Chapter 3
DESTINY
I woke up to pain, voices, and Dylan Degan holding my hand.
For a second, I thought I was still in the desert.
There was heat behind my eyes. Smoke in my throat. Dirt under my tongue. A roaring sound somewhere far away that might have been fire or engines or my own blood trying to escape my body.
Then I blinked.
Ceiling.
Wood beams.
Dim yellow light.
The upstairs room at the clubhouse.
Doc’s room.
Not officially. Officially, it was a guest room with a bed, a dresser, and an old painting of a desert sunset that had been hanging crooked for as long as I could remember.
Unofficially, it was where men went when they came home bleeding and couldn’t go to a hospital.
I’d brought towels up here before. Ice. Coffee.
Once, a bowl of soup Regan had bullied a prospect into making because the man on the bed had taken two bullets and still tried to claim he wasn’t hungry.
I never thought I’d be the one in the bed.
Something tugged at my arm.
I looked down.
An IV ran into my vein, clear fluid dripping slow and steady from a bag hung on a hook that had definitely not been designed for medical care.
My left hand was wrapped. My shoulder burned.
My ribs hurt when I breathed too deep, which apparently my body considered an unnecessary luxury.
One side of my face felt stiff, like dried blood had pulled the skin too tight.
Everything hurt.
But Dylan’s hand was around mine.
Warm.
Callused.
Careful.
That was what made my throat close.
Not the pain. Not the IV. Not the fact that I was probably in enough trouble to make the entire state of New Mexico point and laugh.
His hand.
Because the last clear thing I remembered was the desert, stars wheeling above me, sirens coming closer, and the certainty that I had ruined everything.
Then him.
His voice.
His arms.
You bled first.
Guess that makes us even.
My eyes shifted.
He sat beside the bed in a chair pulled too close, elbows on his knees, one hand around mine and the other resting near his thigh like he hadn’t decided whether he was allowed to touch me and had compromised by refusing to let go.
His black hair was messy from wind and hands dragging through it.
Dirt streaked his jaw. There was blood on his shirt.
Mine.
I knew it was mine.
Shame hit so hard I nearly gagged.
“Oh no,” I whispered.
His eyes lifted fast.
Dark.
Focused.
Tired.
“Hey,” he said quietly.
I tried to pull my hand away.
He let me.
That made it worse.
My fingers curled against my chest, but the wrapped hand protested and pain sparked bright enough to make my eyes water.
“Easy,” Dylan said, leaning forward.
I shook my head and immediately regretted it. The room tilted.
“No. No, no, no.”
“Destiny.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
The name hurt.
It had never hurt like this before. Not even when Brielle said it like glitter and dollar bills. Not even when the boys laughed. Not even when the whole school turned my mother into a ghost story and me into the punchline.
Now it hurt because I had lived up to it.
To the worst version.
To every whisper.
To every warning nobody wanted to say out loud.
I opened my mouth, and the apology came clawing up so fast I barely caught breath around it.
“I’m sorry.”
The door opened.
Regan was there before the words finished leaving me.
“No.”
Her voice cracked.
Edge was behind her, big and silent, face carved into something that made my heart hurt worse than my ribs.
Tarak stood over his shoulder, pale under his tan, jaw ticking so hard I could see the muscle jump.
All three of them looked like they had been dragged behind the same nightmare and dropped outside my door.
But Regan got to me first.
She crossed the room in three strides and sat carefully on the edge of the bed, hands hovering over me like she wanted to touch everywhere at once but didn’t know what was broken.
“No,” she said again, softer. “You don’t start there.”
My eyes burned.
“I—”
“No.” Her hands cupped my face, so gentle I almost wished she’d slapped me instead. “Not with sorry. Not first.”
Edge came around the other side of the bed. He didn’t sit. He stood there like if he stopped holding himself up, the whole building might collapse with him.
His eyes moved over me, counting damage.
Bandage.
Bruise.
Burn.
Cut.
IV.
Me.
“My bike,” I croaked.
Regan made a sound that was half sob, half laugh. “I swear, Destiny Rourke, if you say one more word about that bike before I’ve decided whether to kiss you or shake you, I’m going to need Doc to sedate me too.”
I tried to smile.
It hurt.
So I cried instead.
Just one tear at first.
Hot and humiliating, slipping out before I could stop it.
“I really messed up,” I whispered.
Edge’s face changed.
He sat then.
Not gracefully. Not slowly. He sank into the chair on the other side of the bed like his bones had finally given out. My father reached for me, stopped halfway, then settled his hand gently over my ankle through the blanket because it was the safest place he could find.
