Etched in Stone (Stoneheart MC #5)

Chapter 1 Emma

EMMA

My boarding pass is crumpled in my fist. My carry-on sits at my feet. And I can’t breathe.

It’s the gate. That’s what I tell myself. It’s just the similarity—the long corridor, the plane waiting beyond the glass, the crowd pressing forward with their bags and tickets and their normal, everyday confidence that nothing bad will happen.

They didn’t get snatched from an airport only a day ago.

They didn’t wake up zip-tied in the back of a van.

They didn’t spend hours thinking they were going to die.

My chest tightens. The terminal blurs at the edges. I grip the armrest so hard my knuckles go white, trying to ground myself, trying to remember the breathing exercises my therapist taught me when I was sixteen and panicking about auditions.

Four counts in. Hold. Four counts out.

Except I can’t get past two counts before my lungs seize up.

“Final boarding call for Flight 2847 to LaGuardia. All remaining passengers need to board at this time.”

I should get up. I should walk through that gate, get on that plane, and go back to my life in New York.

Back to Joffrey, back to my apartment in Brooklyn Heights, back to the familiar routine I’ve built for myself.

Back to the safety of being Emma Armstrong, prima ballerina—not the MC president’s daughter who just got kidnapped and then fucked her self-appointed bodyguard in a clubhouse full of people who definitely heard everything.

God. What was I thinking?

I wasn’t. That’s the problem. I was feeling too much, all at once, and Bones was there, and we’ve been circling each other for thirteen years, and it finally just . . . happened.

The sex wasn’t the mistake.

Running away while he was still sleeping probably was.

But I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t wake up at the clubhouse with everyone knowing—with my dad, Stone, knowing.

With Lee ready to murder Bones on sight.

I wasn’t ready to face the questions, the conversations, the truth.

Bones tracked me for years. First with a GPS necklace.

Then with a chip in my body. And I still let him put his mouth on my—

No. Not thinking about that right now.

Right now, I need to get on this plane.

Except I can’t. I’m frozen.

This is just the kidnapping. Just trauma. My therapist would say it’s a normal response—the body recognizing danger and locking down to protect you. Airport equals where they took me. Plane equals no exits. No control.

That’s all this is.

It’s not about where the plane is headed. It’s not.

My phone is in my other hand. I bought it this morning at a gas station on the way to the airport—a cheap burner, because my regular phone was destroyed by the guys who . . . who took me. My stomach drops. My hands shake.

The only number I’ve typed in is the one I’ve had memorized since I was fifteen, when Bones made me repeat it back to him until I could say it in my sleep.

“Just in case,” he’d said. “You ever need me, you call that number. Day or night. Doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing. You call, I come.”

I was fifteen. He was sixteen. Just a scrappy kid hanging around the MC, trying to prove himself.

I’d come home for a couple of weeks during summer break from the National Dance Academy, desperate to let loose after months of strict diet and training.

But Dad wouldn’t let me out of his sight unescorted.

And since Bones was close to my age and had already shown he could take down grown men in a fistfight, he got assigned as my official shadow.

I was pissed about it then. I’m not sure I’ve ever really stopped being pissed about it.

But I always called him when I got in trouble.

Even when it was just rescuing me from a bad date (twice), or bringing me home when I couldn’t remember which bar I’d stumbled into (more than that).

He always came. And he always acted like it was no big deal, even when it clearly was—the time I sprained my ankle on a dare, the night I got blackout drunk in Vegas, yesterday when I was, you know, abducted at gunpoint.

Every time I’ve gotten myself into trouble over the years, Bones has shown up. Sometimes I wonder if I subconsciously seek it out—the bad dates, the questionable neighborhoods, the reckless choices—just to see if he’ll come.

Which is fucked up.

Because he always does.

Now I’m twenty-eight, he’s twenty-nine, and my thumb is hovering over the call button. Because apparently over a decade of complicated history and a fresh betrayal still aren’t enough to change the fact that when everything falls apart, he’s the first person I want.

I should be furious about that. I am furious about that.

He tracked me. For years. Put a chip in my body without my knowledge. Violated my trust in ways I’m still processing. And last night, after I found out, after I screamed at him, after everything—I still ended up in bed with him. Or technically on the floor. Then against the wall. Then—

God, I’m an idiot.

But my thumb stays poised over the call button, and I can’t seem to make it move.

