Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
My breath shuddered out. “If you’re the only thing standing between me and that, then yes. I trust you. I trust what you’ll do.”
The steel in his gaze didn’t soften, but something else sparked there—satisfaction, maybe, or relief. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to mine.
“That’s all I needed to hear,” he murmured.
I sagged against him, drained, but some part of me steadied in a way it hadn’t since the accident. It terrified me, knowing I’d just given myself to something I couldn’t take back. But it also felt… inevitable. Like I’d stepped into the path already predestined for me.
Thrasher’s world wasn’t clean. It wasn’t safe in the ways I used to dream about. But with him, I wasn’t powerless. With him, I wasn’t prey.
I was his.
And in his world, that meant protected.
The next day was a blur of condolences and logistics. Brothers took shifts in the hospital. Tiny’s condition wavered but held, a flicker of hope in the sea of grief. But Lyric’s absence hung heavy, a hole none of us could fill.
I sat in the chapel alone for a while, the small sterile room with its wooden cross and stiff chairs. I wasn’t sure if I believed anymore. But I whispered anyway—angry, broken words that weren’t prayers so much as accusations.
Why her? Why not me? Why always the ones who still had hope?
The silence gave me no answers.
When I came back to the waiting room, Thrasher was standing with DK, their heads bent low, voices hushed. Plans were being made. I didn’t ask details. I didn’t need them.
Thrasher looked up as soon as I walked in, his eyes locking on mine like I was the only anchor he needed. He crossed the space, his hand cupping the back of my neck.
“You good?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No. But I’m alive and with you. I will be.”
He kissed my forehead, rough and lingering. “That’s all I ask.”
That night, back at the clubhouse, the grief turned into something sharper. The brothers drank in silence, no music, no laughter. Just the heavy air of mourning and the electric buzz of rage.
I sat at a corner table, nursing a glass of water I barely touched, watching Thrasher move through the room. He wasn’t loud. He didn’t need to be. His presence alone carried weight, and every brother who met his eyes knew what was coming.
I realized then that revenge in this world wasn’t chaos. It was order. It was the way they balanced the scales when the law couldn’t—or wouldn’t. It was brutal, yes. But it was the only justice some men ever faced.
And for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to turn away from it.
I wanted to see the scales balanced. For Lyric. For Tiny. For me.
When Thrasher finally came back to me, his hand slid over mine, his eyes steady.
“You still with me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Always,” I promised.
The word twisted inside me, both terrifying and freeing.
Because it was true.
I was with him.
No matter where this road led.
19
MELODY
Tiny died three days after Lyric.
When the call came from the ICU, I already knew. His machines had been humming a fragile rhythm, keeping him tethered to this world when his body was too broken to do it on its own. I had sat by his bed with Thrasher more than once, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest, whispering to him about Lyric, hoping he would hold on for her.
But he didn’t.
The nurse’s voice was gentle, practiced, as she told us the bleed had worsened, that he slipped away in his sleep. She said it like it was a mercy, but all I heard was finality.
Gone. Just like Lyric.
The only thing I could hold onto was that they were at least together in the afterlife.
The clubhouse turned into a cave of sadness. Every brother wore his grief in silence, their cuts hanging heavy on their shoulders, the weight of loss bending even the strongest of them. They didn’t cry, not out loud, but I saw it in their eyes, in the tight lines of their mouths, in the way they poured liquor like water and stared into the bottom of their glasses as if answers might float up from the dark.
For me, the grief came with guilt, a thick choking thing that settled in my chest and refused to let go.
Tiny and Lyric died because of me. I was sure of it. BJ wouldn’t have put forth the effort to find her. This was about my disobedience.
Logan and BJ had come for me. For the choice I’d made to run from the chains of the church. And instead of me, they’d stolen lives that weren’t theirs to touch.
I found Thrasher in the garage that night, hunched over his bike like it was the only thing keeping him from unraveling. His cut was tossed across a workbench, his forearms slick with grease. He didn’t look up when I walked in, but he knew I was there. He always knew.