"Nope to what?"
"All of it." She brushes sand off her palms and turns to face me. "What was my dad like?"
The subject change is deliberate. She doesn't want me digging into whatever sent her to our gate with a split face and everything she owns in a duffel bag.
I let her redirect the conversation. For now.
"Fiend.” I say the name, and it doesn't burn as much as I expect. "He could talk his way out of anything—or into anything." A ghost of a smile pulls at my mouth. "When I joined the club, he took me under his wing. Showed me the ropes. We were inseparable after that."
“You knew him well then.”
"Better than anyone in this club." And yet not well enough, apparently.
“Tell me about him. Please.” She kicks a pebble, watching it skitter into the water.
I stop walking. My hands ball in my pockets, and I force them open again. I've spent six months refusing to think about Fiend as anything other than a traitor. A rat. A dead man who deserved what he got. But this girl is looking at me with those eyes—hiseyes—and asking me to remember the man her father was before everything went to shit.
"He was funny." I hear my own voice, rough and surprised by what it's offering up. "Had this way of telling a story that made everyone laugh. Could spin a thirty-second event into a twenty-minute saga and have the whole room in stitches."
London's gaze lifts to my face, curious and starved for information.
I tell her about the time Fiend and I got lost on a run through Minnesota because he refused to use GPS—said real bikers navigated by instinct—and we ended up in a town of three hundred people where the only restaurant served nothing but lutefisk, which tastes like fish-flavored jello. I tell her about how he'd pick up stray dogs and sneak them into the compound until Chaos made him stop. About how he taught me to play poker and then cleaned me out every Friday for two years straight until I figured out his tell.
I tell her about the road trips—riding cross-country with nothing but the clothes on our backs and open highway ahead. About the time Fiend convinced an entire bar of strangers he was a retired rodeo clown and scored free drinks all night. About how he could fix any engine, pick any lock, charm any woman who crossed his path.
The words pour out, and with each one, a knot loosens—one I've been carrying for half a year, drawn so tight I forgot it was there. I've been so consumed by the betrayal, so fixated on the monster Fiend became, that I forgot about the friend he was before.
London listens. She doesn't interrupt or ask questions. She just listens.
"He sounds like he was a good person," she says when I finally trail off.
"He was…” My jaw tightens. “Complicated.”
My shoulders raise and lower in a shrug. “I guess nobody’s all good or all bad. We’re—all of us—a mix of both on a sliding scale."
She doesn't push for more of an explanation.
The sun drops lower, painting the sky in amber and rust. Down the beach, brothers are building a bonfire. Someone cranks the music louder.
I look down at London. Her face is warm in the fading daylight, and her eyes are soft. I feel different. Something inside me has shifted. I feel…not exactly hopeful, but like there’s a space where hope might grow if I let it.
"What?" she asks in response to my staring.
"Nothing." I hold out my hand. "Come on. Let's head back before they eat all the food."
She takes my hand. Her fingers are small inside mine, but they feel just right.
As we approach the bonfire, I catch a flash of platinum blonde. Kandi's perched on a log, drink in hand, but her attention isn't on the man beside her. Her gaze is locked on us, and her face is pure acid.
Fucking Kandi. The way she watches London—that sets my teeth on edge. I might need to have a very stern talk with her.
I steer London toward the food with an arm around her shoulders, grateful when she doesn't pull away.
Chapter 7
London
The bonfire throws sparks into the darkening sky like tiny orange stars racing upward to join the real ones. I'm wedged between Kayla and Rowan on a driftwood log, a half-finished hard seltzer warming in my hands, and the fizzy sweetness makes my head float in a way that's not unpleasant.