Chapter 3 #5
Regan stood beside him with one hand pressed to her mouth, trying so hard not to cry that it made me want to crawl back into bed and never cause another emotion again.
Edge’s eyes stayed on Dylan.
Dylan looked back.
No challenge.
No apology.
Just steadiness.
“She’ll need support,” Dylan said. “Regan can’t hold her and manage the terrain. Not safely. I can.”
Edge’s jaw flexed.
Regan took his hand. “Let him.”
Edge looked at her like that hurt.
Then he looked at me.
“Do you want him with you?”
The question cost him.
I knew it did.
I looked at Dylan.
At the man who had once bled in our clubhouse and dropped his gaze because I was too young. At the man who had found me bleeding in the brush and carried me home. At the man who had not repeated the things I said when I was too drugged to guard myself.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Edge closed his eyes.
Opened them.
Then gave one short nod.
Dylan mounted first. Easy. Smooth. Like the horse had been expecting him. Then hands lifted me. Edge’s hands. Regan’s. Tarak’s maybe. A whole lifetime of protection holding me up and letting me go at the same time.
Pain burst white behind my eyes when they settled me sideways in front of Dylan.
I hissed.
Dylan’s arm came around me immediately, firm across my middle but careful of my ribs.
“Easy,” he murmured near my ear. “Breathe through it.”
His chest was warm at my back.
Too warm.
Too solid.
Not family.
That was my first clear thought.
This was not Edge’s arm, or Tarak’s, or Cal’s, or any safe uncle-shaped protection that had been wrapped around me since I came to Santa Fe.
This was a man.
A dangerous man.
A San Diego Royal Bastard with quiet hands and dark eyes and the kind of restraint that made my body notice things it had no business noticing while bruised, bandaged, and still seventeen for one more week.
I was going to blame the drugs forever.
Regan mounted beside us with Nate helping her, though she glared at him when he tried to fuss. Nate swung onto another horse with the IV bag rigged awkwardly but high enough that Doc stopped swearing under his breath.
Edge came to my side.
The horse shifted, and Dylan’s arm tightened slightly to keep me steady.
Edge saw.
Of course he did.
He reached up and touched my cheek.
Just once.
“Come back to me,” he said.
My throat closed.
“I will.”
“You better.”
Regan leaned down from her saddle and took his face between her hands, kissing him hard and fast. Not Callumtic. Not pretty. A battlefield kiss. A vow with teeth.
Then she whispered something to him I couldn’t hear.
Whatever it was, it made Edge press his forehead to hers for one brutal second before he stepped back.
River opened the rear gate.
Beyond it, the desert waited.
No road.
No lights.
No witnesses.
Just brush, rock, old trails, and the last stretch of night.
We left before dawn.
The clubhouse disappeared behind us one slow hoofbeat at a time.
At first, I stayed awake because pain demanded attention like a spoiled rich girl with a wrecked Bronco.
Then the rhythm got me.
Hooves over dirt.
Dylan’s breathing behind me.
Regan’s horse moving somewhere to my right.
Nate muttering complaints under his breath until Regan threatened to shove him into a cactus if he didn’t let the desert have five minutes of peace.
The IV tube tugged gently against my arm.
The sky paled by inches.
Stars gave their last weak twinkle above the ridgeline as the first blue edge of morning lifted behind the mountains. The world softened into shapes: cactus arms raised like witnesses, scrub brush silver with dawn, red earth turning purple, then rust, then gold.
I drifted.
Came back.
Drifted again.
When my eyes fluttered open for real, Dylan was looking down at me.
Not checking the trail.
Not scanning the horizon.
Looking at me.
The unguarded expression on his face stopped my breath.
He looked at me like I was something impossible.
Not damaged.
Not dangerous.
Not Mandy’s daughter.
Not a problem being smuggled through desert land before a warrant could find me.
Something softer.
Something brighter.
Something close to hope.
That was unacceptable.
“I’m not a good angel,” I murmured.
His brows drew together. “What?”
My tongue felt thick, but the words came anyway. “I’m the bad kind. Stop looking at me like I’m hope when I’m the destroyer of hope.”
For one second, he stared.
Then he chuckled.
Low.
Warm.
It moved through his chest into my back, and I hated how good it felt.
“You think you’re a real badass, don’t you?”
“I committed multiple felonies before breakfast.”
“Allegedly.”
My mouth twitched.
“Ow.”
“Don’t smile.”
“You made me.”
“That’s going in my report.”
I turned my face slightly, trying to glare up at him.
Bad idea.
His face was too close.
Dawn caught the edge of his jaw and the dark scrape of stubble there. His eyes were nearly black in the fading starlight, but gold touched them where morning found us. He looked tired. Dirty. Beautiful in a way men like him had no right to be beautiful.
