Chapter 2 #2
Not fragile. Nobody who had seen her eyes would make that mistake twice. But delicate in the lines. High cheekbones. Soft mouth. Long lashes dark against skin gone too pale under the blood. A face that looked like it had been drawn by a careful hand and then given a spirit too fierce for the frame.
She was half-conscious, shaking, one hand pressed to her middle, the other curled near her chest like she was trying to hold herself together by force.
For a second, I couldn’t move.
Because I knew that face.
Older now.
Sharper.
Not a child anymore.
But not far enough from one for me to forget the line.
Edge’s daughter.
Forbidden to the core.
A shooting star fallen into the dirt, and I was the poor bastard stupid enough to reach for it.
“Shit,” I muttered.
I crouched low beside her and touched two fingers to her throat.
Pulse.
Fast.
Too fast, but there.
Her eyes fluttered.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
Her voice was raw and small.
It hit me harder than the explosion.
“Easy,” I said. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
She flinched anyway.
I wanted to kill whoever had made Edge’s daughter flinch like that.
Then I remembered the fire behind us and the burning cars and the screaming kids, and the thought turned complicated.
Her eyes opened halfway.
Dark.
Unfocused.
Huge.
She looked through me first, not at me. Whatever she had taken still had claws in her. Her pupils were wrong. Her breath came too quick. She was trapped somewhere between the desert and whatever nightmare the drugs had built inside her skull.
“Mandy?” she whispered.
“No.”
Her face twisted.
“I’m not her.”
“I know.”
She tried to sit up.
I stopped her with one hand at her shoulder, gentle but firm. “Don’t move.”
Her breath hitched, and for one second her gaze focused.
Really focused.
On my face.
Recognition flickered.
Not clear. Not steady. But there.
“You were bleeding,” she murmured.
My chest tightened.
Three years vanished.
Rain. Clubhouse. Towel. Edge’s voice.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Now it’s your turn.”
Her mouth moved like she might laugh, but pain cut it off.
Nate pushed through the brush behind me. “How bad?”
“Head injury. Burn on her hand. Maybe ribs. Hip or shoulder took a hit. She’s high as hell on something.”
Destiny made a soft sound. “I’m not high.”
Nate looked at me.
I looked at him.
Even half-dead, the girl had pride.
“Sure, princess,” Nate muttered.
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Don’t call me that.”
Good.
Fire still in her.
That relieved me more than it should have.
I checked her pupils again with the penlight. She groaned and turned her face away.
“Stay with me,” I said.
“Don’t tell Edge.”
Nate made a low sound. “Oh, sweetheart.”
Her fingers grabbed weakly at my cut. “Don’t tell him.”
That was when I knew she was more scared of her father seeing what had happened than she was of cops, sirens, fire, or bleeding alone in the brush.
Something in me went hard and cold.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
Her eyes filled, but she didn’t cry. Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe she was too drugged. Maybe she had been trained by love and fear to bleed quietly.
“They laughed,” she whispered. “They wanted fire.”
Nate looked toward the glow. “Well, they got it.”
I shot him a warning look.
He shut up.
Sirens screamed closer.
Voices carried from the trail.
“Bike’s over here!”
I went still.
Nate swore.
Destiny’s hand tightened in my cut.
“My dad,” she whispered.
“Not yet.”
I looked at Nate. “Can you move the bike?”
He stared at me for half a second, then understood.
“Dylan.”
“Can you move it?”
“That’s Edge Rourke’s bike.”
“And that’s Edge Rourke’s daughter.”
His jaw worked.
Behind us, another voice shouted, closer this time.
I could see flashlight beams beginning to sweep through the smoke.
Nate cursed under his breath. “I’ll make it disappear long enough.”
“Don’t get caught.”
“I was planning to hand out business cards.”
“Nate.”
“I got it.”
He vanished back through the brush.
I looked down at Destiny.
She was fading.
Not unconscious yet, but slipping. Her lashes fluttered. Her breathing stuttered. Blood slid from her temple into her hairline. Dirt clung to her cheek. Her burned palm was starting to blister.
I shouldn’t have touched her more than I had to.
I knew that.
Knew it like a law written in bone.
But when her head lolled to the side and she whimpered, something in me broke rank.
I slid one arm beneath her shoulders and the other under her knees.
She gasped when I lifted her.
“Sorry,” I said, meaning it.
Her body curled instinctively toward my chest, seeking warmth or safety or just the nearest solid thing in a world that wouldn’t stop spinning.
She weighed less than she should have. Heat and tremors moved through her.
Her hair fell over my arm in a dark river, soft even tangled with dirt and smoke.
Precious cargo.
That was the stupid phrase that hit me.
Not girl.
Not problem.
Not Edge’s daughter.
