I touch the tender skin near the tattoo. “Why?”
“Because Derby is already having big feelings and trying not to stab people. One outlaw crisis at a time.”
Despite everything, I smile.
“Will you tell me what happened to Caroline?” I ask.
Hot Mama pauses.
“Not tonight.”
“When?”
“When you can hear it without trying to become her or forgive her all at once.”
That answer settles heavy.
Outside the garage, the fire has burned low. The campground is quiet. Derby appears near the bunkhouse porch, August asleep in his arms. My son’s face is tucked against Derby’s shoulder, Blue Rex trapped between them. Derby looks across the yard and finds me.
Always finds me.
His gaze drops to my raised hand near my ear. He frowns slightly, not understanding yet. I let my hair fall. Not hiding exactly.
Not ready either.
Derby starts toward me, slow, carrying August like the most fragile thing in the world.
Jeremy is dead.
My son is safe tonight.
Derby came because he wanted to ask, not take.
Behind my ear, the crown burns. I’m free from my abusive husband.
But as Derby crosses the dirt toward me with my sleeping child in his arms, I understand the truth Hot Mama did not need to say.
I’m not free from the women who freed me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Derby
Leaving Oregon feels less like leaving shelter and more like riding away from a woman who let us go because she already knows where the road comes back around.
Hot Mama stands under the Queens of Anarchy sign with a cold beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, red mouth curved like she is watching a play she wrote before we knew our lines. Shortie is beside her with a rifle over one shoulder. Harlot is near the garage, wiping grease from her hands. Wildflower leans against a purple bike, smiling at August like she might miss the kid more than she will admit. Baby Doll stands on the porch with intake forms tucked under her arm, pretty face hard as a locked gate. Sagebrush holds a jar of some kind of herbal salve and yells after Amelia to use it on the tattoo or her aura will scab.
I don’t ask.
I’ve learned enough in three days to know some questions in Oregon come with answers that require tea, a waiver, and possibly a shotgun pointed between your eyes.
August is buckled into the back of the borrowed cage, an SUV Hot Mama insisted we take as far as Kentucky because my Harley wasn’t made for a cross-country trip with a five-year-old, two dinosaurs, and a woman carrying so much grief.Widowmaker is tied down on a small trailer behind us, which offends me so badly I keep looking in the mirror to make sure she doesn’t start resenting me.
She probably already does.
A Harley belongs under a man, not behind a cage like luggage.
But August is in the back seat. Amelia is beside me. The road is long. The kid needs snacks, sleep, bathroom stops, and room to ask impossible questions about why Daddy can’t call anymore.