The images feel loud somehow. Gritty. Greasy. Like a prayer said backward. They don't invite you in—they dare you to look away.
I search the faces, wondering if Legion is in any of these frames. Wondering what stories these walls would tell if they could speak. What confessions they've absorbed from drunken mouths at three in the morning.
I think about the Book of Legion hidden in my safe room—my mother's obsessive documentation of a boy growing into a man. What would a Book of Badlands look like? Would it be bound in leather like my mother's albums, or would it be scattered across these walls, these tables, these scarred bodies?
The difference between my world and this one hits me like a slap. In my photos, everything is staged—the lighting perfect, the pose practiced, the story controlled.
Here, the images are raw. Real.
They don't try to be anything other than what they are.
Moments captured between blood and brotherhood.
I close my eyes and pray to a God I don't think is listening anymore. Not for salvation. Just for this moment to end. For my mind to stop whirling like creek water over stones. For the club walls to stop closing in.
My throat clicks when I swallow. I hug myself. Wrapping my arms around my pulled-up legs and rest my chin on my knees.
I don’t feel right. I don’t feel like me.
Every sound in this place hits too hard. Pool balls cracking together. Whiskey bottles clinking. Low voices murmuring things I can't quite catch. Men shifting in leather cuts that creak like old saddles. The building itself seems to breathe—exhaling cigarette smoke, inhaling tension.
"Savannah..."
My name floats across the room, a whisper meant to be heard. But I miss the rest. A woman's voice, gruff as sandpaper. I glance up to find the source—a silver-haired woman leaning against the bar, arms crossed over her chest. She's not looking at me now, but I know she was. Everyone is, even when they pretend not to be.
A girl walks by, whisperin’ something about my bare feet. I ignore it, turning my face away.
I can still taste cherry pie.
I will never eat cherry pie again. It's a symbol now of everything I want to forget.
I want to brush my teeth until my gums bleed. And even though Legion washed me off before we came here, I feel covered in dust and smoke. I want to scrub every inch of skin with steel wool and bleach.
I want to go home.
I want Legion.
Not just near me, not just in the same room. I want him on me, around me, holding me like a shield between my body and the world. I want his arms locked around me, his chest against my back, his breath in my hair.
I'm drowning in open air and I need his hand.
I don't know how to live in this world of outlaw bikers who all look like killers.
I need Legion, and he's gone, and I'm alone in a room full of men who see me as nothing but trouble.
The door swings open with a rush of air that cuts through the smoke.
Every head turns.
Legion walks through the threshold, his eyes lock onto mine like I'm the only thing in the world. The bruises on his face have darkened since the rescue, purple-black against his skin. There's dried blood at the corner of his mouth he didn't bother to wipe away.
He looks tense.
Whatever happened in that room, it didn't go how he planned. It wasn't victory.
When he comes towards me, the men part around him without a word, making space so he can pass.
When he reaches me, he crouches down in front of the couch. Close enough that I can smell sweat and blood on him, but he doesn't touch me. Doesn't brush my hair back or take my hand like he usually would.
