And this time, we weren’t the ones being hunted.
28
AMANDA
We didn’t talk much after dinner.
Didn’t need to.
My body still ached in ways I couldn’t explain. My nerves were raw. My mind wouldn’t stop replaying the hours I’d spent trapped in that warehouse, but something else was pulsing underneath it now.
Something mine.
I found him in the garage, leaning against his bike like he’d been waiting for me.
He straightened when he saw me.
“I need air,” I said. “Ride with me?”
He didn’t ask questions. Just held out a helmet.
We rode into the dark, no destination, no plan. Just the road and the wind and the weight of everything unsaid settling between us.
The cold bit at my exposed skin, but I didn’t care. Not with my arms wrapped around his torso. Not with his body heat seeping into mine.
It wasn’t an escape. It was a reset.
He took a familiar turn just past the old service road, the same route the club used for perimeter sweeps, and cut theengine behind a half-collapsed hunting cabin about a mile from the compound. Still close. Still protected. But far enough that no one would come looking.
He dismounted first, then turned to me, jaw tight.
“You okay?”
I nodded, throat thick. “I will be.”
We slipped inside. The place was barely standing, but it was private. Just four walls and a warped floor. A mattress on the ground. No lights but the moon through the window.
I closed the door behind us.
Then I turned to face him.
“I don’t want to be scared anymore,” I said quietly. “I want to feelthisinstead.”
His chest rose on a sharp inhale.
“Amanda—”
“I’m not broken. Not tonight. Not with you.” I stepped closer, hands at the hem of my sweatshirt. “Let me choose this.”
He didn’t move at first.
Didn’t speak. Didn’t breathe.
Just stared at me like I was a bomb counting down and he didn’t know whether to run or let it blow him apart.
Then he reached for the hem of his own shirt, pulling it over his head in one smooth motion.
The sight of him, bruised, scraped, still healing from the fight, should’ve made me flinch. But it didn’t.
