I wanted to believe it. I wanted to let that word be real. But my body remembered too much—the folded flag, the empty bed, the echo of his voice in my head long after it was gone.
I turned toward the window. The city blurred into streaks of gold and rain alight. My reflection looked older, harder. The kind of woman who’d learned to keep going even when it hurt. Maria’s warm, soft hand stayed on mine and her fingers brushed the back of my hand.
We drove in silence. The city gave way to fields, fields to pine woods, and soon the familiar backroads unfurled like old scars. The smell of damp earth crept in through the cracked window.
Every mile closer made it harder to breathe. I pressed my forehead against the glass, feeling the vibration of the road hum through my skull. When the first flicker of the Steel Saints MC neon sign appeared through the trees, my pulse went wild. Hannah slowed the car as the gravel lot opened up before us. Theroll-up garage door stood wide, light spilling onto the dirt like a beacon.
Dalton’s truck. Maria’s minivan. A neat line of bikes glinting under the floodlight. I stared at them, frozen. It looked like any other night. Like nothing monumental waited inside. Hannah parked and killed the engine. The sudden silence roared in my ears. Mom turned in her seat, eyes soft and steady. “Take your time, honey. He’s just through there.”
Maria got out first, walking around to open my door. Cool night air rushed in, beckoning me out of the car but I couldn’t move. They waited patiently for me. My mom and Hannah shared a look, and Maria and I shared a long look. The kind of look between friends that didn’t need words.
Ok,” I whispered. “Ok.”
I stepped out. My heels clicked on gravel, quick and uneven. Each sound from inside, laughter, the clang of tools, Dalton’s unmistakable voice, felt like an ache I couldn’t name. Dalton’s laugh was different. I hadn’t heard him sound like that in a very long time.
I followed the voices toward the garage, one breath at a time. The light grew brighter, spilling out onto the lot.
Through the open door, I saw a group of Saints huddled in the open bay. People I knew by name. People who turned to me and stepped back from a central figure. Tall. Thin. Leaning on a cane.
My breath stopped.
The shape was all wrong and exactly right.
He turned at the sound of my footsteps.
The world narrowed to him.
And then—
Our eyes locked.
And the world stopped.
No breath. No heartbeat. Justhim.
For a split second, my brain refused to believe what my eyes were seeing. His hair was longer, sun-bleached to sand. His face was leaner, sharper around the edges, with a beard that didn’t quite hide the hollows beneath his cheekbones. There was a scar slicing through his eyebrow I didn’t remember. He leaned heavily on the cane, like it was the only thing tethering him to the floor.
But his eyes—God, his eyes were the same. Gray and wild and so damnalive.
My knees went weak. The sound that ripped out of me wasn’t a word—it was raw, broken air.
He moved first, or maybe I did. It didn’t matter.
He stumbled forward, half limping, half falling, and I was already running, fast enough that my shoes skidded on the concrete.
We collided in the middle of the room, the force of it nearly knocking him off balance. His arms came around me—tight, desperate, shaking. I clutched the back of his shirt, my fingers curling into the thin fabric like if I let go, he’d vanish.
He smelled so different but underneath the scent of somewhere far away, of too much pain, was a smell that frequented my dreams. Pine. Smoke.Home.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Over and over. The words cracked with every breath. “I’m so sorry, Malibu. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt it—hot tears sliding down my face, soaking into his shoulder. I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop. Then I pulled back, just enough to see him. To reallyseehim. Tears blurred everything, but I forced my eyes to focus, to memorize every scar, every line, every impossible detail of him standing there in front of me.
His hands came up, rough and calloused, cupping my face so gently it broke me all over again. His thumbs brushed tears from my cheeks like he could wipe away the time we had lost.
My breath came out in ragged pieces. “Please tell me this is real,” I managed. “Please, Jackson. Please tell me this isn’t another dream.”
His forehead rested against mine, breath hitching. “I’m here,” he rasped. “I swear to God, Malibu, I’m here.”