Cargo.
The kind you took bullets for because losing it was not an option.
I hated myself for the thought.
Then held her tighter anyway.
She pressed her face weakly against my cut. “You smell like rain.”
“There’s no rain.”
“There was last time.”
My feet stopped for one heartbeat.
She remembered.
Not all of it. Maybe not even clearly. But some part of her remembered me the same way I remembered her.
That was bad.
That was worse than bad.
That was the kind of thing men wrote songs about before somebody ended up dead.
“Stay awake,” I said.
“I don’t want to.”
“I didn’t ask.”
A faint line appeared between her brows. “Bossy.”
“Bleeding girls don’t get a vote.”
“Almost eighteen.”
My jaw tightened.
There it was.
The line.
The reminder.
The warning.
Almost.
Not there.
Not mine.
Never mine if I wanted to keep breathing and, more importantly, if I wanted to keep honor from rotting out of me completely.
“Then almost listen,” I said.
She made the smallest sound. Maybe amusement. Maybe pain.
I moved fast, keeping low, cutting away from the main clearing toward the darker trail Nate and I had come down.
Behind us, chaos swallowed the desert. Kids shouted over each other.
Doors slammed. Tires spun. Somewhere, glass popped under heat.
Firelight licked the sky while emergency lights strobed red-blue through smoke.
It looked like a war zone built out of rich kids’ bad decisions.
Nate caught up on my left, breathing hard.
“Bike’s out of sight,” he said. “For now. Tracks are a mess anyway with everyone running around.”
“Call Prez.”
“Already did.”
“What’d you say?”
“That we found a complication.”
I looked at him.
He grimaced. “Fine. I said we found a nuclear complication.”
Destiny stirred in my arms.
“Nuclear,” she mumbled. “That’s me.”
Nate blinked. “She’s funny when concussed.”
“She’s not concussed until Doc says she’s concussed.”
“She crashed Edge’s bike and started a car apocalypse. I’m making an educated guess.”
I kept walking.
The trail ahead dipped between two low ridges. My boots slid in loose sand. Destiny’s fingers had curled into my shirt now, holding on with what strength she had left.
I told myself she would’ve grabbed anyone.
I told myself it didn’t matter that I liked the weight of her against me.
I told myself a lot of lies in the space of those fifty yards.
Nate’s phone buzzed. He checked it.
“Prez is two minutes out.”
“With the truck?”
“Yeah.”
I almost laughed.
Of course Prez was bringing the truck.
Our president rode a Cybertruck when he wasn’t on two wheels, and every bastard who gave him grief for it shut up the first time it took rounds on the passenger side and kept moving like it had been mildly insulted.
Bulletproof glass. Reinforced panels. Electric torque that made it move like a silver brick launched by God’s own slingshot.
Ugly as sin.
Fast as hell.
Perfect for nights when the world went sideways.
Destiny’s head shifted against my chest.
“My phone,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Regan.”
Her voice cracked on the name.
I looked down.
Her eyes were barely open, but panic moved there now. Real panic. Not drug haze. Not fire rage.
“Regan knows I’m breathing,” she said. “Don’t let her think I’m dead.”
A girl who had just burned down half a party and crashed a stolen motorcycle was worried that her stepmother thought she was dead.
That told me more about the Rourkes than any club story ever had.
“I won’t,” I said.
“You promise?”
I didn’t make promises often.
Promises got men killed.
But her blood was on my arm, and her eyes were begging.
“I promise.”
She exhaled, then shuddered hard enough I felt it through my chest.
Headlights appeared ahead.
No engine sound at first. Just light cresting the trail, white and cold, then the soft electric whine of a vehicle moving too fast over bad ground. The Cybertruck came around the bend like something out of a rich man’s apocalypse fantasy and stopped hard enough to throw dust over the hood.
Prez stepped out before the door fully opened.
Callum Mercer was not a man who needed to raise his voice to get obedience. Tall, silver at the temples, eyes like a loaded chamber. He looked at me. Then at the girl in my arms.
His face changed by one degree.
For Callum, that was a whole speech.
“Who is that?”
I adjusted my hold on her, feeling her flinch when pain bit.
“I think it’s Edge’s daughter.”
The air went colder.
Nate muttered, “Surprise.”
Callum looked toward the glow behind us, then at Destiny’s bloody face. “You think?”
“I know.”
Callum’s jaw flexed. “Does she need a hospital?”
I looked down at her.
Her breathing was fast but steady. Pulse still there.
Blood, burns, possible concussion, maybe cracked ribs.
Drugs in her system. Shock creeping in. She needed medical care, but a hospital meant cops.
Cops meant reports. Reports meant Edge’s daughter at a felony scene where cars were still burning and kids were screaming about Mandy’s curse.