Brittany
The first night back in Hell, Kentucky, I don’t sleep.
I lie on my side in Lottie’s basement room, staring at the little window near the ceiling where moonlight slips in like it’s nosy, and I can hear the house settling around me.
Pipes tick. Floorboards pop. Mason’s soft toddler snore drifts down through the vents like a reminder that real life keeps going even when yours cracks in half.
I keep waiting to hear motorcycles, boots on the porch or a police door slam, like the whole town is going to show up in the dark with a rope and a story they already believe.
Every time I close my eyes, I see Bethany’s face right before it happened. Not screaming. Not wild. Just calm. Like she’d already decided the ending, and I was the last page she needed to tear out.
I remember her fingers in my hair, the pain bright and mean, her grip strong enough to drag my head back and make my eyes water.
I remember the slap, hot and sharp, the way it turned the whole world into a bright white ring for a second.
I remember the words she used like they were tools, like she’d practiced them in the mirror until they came out smooth.
Trailer trash. Backwoods whore. Gold digger.
I remember the board in my hands because my body moved before my brain could be polite.
Because something in me finally snapped from being watched and whispered about and threatened in half-smiles.
I remember the sickening thud when it connected and the way she went down, not dramatic, not flailing, just a hard stop like somebody turned her off.
Then I remember kneeling beside her, shaking so hard my teeth clicked, my hand hovering over her mouth to feel breath because I didn’t know what else to do.
I remember the relief that hit me when she exhaled, and the nausea that followed it, because relief shouldn’t exist in a moment like that.
I remember the blood at her hairline and how my stomach rolled when I realized it was real blood, not something you can shrug off with a laugh.
I ran for help.
I did the right thing. I did what a decent person does.
And when I came back, she was gone.
Now there’s a new kind of quiet in town, the kind that ain’t peace. It’s that waiting hush right before a storm rips through and takes what it wants. It feels like everybody in Hell is holding their breath at once and listening for the same thing.
A body. A confession. A scapegoat.
At dawn, the first rumor comes through the basement door before my feet even hit the floor. Lottie is on the phone upstairs, voice low but tense, and I hear my name in the spaces between her words like it’s being dragged over gravel.
“No, she didn’t,” Lottie snaps, sharp enough to cut. “No. She’s with me. Yes, I know what folks are saying. Folks can say whatever the hell they want.”
There’s a pause, and her voice goes colder, the way it does when she’s about to turn into a problem no one wants.
“Tell them if they come to my house running their mouths, they better bring a toothbrush, because they’ll be picking teeth up off my porch.”
I stand in the doorway in an old T-shirt and socks, hair a mess, stomach hollow like I forgot how to eat. Lottie turns when she sees me and her expression softens, but it’s the kind of soft that packs a gun.
“You want coffee?” she asks, like offering caffeine can fix the fact that I swung a board at the Vice President’s wife and now nobody can find her.
My throat tightens. “What are they saying?”
Lottie turns her head away. She pours coffee into a mug with hands that don’t shake, because Lottie is the kind of woman who can hold steady in a hurricane.
“They’re saying she ran,” she replies. “They’re saying she fell in. They’re saying the lake did what lakes do.”
“And?” I push, because my chest is squeezing like it’s trying to crush my heart into something smaller.
Lottie meets my eyes. “And they’re saying you did it.”
The words don’t hit like a slap. They hit like a hand around my throat. My vision blurs for a second, not from tears, just from the pressure of it. The weight of a whole town deciding you’re guilty because it’s easier than admitting something else might be stalking them.
I set my palm on the counter to steady myself. “I didn’t.”
“I know,” Lottie says immediately, fierce. “I know you didn’t.”
But the world doesn’t care what’s true. Hell cares what’s easy.
I take the mug even though I don’t want it. My hands tremble around the heat. “Are the cops coming?”
“Not here,” she says, then her mouth twists like she hates that she can’t promise it. “Not yet. They’re sniffing around the lake. Taking statements. Asking questions. They’ll circle this way eventually.”
I stare into the coffee like maybe the dark can swallow me whole and I won’t have to answer anything. “Oaks said…”
Lottie’s eyebrows lift. “He said what.”
“He told me not to talk,” I whisper. “He said it like he was buying time.”
Lottie’s eyes flick toward the living room window, toward the road like she expects a cruiser to roll by. “He is,” she says. “That’s what he does. He moves pieces around so the board doesn’t light on fire.”
