Chapter 36-Bit
It all happens so fast.
I mean, really freaking fast.
One minute I’m trapped on the back of a monster’s bike, holding my breath while his laughter mixes with the sound of wind and engines.
The next, I’m locked inside a rank gas station bathroom, shaking, praying for something—anything—to happen.
Oh, who am I kidding?
I’m praying for him.
Sawyer.
The flickering fluorescent light buzzes overhead, painting everything in a sickly yellow glow.
The smell of oil and bleach makes me nauseous. I try to breathe slowly, try to be still, but my hands won’t stop trembling.
I know I’m supposed to try to save myself. It’s the 21st Century, fuck’s sake. So I force myself to stand, and I look around for a weapon—a piece of tile, a trash can, anything I can throw when he comes in for me—because I know for a fact, he’s coming in for me.
But there’s nothing, absolutely nothing I can use to help me get out of this mess. I frown, and I almost give up. But that’s when I see the toilet paper holder screwed into the side of the wall.
It’s just a thin piece of metal, but it’s something.
I reach for it, and I pull. It can’t be holding on to that piece of tile with more than half a screw.
It’s tough, though. And I cut my hand, but I try again. I whip off my sweatshirt, and I use it to get a better grip. I pull again.
Then, the doorknob rattles.
“Hey!” Roach’s voice slices through the thin metal door. “Hurry it up, girl! You takin’ a fat shit or what?”
The way he laughs after makes my stomach twist.
I was hoping he’d get bored. Or that maybe the universe would open a hole and swallow him whole.
But no such luck.
“I said, you done, girl?” he shouts.
“Almost done!” I yell, hating him and the other guys for the disgusting comments they make about women on their period, and bowel movements.
But really, I hate them just because they’re breathing. Those mean bastards don’t deserve to.
And I’m not letting them take me any farther. Not without a fight.
I squeeze my eyes shut, I squeeze the toilet paper holder tighter, and I pull with all my might.
The knob rattles.
Then I hear the unmistakable scrape of a key fitting into the lock.
Dammit.
Not enough time.
Not enough distance between me and the nightmare waiting outside.
My heart beats so loud I can barely hear the click of the bolt turning—then everything changes.
The toilet paper holder comes off the wall and I turn holding it out like a sword.
But then?
Thuds. Shouts.
A grunt. A crash.
The sound of a body hitting the ground.
And—gunfire.
I scream, drop to the floor, and I hold the stupid metal holder wrapped in my sweatshirt in front of my head as the bathroom walls vibrate with every blast.
My ears ring, my pulse a drumbeat in my throat.
It’s chaos—violent, raw, and fast.
Then, just as quickly as it started—it ends.
Silence.
All I hear is my own shaky breathing. And I smell something burning—gunpowder?
Someone bangs on the door, harder this time. I flinch, crawling backward, shaking my head.
“Get away!” I sob. “Get away from me!”
The door bursts open, metal scraping tile, and I lash out—hands flailing, waving around my pitiful weapon, tears blurring everything.
Then I hear it.
“Easy, easy,” the voice says—low, rough, familiar. “I got you, Lil Bit. I got you.”
My breath catches.
I look up—and there he is.
Sawyer.
He’s covered in dust and sweat and specks of blood, his chest heaving, eyes dark and wild with the kind of fury that could burn the world down.
But when he looks at me—just me—everything softens.
He kneels, hands trembling just a little as he reaches for my face.
“You’re hands. You’re bleeding. Fuck. Are you okay?”
For a second, I can’t speak.
The only sound that comes out of me is a broken sob before I throw myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck like if I let go, I’ll stop breathing.
“Sawyer,” I whisper, shaking. “Oh, thank God. Oh my God. You came for me.”
He pulls me tight, one arm banded around my waist, the other buried in my hair. I can feel his heartbeat—fast and strong—pounding against mine.
