Chapter 7
I sink deeper into this broken-down couch like it's trying to claim me.
The springs beneath me groan with every tiny shift of my weight—a confession of age and overuse.
This isn't the kind of furniture that gets replaced when it wears out.
It's the kind that wears in, collecting stories in its stains.
Legion's clothes hang off me like a child playing dress-up. His shirt smells like him—motor oil, and soap, and something darker underneath. My fingertips brush against a tear in the seam, tracing it like braille. The fabric's worn thin from years of washing.
My mouth is so dry and my tongue isn't working right. Whatever Marcus gave me has left my throat parched as prairie dirt. I'd kill for a water, but I’m not gonna ask. Can't speak. Not here, where every word feels like it might be priced differently than what I'm used to.
The air hangs thick around me—cigarettes, and whiskey, and male sweat. Like breathing through a filter of secrets and testosterone. Smoke drifts in lazy circles beneath the dim lights, never quite finding its way out.
Like me.
A bead of sweat slides down my neck, disappearing into the collar of Legion's shirt. I feel… empty. Like someone scooped out everything inside me that was important and left just enough behind to keep breathing.
Three days tied to that bed with Marcus hovering over me, feeding me drugs, and lies, and cherry pie.
I don't know that I'll get over this. I can't see a way.
And while all these thoughts circle me like the smoke, the clubhouse breathes around me. Men move through doorways on the far side of the room, their boots heavy on the floor. Their eyes slide over me—curious, suspicious, calculating—before moving on.
I'm cargo. Something Legion dragged in bleeding.
A complication.
The lights buzz overhead, not bright enough to chase away the shadows in the corners, just enough to make sure nobody trips over the furniture. Just enough to see the blood dried on my wrists where the zip ties cut in.
I bring my knees up to my chest, hugging myself. Making myself smaller. I feel like I'm in the wolf's den. Sitting here in borrowed clothes, with no shoes, no phone, and no idea what happens next.
The room is loud in a silent way.
Men shuffle cards at a table in the corner, the snap of worn paper against wood the only real sound. Someone coughs. Ice clinks in a glass. A chair scrapes. But it's the quiet that presses in on me—the weight of all the words they aren't saying.
No one talks directly to me, but they're all looking.
Quick glances, sidelong stares, eyes that measure and dismiss in the same breath.
A man with a gray beard scratches his neck and mutters something to his neighbor.
They both turn to study me like I'm an exotic animal that wandered into their territory.
Another leans against the bar, whiskey in hand, watching me over the rim of his glass.
His gaze doesn't waver even when I catch him.
Leather cuts, patched vests, scarred knuckles, tattoos that don't mean art—they mean warning.
These are not my people.
They all look hungry.
Not the kind of hunger that gets satisfied with food. It's deeper, older—the hunger of men who've spent their lives taking what they need because nobody ever gave them anything.
These men don't believe in filters or appearances. They've stripped life down to its bones—loyalty, territory, survival. The neon beer signs and tattered pool table are just dressing on something much more primal. It hums in the air like electricity before a storm.
I don't belong here.
Behind the bar stands a glass-fronted case filled with liquor bottles—the good stuff, I'm guessing—secured with a padlock that's hanging half-open. Like they can't decide if they're protecting it from outsiders or each other.
Overhead, a ceiling fan turns with a slow, rhythm. It clacks once every revolution, the sound becoming a metronome to my scattered thoughts. Marking time in a place where minutes disappear.
I shift my attention to the clubhouse walls, desperate for something to focus on besides the men watching me.
They’re a chaotic collage—photographs, plaques, and club memorabilia stacked like sedimentary layers of history.
Everything's coated in a film of dust and neglect, like these memories aren't meant to be polished, just preserved in their original grit.
The photographs draw me in—finally something I understand. Pictures. Documentation. Evidence. My mother's obsession, my childhood prison, my professional language.
These aren't studio portraits with perfect lighting.
They're snapshots of club parties, ceremonies, initiations.
Men with arms thrown over each other's shoulders, standing before motorcycles or around fires, their eyes dead-serious beneath the brims of caps or bandanas.
Not a single smile among them. Not even a hint.
