Chapter 17
Seventeen
Ledger
If they want a war, they picked the wrong man to provoke.
Rain slams sideways across the windshield as I tear down the country road, wipers barely keeping up. The storm is coming in thick, fast sheets, lightning flashing across the sky like camera flashes in rapid succession.
Kelly’s hand is gripping the seat beside her, knuckles white. She’s trying to look calm, but I can feel her fear pumping through the cramped space of the truck like a living thing.
She remembered me. She remembered us. And the universe decided to answer that with another threat.
Figures.
“Riot?” Her voice cracks just slightly.
“I’m here,” I answer immediately.
Not “yeah.” Not “hold on.” Not “we’re fine.”
I’m here.
I catch the way her shoulders ease. Not much but enough to tell me she needed those two words more than anything else.
Lightning splits the sky, lighting up the road in stark white.
We’re not going to the clubhouse. We’re not going to the fallback cabin. We’re going deeper into Kings territory a place only a handful of us know exists.
A place I swore I’d never have to bring her.
She watches me drive, eyes darting between my face and the darkness outside.
“You’re angry,” she whispers.
I exhale once through my nose. “I’m always angry.”
“No,” she says softly. “This is different.”
I don’t answer.
Because she’s right.
This isn’t the slow-simmer fury I live with. This is wildfire rage edged with fear. I almost lost her once. I’m not fucking losing her again.
I keep my eyes on the road. “Tell me if you see anything outside. Movement. Headlights. Shadows that look wrong.”
She nods instantly. “Okay.”
Another strike of lightning crashes overhead, illuminating the trees on both sides of the road and something moves in the glow.
My body locks.
“What was that?” Kelly gasps.
I hit the brakes so hard we both jerk forward, seatbelts snapping tight. The truck fishtails briefly before gripping the pavement again.
“Stay in the truck,” I order, already reaching for my gun.
Her voice trembles. “Riot!”
“Kelly,” I snap, turning to face her, “if something happens out there, I need you low, I need you quiet, and I need you still. You move when I say. Not before.”
Her lower lip trembles.
But she nods. “Okay.”
I step out into the rain.
And the world goes cold.
The storm is deafening a roar of water slamming into gravel, wind ripping through the trees. My boots splash into mud as I circle the truck, gun raised.
Lightning cracks again.
The roadside ditch flashes into view—And a figure bolts into the woods.
“HEY!” I roar, taking off after them.
Branches whip across my arms. My boots sink into mud, pulling and sliding. Rain blinds me, but I keep running, chasing the shadow darting between trees.
He’s fast. Trained-fast.
He knows the terrain, moving quiet as a ghost even with the storm burying his tracks.
I push harder.
He slips down a slope and disappears behind a deadfall. By the time I scramble after him, he’s gone swallowed by the dark.
A growl rips from my chest, primal and vicious.
“Come back!” I shout into the storm. “You wanted me? COME FUCKING GET ME!”
Nothing answers.
Just thunder.
Just rain.
Just my own pulse pounding in my skull.
I turn back toward the truck breath heaving, soaked to the bone and see Kelly through the fogged-up window.
Her face is pale. Her eyes wide. Her hand pressed to the glass like she can anchor me from inside the cab.
My legs move on instinct.
I wrench open the door and climb inside. Her hands reach for me immediately.
“Are you hurt?” she breathes out.
“No.”
She grabs the front of my jacket and pulls me toward her— Not to kiss me. Not to cling.
But because she needs to check, needs to see with her own eyes that I’m okay.
Storm water drips off me onto her sleeves.
Her fingers shake. “Riot, I thought.”
“I know,” I murmur, voice low and gravel rough. “I know, sunshine.”
At the nickname, she lets out a tiny sound a soft, broken exhale that hits me harder than any punch I’ve taken.
“You can’t run into the dark like that,” she whispers.
“Like hell I can’t,” I mutter. “If someone’s hunting us, I’m not waiting for them to get brave.”
Her voice cracks. “But if something happened to you.”
I press a hand to her cheek, forcing her eyes to meet mine.
“Kelly. Listen to me.”
She swallows.
“You will not lose me,” I promise, slow and deliberate. “You hear me? Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever.”
Her eyes glisten in the dim truck cab light.
“You can’t promise that,” she whispers.
I lean closer, close enough that our foreheads nearly touch.
“I just did.”
Her breath shudders out.
For a moment, we just sit there, my forehead now on hers, storm raging around us, our breaths mingling in the dark cab, both of us clenched tight with adrenaline and fear.
