Chapter Thirty-Three #2
I smiled, lifted a hand, tried to play it off. “You all came to pick me up? What, did I win something?”
Maria smiled back, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Hannah’s jaw was locked tight. Mom’s hands twisted the strap of her purse so hard her fingers went pale.
The smile dropped right off my face. “Ok…what’s going on?”
They all started talking at once—Maria’s words tumbling over Mom’s, her Spanish bleeding into mom’s English:
“We didn’t know how to—”
“Es un milagro—”
“He’s alive—”
“Alive! No está muerto—”
I blinked between them, my pulse pounding in my ears. “What? Who’s alive?”
Hannah’s voice cut through, steady and sharp. “Let’s find a place to sit.”
We ended up in one of those half-dead airport restaurants, the kind that smells like stale fries and burnt coffee.
The TV above the bar was tuned to the news, but the sound was off.
They slid into a booth across from me. Hannah reached across the table and wrapped her hands around mine.
Hers were warm; mine were ice. That look in her eyes turned my stomach.
It was the same look people wore when they were about to tell you someone had died.
I swallowed hard. “Who?”
Hannah exhaled slowly. “Honey…it’s not who you think. Or what you think.” She hesitated, then said it anyway. “It’s Jackson.”
I stared at her. The name didn’t fit in my ears. It was a sound that didn’t belong here, didn’t belong anywhere.
I shook my head. “What are you talking about? What about Jackson? Did they find his…his body?”
Mom’s eyes swam, and she swayed like she was slightly drunk.
Maria leaned forward, eyes glassy. “He’s alive, Holly.”
I felt the air punch out of me. “That’s not funny.”
Mom’s voice wavered. “It’s not a joke, sweetheart. He’s home.”
I laughed, sharp and hollow. “Home? That’s impossible. I saw—”
The words jammed in my throat. The funeral. The flag. The sound of rifles and Dalton’s broken voice reading his brother’s eulogy.
Maria reached for my arm, tears slipping free. “They found him. He made it out. He’s alive.”
Alive. I looked at Hannah for confirmation, and she gave me a watery smile before nodding.
The words didn’t land; they just spun around my head until everything started to tilt. My chair scraped back. The sound of it felt miles away. The whole restaurant blurred. I couldn’t breathe. The air was too thin.
Maria was crying openly now, voice rising. Hannah was suddenly beside me, one arm around my shoulders, steering me out of the booth. “Come on, baby. Breathe.”
I tried, but the breath came jagged and shallow.
I wasn’t sure if I was moving or if she was just dragging me.
The lights smeared into streaks, the hum of the crowd turning into a roar in my ears.
Someone bumped into me. Someone apologized.
My body didn’t react. My brain was locked between he’s dead and he’s alive, and neither version made sense.
By the time we made it to the car, I didn’t remember crossing the parking lot.
Maria opened the passenger door, her voice thick and shaking. “He’s at the clubhouse. You want to go there or…?”
I nodded because my mouth wouldn’t work. Maria didn’t ask for clarification; she understood. I got in, buckled my seatbelt, and stared out the window like I was watching someone else’s life roll by.
The car started. The world moved. I didn’t.
The hum of the tires filled the silence, steady and relentless.
Maria sniffled softly beside me, her hand on mine where it rested rigid on my knee.
Hannah’s hands were tight on the wheel and Mom stole glances at me from where she sat in the passenger seat.
I pressed my palms to my knees to stop them from shaking. It didn’t work.
Finally, Mom spoke, her voice quiet and careful. “He looks different. Thinner. Hurt. But he’s alive, Holly. You’ll see.”
Alive.
I wanted to believe it. I wanted to let that word be real. But my body remembered too much—the folded flag, the empty bed, the echo of his voice in my head long after it was gone.
I turned toward the window. The city blurred into streaks of gold and rain alight. My reflection looked older, harder. The kind of woman who’d learned to keep going even when it hurt. Maria’s warm, soft hand stayed on mine and her fingers brushed the back of my hand.
We drove in silence. The city gave way to fields, fields to pine woods, and soon the familiar backroads unfurled like old scars. The smell of damp earth crept in through the cracked window.
Every mile closer made it harder to breathe.
I pressed my forehead against the glass, feeling the vibration of the road hum through my skull.
When the first flicker of the Steel Saints MC neon sign appeared through the trees, my pulse went wild.
Hannah slowed the car as the gravel lot opened up before us.
The roll-up garage door stood wide, light spilling onto the dirt like a beacon.
Dalton’s truck. Maria’s minivan. A neat line of bikes glinting under the floodlight.
I stared at them, frozen. It looked like any other night.
Like nothing monumental waited inside. Hannah parked and killed the engine.
The sudden silence roared in my ears. Mom turned in her seat, eyes soft and steady.
“Take your time, honey. He’s just through there. ”
Maria got out first, walking around to open my door. Cool night air rushed in, beckoning me out of the car but I couldn’t move. They waited patiently for me. My mom and Hannah shared a look, and Maria and I shared a long look. The kind of look between friends that didn’t need words.