“You’re breathing,” he said.
His voice was rough enough to scrape.
I swallowed, but my throat felt raw. “Dad?—”
“You’re breathing,” he repeated, like it was the only fact that mattered.
Regan brushed hair back from my forehead. Her fingers trembled when they touched the bandage near my temple. “That’s where we start.”
That should have helped.
It didn’t.
Because I could see them.
All three of them.
The guilt.
The haunting.
The thing I had tried so hard to keep from happening.
Mandy was in the room again.
Not really. Not as a ghost floating above the bed or whatever drugged-out desert version of me had believed.
But in their eyes. In the way Tarak looked at me like time had folded wrong.
In the way Edge kept staring at my face, seeing damage overlaid with old damage.
In the way Regan’s mouth shook when she tried to smile.
I had wanted to protect them from Mandy’s curse.
Instead, I had dragged the curse home wearing my body.
My gaze found Tarak.
He flinched.
That was worse than anything.
“I’m not her,” I said.
The words came out so small.
Tarak closed his eyes.
When he opened them, they were wet.
“I know, little one.”
I hated that I loved him for saying it.
I hated that I didn’t believe him yet.
My chest tightened.
Panic rose sharp and fast, and my hand moved without permission toward the empty space where Dylan’s had been.
He was still there.
Standing now, near the wall, like he had backed away when my family entered because he knew he didn’t belong in this part.
But I looked at him anyway.
“Dylan.”
The room shifted.
Edge’s hand on my ankle went still.
Regan’s fingers paused in my hair.
Dylan’s jaw tightened.
I should have taken the hint. I should have been careful. I should have remembered that asking for a San Diego Royal Bastard while lying half-broken in my father’s clubhouse bed was probably not my brightest post-felony move.
But I was tired.
Drugged.
Scared.
And he had found me in the dark.
“Did you?” I asked.
His brows drew together. “Did I what?”
I licked my cracked lip. “Tell them.”
His face softened by a fraction.
“No.”
Relief made my eyes close.
“I didn’t tell them anything you said out there,” he continued quietly. “Not the things you couldn’t help saying. Not the things that came from whatever was in your system. You were drugged out of your mind, Destiny. That wasn’t for me to hand around.”
Regan’s breath caught.
Edge looked at him.
Something passed between them.
I didn’t know what.
I didn’t have enough strength to read men and their silent outlaw language right now.
Dylan’s gaze dropped to the IV bag. He watched the saline drip for a second like it was the only thing in the room he trusted.
“We have to move you tonight,” he said.
My pulse jumped.
Regan’s hand tightened around mine.
“What?”
Dylan looked back at me. “Horseback first. Out through Cal’s back land. We’ve got to get you away from the clubhouse before the warrants start landing.”
The word hit harder than pain.
“Warrants?”
Edge’s voice turned deadly. “Maybe.”
Dylan didn’t soften it.
“Search warrant, definitely if the wrong people push. Maybe an arrest warrant if someone gets your name in front of the right judge before we get ahead of the story.”
The room blurred.
I stared at the IV.
At the tape on my skin.
At the clear line keeping me steady while the whole world outside this room got ready to tear me apart.
A tear slipped down my cheek.
I hated that one too.
Hated it more because Dylan saw.
He moved before he seemed to think better of it.
One step.
Then another.
His hand lifted slowly, giving me time to move away if I wanted to.
I didn’t.
He brushed the tear from my cheek with the side of his finger.
Not soft exactly.
Careful.
Like he was touching something breakable and dangerous at the same time.
Regan went very still.
Edge’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t speak.
Dylan dropped his hand immediately, like the contact burned.
I should have looked away.
I didn’t.
“I wanted to thank you,” I whispered.
His expression tightened.
“If you hadn’t been there,” I said, voice shaking now, “if you hadn’t cleaned this up for me and gotten me out of there, I’d be handcuffed in a hospital bed right now.”
“Yes,” he said.
No comfort.
No lie.
Just truth.
My stomach twisted.
“And they would never let you out of that handcuff,” he added.
Regan made a wounded sound.
Edge’s jaw flexed.
I closed my eyes.
“My father’s going to kill somebody,” I whispered. “He’s going to kill them all.”
“No.” Dylan’s voice stayed low. “Your father has a good head on his shoulders.”
A cracked laugh pushed out of me. “Have you met him?”
“Yeah. I have.”
Edge made a sound that might have been offense or agreement.