Epilogue #2
Zay’s quiet. Then he lets out a low laugh and pulls a pack of gum from his pocket, sliding a piece between his teeth. “They didn’t teach you loyalty across the pond?” he mocks. “Figures. You Brits fold like wet paper the second it gets personal.”
I stare him down, blood thudding behind my eyes.
He doesn’t get it. None of them do. I didn’t just lose my sister.
I lost the one person who made this life feel bearable.
The one who kept me tethered when everything else was chaos.
Without her, it’s like the world lost its sound, its color, its shape.
Like I’m walking through smoke and glass, and every breath cuts going down.
I can’t do this anymore. I can’t sit at Marcus’s table, call him brother, pretend I don’t see her blood on his hands. If I stay a Raider, I’m going to kill him—maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. And I won’t regret it.
But if I try and fail? He’ll make me wish I was dead. Marcus King doesn’t just bury traitors—he makes them suffer, that's what the Kings do, perpetuate suffering. And with every club in Texas under his thumb, there’d be nowhere to run.
And while I am from the United Kingdom. I can’t go back to Bristol. My father would string me up by the throat the minute he heard I was back on British land.
So yeah—maybe the only future I’ve got is far from here. A shitty little farm in the middle of Montana. A place with silence and sky and no fucking ghosts. Somewhere Kelly would’ve wanted to grow old. Somewhere I can try to remember what peace feels like.
I swallow roughly. “Is this why Marcus made you come out here with me?”
Isaiah isn’t an enemy but he sure as hell isn’t my friend, and he nods turning to look at me with his black eyes. “I always said you were too smart to be a grunt, Lan.”
I snort, a nod looking over his body, knowing that Isaiah’s favorite pistol is somewhere on him. “So what’s the plan Zay?”
He takes a step forward, his eyes glittering with his signature feral need. “Well,” he says, voice smooth, almost playful, “I take you back to the house, and we tell Marcus you want to leave.”
I blink. “That easy?”
He chuckles—low, humorless. “Of course not. You gotta make it past the beating.”
“The what—”
His fist slams into the side of my jaw before I even register him moving. White-hot pain explodes through my head. The world tilts sideways.
I stagger back, tasting blood. “Are you serious—”
Another hit. This one drops me. My knees slam the dirt, the field spinning around me.
“You don’t just quit the Raiders,” Isaiah mutters, standing over me now. His voice sounds far away, distorted. “You get beat out. Or buried out.”
I try to push up, spit thick with iron. “You’re out of your goddamn—”
Blackness cracks through my vision as his boot connects with my ribs.
“Welcome to the exit interview, brother.”
Then nothing.
Jasmine
Six Months Later
“Ma’am, it’s 9:58 p.m. We close in two minutes, and no—we are not selling breakfast,” I deadpan, barely glancing up as I punch the register with just enough force to keep myself awake.
Two more minutes and I’m free. Free from the fluorescent lights, the smell of burnt fryer oil, and the fake smiles carved into my cheeks like permanent scars.
“But your website says All Day Breakfast, and I—” she starts, all high-pitched indignation and entitled breathlessness.
I watch the clock tick to 9:59 like it’s crawling through molasses.
I lean back against the grease-stained wall and let my head thunk against it.
Hard. Today was hell. This week was worse.
And the last two goddamn years? A spiral straight into oblivion since Willow disappeared.
I might as well just call it, the greatness of high school is long gone and adulthood has been a never ending shit show of disappointment.
I had an early acceptance to MIT, got waitlisted at Princeton, and Yale let me in with a whopping $800 scholarship—just enough to cover textbooks, maybe.
NYU flat-out rejected me. And when the rest of the scholarship letters came pouring in, they all said the same thing: You are brilliant.
Your story is sad, but no. Or worse—rejections from every loan company I could find.
And the few that didn’t say no outright came back with a hollow maybe: With a cosigner, perhaps.
I was up at 3 a.m. most nights, digging through sketchy loan sites and refreshing my inbox like it owed me money.
Eventually, the rejections stopped surprising me.
They just started stacking—like proof I was never meant to get out.
So I gave up on college. I gave up on the dream I’d built my whole life around.
And I fell, fast, into the life I always feared: working dead-end shifts, watching the clock more than my future, stuck in the same town that never stops sucking the life out of me.
“Well, the service here is ridiculous!” The woman shrieks over the intercom and I jump up off the wall, realizing that I thankfully spaced out for most of her rant.
