I went backto San Diego and told myself I was fine.
That lasted about six hours.
By midnight, I still smelled smoke.
Not real smoke. Not clubhouse smoke. Not exhaust from a bike or a cigarette burning too close to my fingers.
Desert smoke.
The kind that got into your clothes, your hair, your skin, your dreams. The kind that curled around a girl with blood on her mouth and prickers tangled in her hair while fire turned the night behind her orange.
I could shower until my skin went raw.
Still smelled it.
I could ride until my hands went numb.
Still saw it.
I could close my eyes and swear I was going to sleep like a normal man with a normal conscience.
Still saw her.
Destiny.
Beautiful Destiny.
Not the polished version from Cabo with sun warming her skin and diamonds waiting in boxes she hadn’t opened yet.Not the birthday girl in teal by the water, laughing like the ocean had remembered her body belonged to her. Not even the woman-child under the palm tree with saltwater on her skin and moonlight in her eyes, telling me not to decide I wasn’t allowed in her story.
No.
I saw her the first night.
Fire behind her. Smoke in the air. Dark hair falling wild around her face. Crimson blood on her lips. That haunted, exhausted look in her eyes like she had walked through hell and was still deciding whether I was rescue or another kind of ruin.
That was the version that followed me home.
That was the ghost I could not shake.
And because life had a sense of humor meaner than any brother I had ever ridden with, my body decided to betray me every morning like I was sixteen and stupid.
I would wake up hard, heart pounding, her name already in my mouth before I had enough sense to swallow it down.
Then I would lie there staring at the ceiling, furious with myself.
Twisted up over an eighteen-year-old girl.
Edge’s daughter.
Santa Fe’s princess.
A girl who had been through too much and needed clean air, clean pages, and people who didn’t look at her like she was a miracle they wanted to get their dirty hands on.
So I kept my hands to myself.
All year.
That part surprised people.
