Chapter 3 #2
Dylan ignored it. “And he’s got people around him making sure rage doesn’t drive the bike. There’s a plan. You just need to rest and get well enough to play your part in it.”
I opened my eyes.
“What part?”
Something changed in his face.
Just for a second.
Humor, maybe. Or mercy.
“Graduation trip in Mexico.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“Bikinis. Beach photos. Sun poisoning if we need realism.”
Regan let out a breath that almost turned into a laugh.
I stared at him.
Then, because apparently my brain was still floating somewhere above the desert in a cloud of tequila, smoke, and bad choices, I said, “I’ve always wanted to try a pi?a colada.”
No one spoke.
I added, “Not the virgin kind.”
Dylan’s eyes flashed.
Just once.
Barely.
But I saw it.
Or thought I did.
His face tightened around the word virgin like it had hit somewhere he did not want anything hitting. His gaze stayed on my face, careful and controlled, but the air shifted. Warmed. Snapped taut.
My heart gave one stupid, wounded flutter.
Oh.
Oh no.
No, no, absolutely not.
I was lying in bed with an IV in my arm, a burned hand, a possibly concussed skull, and criminal charges circling me like vultures. I was not noticing the way Dylan Degan’s mouth pressed into a line when he was trying not to feel something. I was not feeling anything back.
I was still drugged.
Obviously.
This was drugs.
And trauma.
And maybe brain swelling.
“I meant because I’m almost eighteen,” I muttered, horrified.
Nate laughed somewhere outside the room.
Dylan closed his eyes.
Regan made a strangled sound.
Edge stood.
“Out.”
Dylan’s eyes opened.
I panicked before I could stop myself.
“No.”
Every adult in the room froze.
Fantastic.
Perfect.
Could this night get more humiliating?
Probably. I had set several vehicles on fire and crashed my father’s motorcycle. Apparently, I was committed to the full experience.
“I mean…” My throat worked. “I just…”
I couldn’t explain it.
Not without sounding worse.
I didn’t want Dylan to leave because when he was in the room, the dark didn’t feel as close. Because he had heard some of my ugliest words in the desert and hadn’t handed them over like evidence. Because he told the truth in a way that didn’t feel like punishment.
Because once, three years ago, he had bled on the clubhouse floor and still looked away when he realized I was too young for his eyes to linger.
And now he was here.
Looking.
Not lingering.
Not taking.
Just seeing me.
Dylan seemed to understand too much.
That was another problem.
He stepped closer, but not too close. His gaze dropped to my hand, then lifted to my face.
“You can face them,” he said.
I swallowed.
His voice lowered. “You’re brave, Destiny. One of the bravest girls I’ve ever known.”
My eyes burned again.
“I don’t feel brave.”
“Brave girls usually don’t.”
Then he did something so quick I almost thought I imagined it.
He bent and pressed his mouth to the top of my head.
Not my lips.
Not my cheek.
My hair.
A kiss so gentle it should not have changed anything.
It changed everything.
Heat moved through me so fast I forgot pain for one impossible second. Not desire exactly, or not only that. Something stranger. Bigger. Like the world, which had been spinning broken and wild all night, suddenly clicked one tiny piece into place.
Destiny.
The name whispered through me, but this time it didn’t sound like a curse.
It sounded like a door opening.
Dylan straightened and stepped back.
Regan’s eyes were wide.
Edge’s face had gone unreadable.
Tarak looked at Dylan like he had just watched a man strike a match inside a room full of gas.
Dylan knew it too.
His jaw tightened.
“I’ll be outside,” he said.
Then he left.
The room held his absence like smoke.
I stared at the door.
A thought rose, stupid and shining through the haze.
Maybe Dylan could be mine.
I nearly laughed out loud.
My parents would never let me date a Royal Bastard. I was not even eighteen yet, and I was lying here thinking this man was the love of my life because he wiped one tear and kissed my hair after dragging me from a crime scene.
I was definitely still drugged.
Still crazy.
Still concussed.
Maybe all three.
Regan cleared her throat.
I looked at her and wanted to disappear under the blanket.
“Please don’t,” I whispered.
“Don’t what?” she asked.
“Look at me like that.”
Her face broke.
“Oh, baby.”
That did it.
The apology came back up, bigger this time, too heavy to swallow.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and when she opened her mouth, I shook my head.
“No. Let me say it. Please. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
I stole the bike. I went to the party. I drank.
I smoked something. I knew better. I did.
I set things on fire. I could’ve hurt people.
I could’ve killed someone. I could’ve ruined everything you built. I could’ve?—”
My voice shattered.
