1
COURTNEY
The sign welcoming me to Pine Valley is faded, the green paint peeling back like sunburned skin to reveal the gray, weathered wood beneath. Fitting. Nothing in this town stays shiny for long. The mountains don't allow it. They grind everything down to its essential, raw core—people included.
My grip on the steering wheel of my rental sedan tightens until the blood drains from my hands. I don’t belong here anymore. I made sure of that ten years ago when I packed a single duffel bag and ran from the smoke, the shouting, and the blood soaking into the gravel of the clubhouse lot. I ran until my lungs burned and the skyline changed from jagged peaks to flat, suffocating city concrete.
But the Wade estate doesn't care about the smoke in my lungs. It sits on the edge of town, a rotting Victorian monolith my great-aunt left to me out of spite, knowing I’d have to come back to deal with it.
"Just sell it," James, the local attorney, told me over the phone yesterday. His voice had been clipped, professional, butlaced with a warning I couldn't ignore. "The market is picking up. People from the city want vacation homes. But Courtney... be quick. The atmosphere here has shifted. The Gunnars are aggressive, and there’s tension with the families up on the eastern cliffs. You don't want to get caught in the crossfire again."
The Gunnars.
The name hits my stomach like a shot of bad whiskey—burning, heavy, and sickening.
I turn the car off the main paved road and onto the long, winding gravel driveway leading to the house. The tires crunch loudly, a sound that echoes too far in the silence of the pines. This is the Grizzly Peak District. It’s wilder here. The air is thinner, sharper. It smells of resin, damp earth, and impending storms.
As the house comes into view, I let out a breath that rattles in my chest. It’s worse than I thought. The wrap-around porch sags on the left side, choked by ivy that looks more like a stranglehold than decoration. The windows serve as dark eyes staring back at me, judging me for leaving.
I kill the engine. The silence that follows is absolute. No city sirens, no hum of traffic. Just the wind moving through millions of pine needles, a sound like a collective hush.
I step out, my boots sinking slightly into the soft, neglected ground. I’m not the scrawny, terrified eighteen-year-old girl who left. I’m twenty-eight. I have a career in Chicago. I have a life. I have curves that I’ve learned to dress, filling out a pair of dark denim jeans and a fitted black sweater that hugs the slope of my chest. I’m a woman grown.
So why do I feel like prey?
I walk to the trunk and pop it, dragging out my suitcase. I need to assess the damage, meet the contractor tomorrow, sign the papers with James, and get out. Three days. I can survive three days.
I’m halfway up the creaking stairs of the porch when the sound starts.
It’s low at first, a vibration in the soles of my feet rather than a noise. Then it grows, a guttural, mechanical roar that tears through the serenity of the forest. I freeze, my hand hovering over the rusty doorknob.
I know that sound. My body knows it before my brain even processes the frequency. It’s the specific, thumping cadence of a Harley Davidson modified for mountain roads. A heavy cam, a deep idle.
My heart hammers against my ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage.Ignore it.It’s a public road nearby. It’s just a biker.
But the roar doesn't fade. It gets louder, closer, turning down the long driveway I just traveled.
I turn slowly, my pulse thumping in my throat.
A black beast of a machine rounds the bend, kicking up dust and gravel. The rider is a dark silhouette against the backdrop of green and gray. He’s massive, broad enough to block out the sun, hunched forward over the handlebars with an ease that speaks of thousands of miles in the saddle.
He doesn't slow down cautiously. He rides aggressively, leaning the bike deep into the final turn before straightening out and bringing it to a halt right behind my rental car. The engine cuts,but the silence doesn't return. The air is charged now, thick with exhaust fumes and testosterone.
The rider kicks the kickstand down with a heavy boot. He swings a leg over, dismounting with a fluid, predatory grace that contradicts his sheer size. He’s wearing the cut—the leather vest that haunted my nightmares for a decade. The patch on the back is visible as he turns: the winged skull of the Broken Halos MC.
He reaches up and pulls off his black helmet.
The world tilts on its axis.
It’s him.
Austin Gunnar.
Ten years ago, he was the boy who taught me how to skip stones in the creek, the boy who held my hand when I cried over my parents' divorce, the boy who looked at me with soft eyes while the rest of the world looked at me with pity.
The man standing twenty feet away is not a boy.
He is a fortress of muscle and ink. His shoulders are terrifyingly broad, straining the seams of a black t-shirt worn under his leather cut. His jaw is square, covered in rough, dark stubble that highlights the hardness of his face. His hair is dark, wind-blown, falling over his forehead in a chaotic way that makes my fingers itch to push it back.