The mention of him makes my chest ache in a way that doesn’t have anything to do with bruises.
Oaks brought me back to Hell on the back of his bike like I weighed nothing and mattered too much, and he didn’t touch me when we got here.
No kiss. No hand on my lower back. No quiet word that meant anything.
He dropped me off like an errand he couldn’t afford to do wrong.
I can’t decide if that was restraint or rejection.
I lift my gaze. “Where is he?”
Lottie’s mouth pulls tight. “At the lake. With Legend. With Royal. With whatever mess this is turning into.”
Of course he is.
Because even when the world is swallowing me, Oaks is still a man with a patch and responsibilities and a club that comes before anyone’s feelings. That’s what everyone keeps trying to tell me, like if they say it enough I’ll stop wanting him.
I shouldn’t want him at all.
I didn’t ask to want a married biker who swears like a sin and looks at me like I’m trouble he can’t stop walking toward. I didn’t ask for the way he warned me, the way he watched the road behind me, the way he made my name sound like a promise and a threat all at once.
But my body doesn’t care what I asked for. My heart doesn’t either.
In a week, I hear the bikers are back from the clubhouse.
I can’t sit still. I fold laundry I don’t own.
I wipe counters that are already clean. I play blocks with Mason until my throat burns from forcing my voice to sound normal.
Every time a car slows outside, my stomach drops like it’s trying to leave my body.
When Lottie finally leaves to take Mason to Holler for a bit, because the clubhouse is crawling with tension and she wants to know what’s being said inside those walls, I’m alone in her kitchen with nothing but my thoughts and the buzz of my phone.
I’ve got texts from Elijah.
Where are you? Are you okay? Please call me.
I don’t answer. I can’t decide if the fact that he’s checking on me is sweet or suspicious, because my brain is poisoned by fear now. I hate that. I hate that Hell has turned every kind gesture into a potential trap.
A knock hits the front door, hard enough to make me flinch.
I stand there for a second, heart pounding, listening. Another knock, slower, like whoever’s out there knows I’m inside.
I walk to the door and look through the peephole.
Oaks.
My breath catches so hard it hurts.
He ain’t in his cut. He’s in jeans and a dark shirt, sleeves pushed up, inked forearms tense like he’s been clenching his fists for hours. His hair is still damp like he showered. But he looks like he slept even less than I did.
I unlock the door before my pride can argue.
He steps inside and the whole kitchen feels smaller, like the walls are listening. His gaze sweeps over me fast, like he’s checking for bruises he didn’t cause. Then his eyes land on my face and stay there.
“You eat?” he asks.
The question is so simple it almost breaks me.
“No,” I admit, voice rough.
“Lottie here?”
“She went to the clubhouse to see Holler,” I say, and then the words tumble out because I can’t stop them. “Are they looking for her? Are they saying she fell in? Are the cops…”
“Breathe,” he cuts in, low. Not soft. Controlled.
I try. My lungs don’t listen.
Oaks shifts closer, not touching, but near enough I can smell him, his soap and smoke from the clubhouse. His eyes don’t soften, but something in them steadies like a hand pressed to the back of my neck.
“They’re searching,” he says. “They haven’t found her.”
My throat closes. “They think I killed her.”
His mouth goes hard. “They think a lota shit.”
“That ain’t a no,” I whisper.
His eyes flash, and for a second I see the animal in him, the part that would bite a rumor in half if it could. But he doesn’t do that. He takes a breath like he’s swallowing something.
“I know what happened,” he says. “I know you didn’t plan it. I know you ran for help.”
I cling to that like a life raft. “Then you believe me.”
He holds my gaze too long.
And in that fraction of a pause, I feel it. The smallest shift. Not accusation. Not disbelief.
Doubt’s quieter than that. Doubt is a question you don’t want to ask but can’t stop turning over in your head because the stakes are too high.
I swallow hard. “Ask it.”
His brow furrows. “What?”
“The question,” I say, voice shaking. “Ask me. I can see it in your face.”
Oaks’s eyes drop to the counter like he hates what he’s about to do.
“How long was she alone,” he asks finally, voice low, “between you running and you coming back.”
The room tilts. My stomach drops like I’m back on that collapsing shoreline, falling before I can catch myself.
“I don’t know,” I choke out. “A few minutes. Maybe ten.”
He nods once, like he’s filing it away, like he’s building a timeline in his head.