Can’t seem to do anything except sit here having a panic attack while my flight boards without me.

Staring at the number of a man who cares enough to track me across the country but not enough to just . . . stay occasionally.

Or maybe he cares too much. Maybe that’s the problem.

The phone feels heavy in my hand—heavy with the certainty that if I press call, he’ll answer.

He always answers.

Shit.

“That me you’re about to call?”

I nearly drop the phone.

Bones is standing three feet away, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, looking like he just happened to be passing through Hartsfield–Jackson airport at six in the morning.

His hair is messy, like he woke up, dragged a hand through it, and called it good.

There are circles under his dark eyes. And his expression is carefully neutral in that way that means he’s anything but.

“What the—how did you—why are you—” But I know. Of course I know. “The tracker.”

“The tracker,” he confirms, and he doesn’t even have the decency to look guilty.

“You followed me. Again.”

“You left without saying goodbye.”

“I said goodbye!” The lie is obvious even as it leaves my mouth. “I left a note.”

“‘Tell Dad I’m sorry about missing Christmas’ doesn’t count as goodbye, Em.”

He moves closer, drops into the seat next to mine like he’s settling in for a conversation. The gate agent is making increasingly agitated gestures at the few remaining passengers. The door to the jetway will close in minutes.

“You should go,” Bones says, nodding toward the gate. “You’re gonna miss your flight.”

I look at the gate. Look at my boarding pass. Look at Bones.

“I can’t,” I whisper.

His expression shifts—his neutral mask cracking just slightly. “Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t.” My voice is shaking now, and I hate it. I hate that he’s seeing this. “I can’t get on the plane. Every time I try to stand up, I see the van. I feel the zip ties. I—” My breath hitches. “I can’t do it.”

Bones doesn’t say anything for a long moment. He just sits there beside me—solid and real and not rushing me, not telling me to suck it up or get over it.

That was always his thing. When I was losing my shit at sixteen about school or ballet or Dad being overprotective, Bones would just sit with me until I calmed down.

Still does, apparently.

“Final call for Flight 2847. The gate is now closed.”

The gate agent pulls the door shut. My plane is now leaving without me.

I should feel panic. Instead, I just feel . . . relieved.

Which makes no sense. The gate just closed on my flight home—on my career, my apartment, my entire life—and I’m relieved?

It has to be the adrenaline crash. Or shock. Or my brain protecting me from more trauma by convincing me I’m fine with not flying.

That’s all it is.

It doesn’t mean anything else.

“So,” Bones says. “What now?”

“I don’t know.” I slump back in the chair, exhausted. “But I’m not going back to Stoneheart, OK? I’m going back to New York. Back to where the only thing I have to worry about is rehearsals for spring season . . .”

I came back to Stoneheart for one visit and got kidnapped within twenty-four hours. If that’s not the universe sending a message, I don’t know what is.

New York is safe. Boring, maybe. Predictable. But safe.

And right now, safe sounds pretty fucking good.

“I’ll drive you.”

I turn to stare at him. “What?”

“I’ll drive you to New York. We can take my bike or rent a car if you prefer.” He shrugs like it’s nothing—like it’s not a fifteen-hour drive, like he didn’t just offer to spend an entire day with me after I literally fucked his brains out and ran away this morning. “Your choice.”

“Bones—”

“You can’t fly. You need to get to New York. I can get you there.” His eyes meet mine, and there’s something in them that makes my chest tight. “Let me get you there, Em.”

This is a bad idea. I should figure out another way to get home. I could rent a car myself, take a train, call Kya and see if she and Lee want to do a road trip. Literally anything that doesn’t involve being trapped in a car with Bones.

Not when my head is a mess.

Not when my body is still replaying last night.

Not when I’m furious about the tracker.

And grateful he found me.

And furious about that too.

And I don’t even know what I’m feeling anymore.

“Why?” I ask instead.

“Why, what?”

“Why . . .” I shake my head because the words aren’t lining up. The question doesn’t want to form. So I go with, “Why all of it?”

He’s quiet for a beat. “Because I’m the guy you call.”

Damn it. He’s right.

“That doesn’t mean I want to be rescued. Or stalked.”

Bones grins—just a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, but sometimes you do, so I’m covering the bases.”

I want to be mad, but the bastard is immune to shame, and somewhere in the tension between my ribs I want him here. I want him doing exactly what he’s doing—putting himself directly in front of my panic spiral so I can push off him and not drown.