Ok,” I whispered. “Ok.”
I stepped out. My heels clicked on gravel, quick and uneven. Each sound from inside, laughter, the clang of tools, Dalton’s unmistakable voice, felt like an ache I couldn’t name. Dalton’s laugh was different. I hadn’t heard him sound like that in a very long time.
I followed the voices toward the garage, one breath at a time. The light grew brighter, spilling out onto the lot.
Through the open door, I saw a group of Saints huddled in the open bay. People I knew by name. People who turned to me and stepped back from a central figure. Tall. Thin. Leaning on a cane.
My breath stopped.
The shape was all wrong and exactly right.
He turned at the sound of my footsteps.
The world narrowed to him.
And then—
Our eyes locked.
And the world stopped.
No breath. No heartbeat. Just him.
For a split second, my brain refused to believe what my eyes were seeing.
His hair was longer, sun-bleached to sand.
His face was leaner, sharper around the edges, with a beard that didn’t quite hide the hollows beneath his cheekbones.
There was a scar slicing through his eyebrow I didn’t remember.
He leaned heavily on the cane, like it was the only thing tethering him to the floor.
But his eyes—God, his eyes were the same. Gray and wild and so damn alive.
My knees went weak. The sound that ripped out of me wasn’t a word—it was raw, broken air.
He moved first, or maybe I did. It didn’t matter.
He stumbled forward, half limping, half falling, and I was already running, fast enough that my shoes skidded on the concrete.
We collided in the middle of the room, the force of it nearly knocking him off balance. His arms came around me—tight, desperate, shaking. I clutched the back of his shirt, my fingers curling into the thin fabric like if I let go, he’d vanish.
He smelled so different but underneath the scent of somewhere far away, of too much pain, was a smell that frequented my dreams. Pine. Smoke. Home.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Over and over. The words cracked with every breath. “I’m so sorry, Malibu. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt it—hot tears sliding down my face, soaking into his shoulder.
I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop. Then I pulled back, just enough to see him.
To really see him. Tears blurred everything, but I forced my eyes to focus, to memorize every scar, every line, every impossible detail of him standing there in front of me.
His hands came up, rough and calloused, cupping my face so gently it broke me all over again. His thumbs brushed tears from my cheeks like he could wipe away the time we had lost.
My breath came out in ragged pieces. “Please tell me this is real,” I managed. “Please, Jackson. Please tell me this isn’t another dream.”
His forehead rested against mine, breath hitching. “I’m here,” he rasped. “I swear to God, Malibu, I’m here.”
And just like that, the floor came out from under me.
I sobbed—ugly, shaking, loud—and he held on tighter. He was crying too; I could feel it in the tremor of his chest, the uneven way he breathed.
Around us, the crowd dispersed. A firm word from Hannah had everyone scurrying to the kitchen. But none of it mattered. I paid them no mind. It was just us. Me and him.
My fingers threaded through the hair at the back of his neck, the texture grounding me. He trembled against me, one hand clutching the back of my jacket like he couldn’t believe I was real either.
He pulled back again, just enough to look at me. His voice cracked. “You cut your hair.”
I laughed, or maybe it came out more like a gasp. “You grew a beard.”
His lips quirked—barely. “It’s terrible, isn’t it?”
“Awful,” I said, and the sound that escaped me was half a sob, half a laugh.
Then I kissed him.
It wasn’t graceful or cinematic. It was frantic and messy and too hard.
The kind of kiss that didn’t know whether to beg or to blame.
He caught my face between his palms like he couldn’t decide if he should pull me closer or apologize again.
But I felt the moment he gave in. Sitting there on the concrete floor, he wrapped one arm around me as he pulled me closer.
When I opened to him, he groaned and slipped a hand under the bottom of my shirt, his rough palm on the small of my back and I whimpered, desperate for this to be real. Not wanting to wake up if it wasn’t.
When we finally broke apart, my whole body was shaking. I pressed my forehead to his chest and listened to the wild rhythm of his heartbeat.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” I whispered.
His breath hitched above me. “Wasn’t part of the plan.”
I pulled back, just enough to look up at him again. “You’re really here.”
He nodded. His jaw trembled when he said it. “I’m home.”
That word cracked something deep in me—something I didn’t even realize I’d been holding together.
I didn’t know how long we sat like that, or how many tears I shed into the front of his shirt. All I knew was the feel of his arms around me, the weight of his body against mine, the sound of his uneven breathing and the smell of the man I’d already mourned once.
I’d thought seeing him would bring relief, joy, closure. But it didn’t. It just hurt. Beautiful, unbearable hurt. Because to feel him meant remembering what it was like to lose him.
He pressed a kiss to my forehead, soft and lingering. “You ok?”
I shook my head, laughing through the tears. “Not even close.”
He smiled—small, crooked, so heartbreakingly him. “Me neither.”
I leaned into him again, closing my eyes. For the first time in months, I let myself believe.