This isn't the kind of family that takes Christmas card photos or gathers for professional portraits at JCPenney. This is the kind that buries its secrets six feet under and drinks until the memories blur around the edges. The kind that measures loyalty in scars and silence.
The images feel loud somehow. Gritty. Greasy. Like a prayer said backward. They don't invite you in—they dare you to look away.
I search the faces, wondering if Legion is in any of these frames. Wondering what stories these walls would tell if they could speak. What confessions they've absorbed from drunken mouths at three in the morning.
I think about the Book of Legion hidden in my safe room—my mother's obsessive documentation of a boy growing into a man. What would a Book of Badlands look like? Would it be bound in leather like my mother's albums, or would it be scattered across these walls, these tables, these scarred bodies?
The difference between my world and this one hits me like a slap. In my photos, everything is staged—the lighting perfect, the pose practiced, the story controlled.
Here, the images are raw. Real.
They don't try to be anything other than what they are.
Moments captured between blood and brotherhood.
I close my eyes and pray to a God I don't think is listening anymore. Not for salvation. Just for this moment to end. For my mind to stop whirling like creek water over stones. For the club walls to stop closing in.
My throat clicks when I swallow. I hug myself. Wrapping my arms around my pulled-up legs and rest my chin on my knees.
I don’t feel right. I don’t feel like me.
Every sound in this place hits too hard. Pool balls cracking together. Whiskey bottles clinking. Low voices murmuring things I can't quite catch. Men shifting in leather cuts that creak like old saddles. The building itself seems to breathe—exhaling cigarette smoke, inhaling tension.
"Savannah..."
My name floats across the room, a whisper meant to be heard.
But I miss the rest. A woman's voice, gruff as sandpaper.
I glance up to find the source—a silver-haired woman leaning against the bar, arms crossed over her chest. She's not looking at me now, but I know she was.
Everyone is, even when they pretend not to be.
A girl walks by, whisperin’ something about my bare feet. I ignore it, turning my face away.
I can still taste cherry pie.
I will never eat cherry pie again. It's a symbol now of everything I want to forget.
I want to brush my teeth until my gums bleed. And even though Legion washed me off before we came here, I feel covered in dust and smoke. I want to scrub every inch of skin with steel wool and bleach.
I want to go home.
I want Legion.
Not just near me, not just in the same room. I want him on me, around me, holding me like a shield between my body and the world. I want his arms locked around me, his chest against my back, his breath in my hair.
I'm drowning in open air and I need his hand.
I don't know how to live in this world of outlaw bikers who all look like killers.
I need Legion, and he's gone, and I'm alone in a room full of men who see me as nothing but trouble.
The door swings open with a rush of air that cuts through the smoke.
Every head turns.
Legion walks through the threshold, his eyes lock onto mine like I'm the only thing in the world. The bruises on his face have darkened since the rescue, purple-black against his skin. There's dried blood at the corner of his mouth he didn't bother to wipe away.
He looks tense.
Whatever happened in that room, it didn't go how he planned. It wasn't victory.
When he comes towards me, the men part around him without a word, making space so he can pass.
When he reaches me, he crouches down in front of the couch. Close enough that I can smell sweat and blood on him, but he doesn't touch me. Doesn't brush my hair back or take my hand like he usually would.
He just meets my eyes, his gaze steady but haunted. "I know you don't understand my world…" He blows out a breath. "I get it. What we do here, what we've built here." He stops to swallow. "It doesn't mean anything to you, Savannah."
He lifts up his shirt, showing me the bandage over his heart.
He rips the gauze off, takes my hand, and presses my fingertips to the burned skin.
"It's everything to me. It's not more than you, Savannah.
I need you to know that. But there is no you without this place. I need you to understand that too."
I don't understand. None of this makes sense.
"We only have until dawn," he continues.
My mouth is so dry, I can barely speak. "Only have what until dawn?"
"Protection. They're gonna vote on you. Every patched member will come in tonight at some point and stay until dawn. Then we have church—not the kind you go to—and they will vote. Should Badlands shoulder responsibility for the Little Ashby Princess?"
I blink. Unable to believe he just called me that.
"Or should we cut her loose?"
I swallow again—my god, I need some fucking water. "Maybe I should just go? If I'm causing all this trouble."