise, as does Evan, and a torrent of fire from my shotgun and his pistol sends the approaching Sons diving for cover and one Son falling to the ground, one of Evan’s bullets taking him in the hip. He screams. Evan and I duck, just in time to avoid a hail of return fire.
Evan checks his magazine. “I’m low.”
“I’m lower,” I mutter, counting shells by feel. Not many left.
The room hums with approaching violence. Death growing closer with each passing second, with every round fired. And I realize that, as the end gets nearer, I have no idea if I’ll die a Devil, but at least I can die honest.
I glare at Evan, chest heaving. “You’re a handsome asshole, you know that?”
His mouth twitches to something between a grimace and a smile. “I’ve been called worse.”
“Why the fuck did you take that shot for me?”
“Because I care. Because you don’t deserve to be hurt like that. You never did. You just deserved to be loved, and to… fuck… I don’t know, learn accounting?”
“That might be true. And I’m still an idiot,” I spit, voice shaking, “for letting you in. For forgiving you. For—” A tear burns hot behind my eyes. I blink it back hard. “For still loving you,” I finish, like ripping out a tooth.
Evan goes still.
Even the gunfire seems to pause in the space between us.
He stares at me like the words are oxygen.
“Molly,” he whispers, wrecked. “I still love you, too.”
My throat closes. I reach up, grab his shirt, and yank him in.
Our mouths crash together — desperate, furious, real.
We break apart on a breath, foreheads almost touching.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay. We’ll hold them off as long as we can. Maybe… maybe that’ll be enough time for the club to…”
I can’t finish. The man I love is bleeding out in front of me, and a knot of a dozen trained killers is slowly closing around our neck. There’s no room for hope. I load my last shells into the shotgun, and Evan raises his pistol with his good hand, teeth clenched. We brace shoulder to shoulder behind the wood, low on ammo, pinned in my own bar like prey.
And we wait for the storm to hit.
Chapter Forty-Three
Evan
Sirens hit first — thin and sharp, cutting through the gunfire like a knife. Distant, but growing closer.
Then the motorcycles.
A wall of engines floods the room, growing louder, meaner, until it feels like the air itself is vibrating with violent intent. The Sons of Sorrow hear it too. I see it in the way their heads snap toward the windows, the way their shoulders tense. Predators who’ve just realized they’re not the only ones with teeth, and they’re trapped in the jaws of something that is about to grind them to bloody dust.
“Move!” somebody yells. “It’s a trap!”