Edge sat again and leaned close.
“Stop.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t, because if I don’t say it now, I might never be brave enough to say it again.” I looked from him to Regan to Tarak. “I did exactly what they always said I would do. I became her.”
Tarak flinched.
Regan’s eyes filled.
Edge’s hand closed around mine, careful of the IV.
“You are one of us,” he said.
The words hit like a blow.
I stared at him.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I blew up cars.”
His mouth tightened. “You think no one in this room has ever blown up a car?”
Regan made a sharp sound. “Edge.”
“What? Bad time for honesty?”
“It is always a bad time for that particular honesty.”
Tarak let out something that might have been a breath of laughter if he hadn’t looked so haunted.
I stared at them.
Edge leaned closer.
“You did something dangerous. Reckless. Stupid as hell.”
I swallowed.
“But you are not Mandy,” he said. “You are not a curse. You are not bad blood. You are my daughter.”
My face crumpled.
Regan took over, brushing hair away from my damp cheek.
“You did what half the people in this building would have done if they’d been cornered long enough, hurt deep enough, and drugged hard enough.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“No,” she said. “It makes it understandable.”
Tarak stepped closer.
He looked older tonight. Not physically. Tarak was still Tarak, all hard edges and quiet menace. But something behind his eyes had aged. Or maybe something old had finally surfaced.
“I said the wrong name outside,” he said.
My chest tightened.
“I heard.”
Pain flashed across his face. “I’m sorry.”
I looked down.
“It’s okay.”
“No,” he said. “It isn’t. You spent years being haunted by a woman you barely knew, and tonight I added to it.”
“You loved her.”
“I did.”
The room went quiet.
Tarak swallowed.
“And I hated her,” he said. “And I grieved her. And I blamed her. And I forgave her some days. Then hated her again the next. None of that belongs on you.”
I couldn’t breathe around the ache in my chest.
“I didn’t tell you because I thought it would hurt you.”
Regan made a small sound.
Edge’s hand tightened.
“I know,” Tarak said. “That might be the bravest and dumbest thing you’ve ever done.”
A laugh broke out of me, cracked and watery.
Regan wiped my cheek. “He’s right.”
“I thought you’d blow up the school,” I whispered.
Edge’s eyes sharpened.
“I would not blow up a school.”
Regan stared at him.
Tarak stared at him.
I stared at him.
Edge sighed. “Not with kids in it.”
Regan pointed at him. “That is not better.”
I laughed again, and then immediately grabbed my ribs.
“Ow.”
“See?” Regan fussed, reaching for the blanket. “This is why we don’t make injured felons laugh.”
I looked at her.
Her face changed.
The word hit both of us at the same time.
Felon.
The fragile warmth snapped.
The door opened before either of us could pretend it hadn’t.
JD stepped inside.
I had seen JD Northport plenty of times around the club, mostly with Skye, sometimes with his son, always looking too polished for a man wearing a cut.
He wasn’t like Edge or Tarak. He had money in his posture.
Boardrooms in his voice. The kind of calm that made people underestimate him right up until he owned the room.
Tonight, he looked at me like a man who had come to tell the truth even if everyone hated him for it.
That scared me more than Edge’s rage.
“How bad?” I asked before he spoke.
JD glanced at Edge.
Edge nodded once.
JD came to the foot of the bed.
“Bad,” he said.
Regan’s hand closed around mine.
JD continued, “Not hopeless.”
That helped by half an inch.
Maybe less.
“There’s no burying this clean,” he said. “Not with the number of kids there, the phones, the fire damage, and who those kids belong to. We are going to fight this with law, leverage, money, and the truth where the truth helps us.”
I swallowed. “The truth is I did it.”
“The truth,” JD said, “is that you are a seventeen-year-old girl who endured years of targeted harassment, was publicly humiliated, possibly drugged, and had a breakdown at a party full of intoxicated minors who were filming instead of helping.”
My throat tightened.
“That sounds like an excuse.”
“It’s context.”
“I still did it.”
“Yes.”
No one rushed to soften that.
Somehow I appreciated it.
JD looked at me carefully. “If they push criminal charges, your age matters. You are still seventeen for another week. That may be the difference between juvenile consequences and adult prison exposure. My goal is to keep you away from adult court completely. Maybe away from criminal court if we get enough leverage. But I won’t lie to you. There will be consequences.”
My eyes burned.
“What kind?”
“Restitution if we can settle. Community service. Counseling. Possibly probation. A formal diversion program if we can get the right people to agree. Civil claims are almost guaranteed unless we make them more afraid of discovery than they are angry about the cars.”
“Discovery?”