My eyes snap up to the clock, and I exhale like I’ve been holding my breath all day. “Ma’am, it is officially 10:02. We are now closed. Have a good night!” I chirp, already halfway checked out.
“I want to speak to your manager!” she shrieks, her voice so shrill and aggressive it rattles through my headset like feedback.
I wince, rip the earpiece out of my ear, and toss the mic on the windowsill like it’s burning me.
Rolling my eyes, I slide across the tile floor to where Derek is leaning against the back counter, sorting receipts.
“Yo, D-man. We got a screamer at the drive-thru,” I whistle, tugging off the polyester hat that’s been itching my scalp for the past seven hours straight.
I run my fingers through my hair—shoulder-length blonde waves with streaks of red dye that’ve faded to a soft, stubborn pink.
The left side of my head is shaved down to a buzz, cool against my fingertips, a contrast to the mess of waves that tumble down the right.
Derek glances up, unbothered. He’s only three years older than me, give or take, and lives five trailers down from mine in Mason Park.
He’s got the build of a guy who could have played linebacker or maybe enlisted—buzzcut, square jaw, and that too-tight shirt that hints at military discipline.
But he’s never seen combat unless you count the two years he spent in juvie for a fight that turned bad.
People see the tattoos, the scowl, the low growl of his voice and assume he’s a walking warning sign. But Derek? He’s the biggest softie I know. Gruff, yeah—but solid. Loyal. And in a town that’s built to swallow people like us whole, he’s the only person other than Willow who really gets me.
“Jaz, I am not cleaning up your mess again!” He grumps, tapping the edges of the receipt against the counter.
I shrug, swiping a paper bag off of the counter. “Chill, I told her we’re closed. That’s not a mess—it’s closure.”
Right then, the sharp bang-bang-bang of the drive-thru window echoes through the restaurant, followed by a furious shriek: “I will not be ignored!”
I shoot Derek a look and smirk. “Okay, maybe she’s not quite ready for closure.”
He groans, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Jasmine...”
“What?” I grin, grabbing a fry from the warmer. “You know she’ll leave eventually. Or combust. Either way, not our problem. We are closed.”
“You are the bane of my existence,” he huffs, dragging his large frame over to the window lazily as if his size would scare the woman off before he would have to deal with her.
“You love me!” I sing, grabbing a paper bag and stuffing it with two cheeseburgers and a shit ton of fries.
“No stealing!” he barks without turning around.
“This isn’t stealing. All this goes in the trash anyway. I’m just helping the environment. Think of me as the human garbage disposal.” I shrug, hopping over the counter and heading for the front doors.
“Also, you got clean-up, right?”
“Jasmine—”
“Thanks, bye!” I sing over my shoulder, slipping out the front door.
The thick, humid air slams into my chest the second I step outside. I almost shrink into the doorframe, debating whether it’s even worth walking through air that feels like soup.
I dig into my pocket, pulling out my cracked phone and the now slightly-squashed bag of stolen food. I balance both awkwardly as I make my way through the parking lot, the street lamps buzzing overhead like drunk flies. I tap Willow’s name before I can talk myself out of it—like muscle memory.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Then that too-familiar ring and the sound that always hits too hard: Willow’s voice, bright and sing-song:
“Hey, you’ve reached Willow! Can’t chat now, but will chat later! Leave a message.”
I freeze for a second, thumb hovering over the screen. I shouldn’t. But my mouth opens anyway.
“Hey, Will,” I say, my voice too small at first. I clear my throat, walking slower now. “So today sucked. Shocker, right?”
I step off the curb and start hopping over the railroad tracks, the pavement radiating heat even at night.
“I had some lady try to fight me over pancakes at ten o’clock at night.
Screamed like I insulted her entire bloodline.
Like lady, make the pancakes at home. Ours suck anyway!
” I laugh, but it’s thin. Hollow. My chest tightens as I make it to the sidewalk, the buzzing of insects filling in the silence.
“I keep thinking you’ll answer one of these days,” I say softly. “You’ll pick up and ask if I made it home safe. You’ll call me an idiot for walking alone again. You’ll roll your eyes, and I’ll pretend not to care that you worry about me.”
The voicemail timer is ticking. I know it’s almost up. I can feel the words pressing behind my teeth.
“I don’t care if you’re mad, or if you left for some reason I’m too stupid to get... I just—.”
Click.