Then I force myself to pull away before I forget all the reasons I shouldn’t kiss her senseless while she’s shaking.
“We’re leaving,” I mutter, shifting into gear.
The truck lurches forward.
“Where?” she asks, voice unsteady.
“A place even the Kings keep off books.”
She frowns. “Why didn’t we go there first?”
“Because I didn’t think they’d be stupid enough to follow us this deep.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m not taking chances.”
She nods and leans back, still breathing harder than normal. Her hands are closed in fists on her lap, little tremors running through her fingers.
Without thinking, I reach over and cover one with mine.
It’s not romantic. It’s not calculated.
It’s instinct.
Her fingers open, sliding between mine without hesitation.
My throat tightens.
She whispers, “I don’t want to be scared. Not of the dark. Not of forgetting. Not of who’s out there.”
“You got every right to be scared,” I say quietly. “But you’re not facing any of this alone.”
Her grip tightens. “I know.”
I force myself to look away from her, because the way she’s looking at me right now—Like she’s already halfway in love with me again and doesn’t know it—It’s too much.
We drive another ten minutes before turning down a dirt path almost invisible in the storm.
Branches scrape the sides of the truck. Mud splashes the wheels. The road disappears entirely for a moment, but I keep going until a dark mound of earth rises ahead.
Kelly’s brows knit. “This is a hill.”
“It’s a gate,” I correct.
I stop the truck, step out, and hit a latch hidden beneath a rock. The ground shifts with a groaning hum, revealing a steel-reinforced garage door.
Kelly’s eyes widen. “What is this?”
“Somewhere safe,” I answer. “Safer than anywhere else.”
Once we’re inside the underground garage and the door seals behind us, the sudden quiet is shocking. No rain. No thunder. Only the low hum of generators.
Kelly looks around concrete walls, steel beams, pallets of supplies, two bikes tarped in the corner.
Then she looks at me.
Really looks.
“You’re shaking,” she whispers.
I freeze.
I didn’t notice it, but she’s right. My hands are trembling slightly. The adrenaline crash. The fear spike. The sight of her face when she thought something might’ve happened to me.
I try to shove it down, hide it, bury it.
But she steps closer.
Then closer.
Then she places both palms flat on my chest.
Warm. Soft. Steady.
“Ledger,” she whispers, “it’s okay to be scared too.”
I close my eyes, jaw clenching.
“You almost lost me,” she says softly, “and I almost lost you.”
“You didn’t,” I choke out. “You won’t.”
“But that’s why you’re shaking,” she says gently. “Because it was close.”
I open my eyes.
Her face is inches from mine.
Her breath warm on my skin.
Her voice trembling with truth.
“You matter to me,” she says quietly, fiercely and it knocks the wind out of me. “And I matter to you.”
Every part of me wants to grab her and kiss her until she remembers everything.
Every part of me wants to hold her until the shaking stops.
Every part of me wants to hide her from the world until it earns the right to get close to her again.
But I can’t lose control.
Not now.
Not when danger is breathing down our necks.
Not when she’s still remembering.
“Kelly,” I rasp, “you can’t say things like that right now.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll believe you.” My voice breaks. “And I can’t afford to believe anything tonight.”
Her breath catches. She lifts a hand and touches my jaw, slow, delicate, careful, like she’s done it a hundred times before.
And maybe she has. I just didn’t pay attention because I was too busy denying what we have.
“Ledger Masters,” she whispers, “I’m already choosing you.”
My heart stops.
For a split second, the storm, the danger, the underground hideout it all fades.
Then my phone vibrates. We both jump. I check the screen.
Nitro.
Got a hit on the guy in the trees. Sending location now. Might be connected to Bratok’s last lieutenant.
My vision tunnels.
My breathing slows.
My rage sharpens.
Kelly grabs my wrist. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” I say quietly, “we’re done running.”
She pales. “Riot.”
I step close, closer than before, and lower my voice to a promise.
“They came for you once. They got you. The keep coming for you to get me. They won’t get a second chance to have you again.”
Her eyes widen. “What are you going to do?”
I cup her cheek.
“Whatever it takes.”
Her breath shudders not in fear, but something deeper.
“Don’t go,” she whispers.
“I’m not leaving,” I promise. “But someone’s gotta bleed before sunrise, sunshine.”
She closes her eyes.
When she opens them again, the fear is still there but so is something else.
Trust.
Even without her memories, she trusts me with everything she has left.
And that?
That terrifies me more than the men hunting us.
Because now I know with bone-deep certainty if I lose her again,
there won’t be enough of me left to bury.