One hand shifted near my face.
I froze.
He paused immediately. “You’ve got brush in your hair.”
“Oh.”
His fingers moved carefully, not touching my skin more than he had to, plucking tiny bits of mesquite and dry grass from the tangled mess spilling over his arm.
Then his thumb brushed near the corner of my mouth.
I hissed.
He stopped instantly.
“Split lip,” he said, voice rough. “Sorry.”
My heart beat too hard.
“You’re not eighteen yet,” he said.
The words came from nowhere and everywhere.
A line dragged into the dirt between us.
I blinked slowly. “I will be next week.”
His jaw tightened.
“Are you flirting with me while half drugged, swollen, and bruised?”
“Maybe.”
“Destiny.”
“I know you think I’m beautiful anyway.”
His eyes flashed.
I should have stopped.
I did not stop.
“Bloody and bruised and with cactus in my hair.”
He looked away toward the horizon.
For one second, I thought he would shut me down completely.
Then he exhaled through his nose, like honesty physically hurt.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I do.”
Everything inside me went still.
He looked back down at me, and this time he did not let the words hide.
“Honestly? You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
My breath caught.
He gave the smallest, almost bitter smile.
“Prettier than all the girls in Hollywood. Just like this. Bloodied lip, wild hair, brush tangled in it, looking like you fought the whole desert and made it apologize.”
That was stupid.
Ridiculous.
Impossible.
I had never been spoken to like that.
Not by boys at school, who looked at me like a dare or a dirty joke. Not by club men, who treated me like a niece, a daughter, a protected thing. Not by anyone who knew what my face carried.
Beautiful.
Not despite the wreckage.
Inside it.
My eyes burned.
“I’ve never felt like this,” I whispered.
His hand stilled in my hair.
Then he chuckled softly. “What? Drugged up and in pain?”
I stared up at him.
“You know what I’m saying.”
His amusement faded.
The morning seemed to hold its breath around us.
Hooves kept moving. Regan and Nate were ahead now by several yards, giving us privacy or pretending to. Probably both.
Dylan’s arm stayed firm around me.
Too firm.
Not firm enough.
“You can’t say any of it,” he said.
My throat tightened.
“You can’t, Destiny.”
“Why?”
His laugh was humorless. “Because you’re seventeen. Injured. Half drugged. A possible felon. Unpatched and off-limits in every direction a woman can be off-limits.”
“I’m not a woman?”
His eyes dropped to mine.
“That is not what I said.”
My skin went hot.
He looked away first.
Again.
Always that control.
Always that maddening, careful retreat that somehow felt more intimate than if he had touched me without thinking.
“And your father,” he continued, voice rougher now, “respects me right now.”
“I know.”
“I’d like him to keep doing that.”
“That matters?”
“It matters if I want to keep breathing.”
A weak laugh slipped out of me.
He didn’t smile.
“I’m not going to be Troy,” he said.
I frowned. “What?”
“You’re not Helen, and I’m not starting a war because I’m too stupid to know the difference between love and lust.”
The word love hit like a stone dropped into deep water.
I felt the ripples everywhere.
“I didn’t say love.”
“No,” he said. “You didn’t.”
“But you did.”
His jaw flexed.
I should have felt victorious.
Instead, I felt sad.
He looked down at me, and whatever lived in his eyes was too old for me, too hard, too controlled.
“As beautiful as you are,” he said quietly, “I’m not dying for lust, baby doll.”
Baby doll.
The words should have sounded cheap.
They didn’t.
They sounded like something he regretted the second they left his mouth.
“My job is to keep you safe,” he added.
Safe.
There it was again.
The word that had followed me my whole life like a locked door.
I closed my eyes.
“I just wanted to feel free,” I whispered.
Dylan didn’t answer right away.
The horse moved beneath us, steady and warm. Morning spread across the desert in slow fire. Somewhere ahead, Nate said something that made Regan mutter a threat.
Finally, Dylan asked, “Did you?”
I opened my eyes.
The first car burning flashed behind them.
The white Bronco catching fire.
Brielle screaming.
The impossible, terrible beauty of flame taking something perfect and expensive and cruel and making it answer to me.
Shame followed fast.
But truth got there first.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “When I watched the first car burn, it was very freeing.”
Dylan stared at me.
Then he laughed.
Not loud.
Not mocking.
A real laugh, startled out of him like I had kicked a door open.
I smiled before I remembered pain.
“Ow.”
“You are a menace.”
“Allegedly.”
His arm tightened once, careful and brief.
“Yeah,” he said. “Allegedly.”
The trail dipped then, and the land changed.