Page 80 of Reckless

“I was wearing that jacket five fucking days ago!”

His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. “I know.”

The realization doesn’t hit all at once. It arrives piece by piece, each thought fitting into the next until there’s nowhere left for denial to hide.

“This wasn’t a warning.” I hear how quiet my own voice has become. “They weren’t sent to scare me.”

“No, this was a hit, Sage.”

I lower my eyes to the photograph again, tracing the outline of a woman who had absolutely no idea she was already being hunted. The image of the two men lying in the dirt pushes into my mind before I can stop it, followed almost immediately by Ghost standing over them with smoke still drifting from the end of his pistol.

Everything clicks into place.

Not logically, but somewhere much deeper than that.

“Ghost…” I look back up at him, my voice barely more than a breath. “On the road…” I don’t finish the sentence.

He holds my gaze with that same steadiness that’s carried me through every impossible day since he walked into my life. He doesn’t ask me to forgive what he just did.

Standing there with my face staring back at me from a photograph I never knew existed, I know I don’t need him to. “Thank you,” I whisper.

Sin’s voice comes from the other side of the road. “This is clubhouse level now. You don’t move without someone knowing where you are. Non-negotiable.”

I open my mouth to argue and close it again. I look at Ghost, who says nothing, and I look back at Sin. “Okay,” I say instead.

“Let’s get this shit cleaned up, and get everyone back home and checked over with medical,” Sin states.

And I do the only thing I can right now, which is throw my arms around Ghost and hold on for dear life.

The fact he holds me back with everything he has…

Tells me he needed this just as much as I did.

Chapter Sixteen

SAGE

The ride back to the clubhouse feels longer than it should, even though the highway markers tell me we’re covering the same distance in half the time. Nobody is riding easy anymore. Every bike sits closer to the next, every set of shoulders in front of me locked tight the entire way home, and I keep my face pressed against Ghost’s back, trying not to think about the photograph folded into his cut’s pocket.

When we finally pull into the lot, Sin is off his bike before the engine fully dies, already moving through the group, counting heads.

I climb off Ghost’s Harley on legs that don’t feel like they belong to me anymore, and they shake the second my boots hit the concrete.

I tell myself it’s the adrenaline.

It probably is.

Except every time I close my eyes, I hear it all over again—the crack of gunfire, the metallic scream of a bullet hitting Ghost’s bike, the explosion of his pistol beside my head.

And I keep seeing the look on his face.

Not angry or scared, just… certain. Like the second those men aimed at us, something inside him had already decided what had to happen next.

The parking lot is already full of noise, with bikes cutting engines one after another, brothers swinging off in various states of banged-up. Gia is already moving through the chaos with a first-aid kit under one arm and a look on her face that says she’s done this before and hates having to do it again.

I’ve barely got both feet under me when I hear my name being shouted from across the lot in a voice that could probably be heard from space.

“SAGE!”