“Brother, let’s ride.”
It was still early as Cam’s words sank into me. I had watched Ranger depart—for amonth—the Rebel Kings’ compound from a distance, a kindness for us both, and then I had delivered Lida to Orla for the day, fulfilling Locke’s request for her to watch over his heavily pregnant queen while he was gone.
There was no discernible reason why I had grabbed my battered helmet from the garage shelf, where it’d been since the Rebel Kings had retrieved it from a ditch somewhere. My only bike at the compound was the black Ducati I hadn’t ridden since I’d crashed it, and until this moment, I’d had no conscious intentions to change that.
I had no conscious intention to change itnow, but the words to refuse Cam didn’t come.
In any case, he did not wait for my answer. He strode away, eating up the distance between him and the powerful Harley parked by the bar doors.
The Ducati was in a storage locker on the other side of the yard, its home since Nash had deemed it roadworthy. Thekeyswere in my pocket, but did that mean I wanted to face the bike I’d last seen broken and smoking in a ditch?
“Fucking Russian bitch. Shoot him up, keep him quiet. We’ll make him scream later.”
They had not made me scream. No one ever had. But they’d left their mark on me all the same, and my veins itched with a craving I was used to. A dark scrape of weakness infinitely more unpleasant without Ranger to distract me.
So ride, baby.Swap the bullshit for adrenaline.
It was ludicrous how much I loved him. That my assumption of what he’d say if he heard my thoughts had me crossing the yard without question.
The storage container had a combination lock. I typed in the numbers and lifted the door to face the Ducati, protected by a tarp until I pulled it back to reveal the immaculate restoration Nash had gifted it. The powerful machine looked better than when I’d stolen it from a ship in the Suez Canal. Perhaps it was a shame I did not have much enthusiasm for shiny things, but I appreciated Nash McGovern. We had become friends. And okay, maybe I did appreciate tyres that were not bald enough to kill me.
Regardless, I wheeled the bike out of the storage locker with more than a hint of discomfort in my damaged hip. Across the yard, Cam watched, but his expression was hard to read. He looked annoyed, but I had come to learn it was an O’Brian family trait to appear permanently vexed.
I blocked him out and considered the helmet under my arm. It still bore wounds from being run down that fateful night. I had another that I had used until now, but it was at the house with the red Ducati and Ranger’s bike. This one was heavy in my hand. I straddled the Ducati and regarded the worst dent, a roil in my stomach adding to the burn lancing my ravaged veins and the pain in my hip. It was a big dent. I had gone down hard, my focus weakened by my obsession with Ranger. But he remained the weakness I chose, and despite the vicious scars branded on me, inside and out, I did not regret it.
I love him.
It was the greatest gift of my existence that he loved me too.
Movement in my peripheral caught my attention. The clubhouse doors opened and Liliana flitted out, Embry a heartbeat behind her. She waved, reminding me I carried something far more important than the grinding scrape my pulse had become in the last few minutes.
I dismounted the Ducati and crossed the yard to her, digging in my pocket for the small paper bag. “For you, little queen.”
“For me?” Liliana bounded down the steps to snatch the Spanish candy from my outstretched hand. “Where did you get it?”
“The airport.” Aware Embry didn’t speak Spanish, I switched to English as he approached. “Next time I will find you a bigger bag.”
Liliana garbled her thanks and danced away with the sweets.
Embry appraised me with a penetrating stare. “That helmet’s fucked.”
“Is fine.”
“Attached to it?”
“Perhaps.”
“He’ll be okay, you know.”
“Who?”
“Ranger.” Embry called for Liliana to slow down and wait. “The others will take care of him.”
“I am not worried about Ranger.” It was true. Ranger was fit to drive the lorries, even if I’d yet to understand why he wanted to. I knew the Kings would not have asked him to go otherwise. Perhaps I was worried aboutme. I had not been here, in this place, without Ranger since Locke and I had escaped captivity, and it felt strange enough that Embry’s response was distant. Detached. I heard his kind words, but they did not penetrate deep enough to stick.
The ear-splitting roar of Cam’s bike shattered the quiet. I tipped Embry a nod, with no regard that he was still talking, and returned to the Ducati.
I slipped the helmet on. It smelled of mud and blood, two things I’d learned were triggers for the dizzying flashbacks that hit me sometimes. But if Ranger had taught me anything, it was to plough through things instead of searching for a way around them.