For one heartbeat, I can’t answer.
Then I nod.
Because that is the cost of giving a woman keys.
Sometimes she uses them.
Sometimes you follow and still have to wait outside the door.
I pull out of the clubhouse yard and hit the road west.
The wind takes the first breath from my lungs.
Good.
I did not need it.
Kentucky rolls under Widowmaker’s tires, gray and green and wet, every mile putting me farther from the house where she left and closer to the place she ran. I don’t know what I will find in Oregon. Queens. Hot Mama. Some woman president who may or may not have killed a man named Smiley. A shelter full of ghosts. Caroline’s past. Amelia’s fear. August’s questions.
I only know this.
Amelia used the keys.
Now I’m using the road.
Not to drag her back.
Not to put her in another cage.
To stand in front of her, empty-handed if I have to, and ask the one question that matters.
Do you want me here?
Widowmaker roars west beneath me.
And God help every mile between us if her answer is yes.
Chapter Twenty
Amelia
The first thing I truly see is the sign.
Not the campground beyond it. Not the bikes. Not the women standing around like they have been expecting me since before I was born.
The sign.
It’s nailed between two stripped pine posts at the edge of the property, big enough that no one can pretend they missed it. The wood is dark and weathered, carved deep with black-painted letters that look less like welcome and more like law.
QUEENS OF ANARCHY MC CODE
Under that, seven rules are burned into the wood.
No man enters without invitation.