“I’ll always come for you,” he murmurs into my hair. “I’m sorry it took so long.”
“Hush,” I breathe, pressing my face into his neck. “You came. That’s all that matters.”
He nods once, jaw tight. “Alright. It’s gonna be alright now. Let’s get you home.”
And when he lifts me into his arms—solid, steady, safe—it feels like the whole world exhales with me.
“Don’t look,” he says as we cross the threshold.
And I don’t.
The night air hits my face as we step outside. I catch sight of the scene behind him—the broken bikers, the flashing lights of a drone overhead, Benji and Micah moving with silent, practiced precision for one instant before I squeeze my eyes shut.
I don’t want to see. I don’t need to.
Because he came for me, and he’s taking me home.
And for the first time in my life I know that home isn’t the house, or even a ranch, or the safe, quiet waiting back in Dry Creek.
Home is this—his heartbeat under my ear, his arms around me, and the soft, trembling way he says my name like it’s the only one that’s ever mattered.
We’re squeezed into the back of his SUV, the cab warm from the engine and from him.
The seatbelt presses into my hip. The leather smells like sweat and gun oil and the faint sweetness of the shampoo he wears. He’s got one arm hooked under my knees, the other around my shoulders, a human brace.
Every time I breathe, I feel him move—steady, alive, unbelievably solid.
“Hurry up, girl,” Roach had laughed earlier, an ugly sound that still crawls under my skin.
I scrub that memory away with Sawyer’s hands—callused, careful—tilting my face up so I can look at him.
“Hey, cowboy?” I whisper when he eases me down until I’m half-lying, half-sitting in the back seat.
“Yeah?”
His voice is rough from yelling and the chase and all the things night made him do.
There’s a fleck of dark on his cheek—dried blood?—I don’t care.
I want to memorize the shape of him.
I hook my thumbs under the ragged stubble at his jaw and lift his face. He flinches like he wasn’t planning on gentleness, but when his eyes find mine they’re all nighttime and thunder and something I can’t name without my chest going tight.
I swallow hard because the words have been building like pressure in my ribs. I never planned to say them first.
I never planned to say them like a woman whose world just tilted and was put back together by one brutal, steady hand. But the truth wants out.
“I thought you should know,” I say, voice small.
He tenses—jaw clenching like I stepped on something raw—so I wait, counting the beats of his heart under my palms: boom, boom, boom.
Then I say it, the whole impossible, glorious, terrifying thing.
“I love you, Sawyer. I just thought you should know.”
For a slice of a second, he doesn’t move. The lights from outside cut a bright line along his cheekbone.
I read everything in him—shock, something like relief, the iron will that never lets him lose control.
My throat tightens.
I feel stupid and brave at the same time.
He swallows. Makes a small sound.
Then he closes his eyes for a beat, as if he’s letting the words land inside him where they can’t be taken back.
When he opens them, there’s that soft, broken look I’ve seen before but never as mine.
“Goddamn, Lil Bit,” he breathes, and there’s a laugh in it, shocked and raw. “You beat me to it.”
My mouth drops open, because—what? He’s teasing me?
But then his hand slides up to cup my cheek, thumb brushing the wetness by my eye.
“Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” he says low, the edge of old menace there, but the rest of it threads through with something warmer. “And for the record? I love you, too. God help me, I do.”
I don’t have a plan for what comes next—there’s still work to do, questions to answer, things to figure out—but in this heavy, safe moment, I tuck my forehead to his and let the truth settle.
It’s not a promise of forever written in stone, but it’s a beginning, and it hums louder than the engine.
He holds me tighter, like he’s trying to make sure I can’t slip away.
Outside, the night is full of men and motives and things that can’t be fixed with a whisper.
Inside his arms, though, everything that’s broken feels like maybe it can be mended.
“I’m not going anywhere unless you tell me to,” I whisper.
“Good,” he says. “Then you’re staying put. And I’m not going anywhere either. Not without you.”