Chapter 6
SYVANNAH
The smell hits before the engines fade, bringing back painful memories. I tamp them down before I spiral. Gasoline, smoke, and blood rolls through the compound like weather, seeping through the cracks in the clubhouse walls. I know what that smell means. Something went wrong again.
I’m sitting on the couch in the common room with Peanut on my lap when the first bike pulls in.
The purr in my hands dies the second the doors open.
Tiny is the first through the doors. His face is streaked with soot and blood.
Dagger follows Tiny with a tight jaw and hard eyes.
Trigger is cursing into his comm while Torch limps toward the bar for water.
No one is laughing, and that absence tells me more than any report ever could.
One by one, they file back outside. Curiosity gets the best of me, and I follow. Capone is waiting on the porch. He doesn’t need to ask, he just listens. Every word from Trigger’s mouth is clipped, flat, and professional. The language of men who kill to survive.
I catch Tiny’s reflection in the glass. He’s standing still, staring at his hands like he doesn’t recognize them. His gloves are dark with oil or blood, I can’t tell. Neither can he.
Nadia appears beside me, whisper-soft. “Don’t go out there.”
“I’m not,” I lie.
She gives me the kind of look you learn in recovery groups. The look that says you’re lying, but I understand why.
“I’ll make coffee,” she says, already moving toward the kitchen. “That’s what we do when everything smells like war.”
I stay where I am, frozen in the doorway, watching through the glass as Capone gives orders and the others scatter to obey. Tiny doesn’t move. He’s a shadow carved out of steel.
Tiny heads to the garage and stops to pick up Peanut along the way. They disappear, and I resign myself to go back inside. I’m not in the right headspace to help anyone, let alone myself. If Tiny needs me, he knows how to find me.
When the guys come back inside, the noise starts again. Voices are loud, laughter that doesn’t reach their eyes. The usual routine of pretending the world isn’t on fire.
Tiny comes in last and brushes past me without a word. The heat from his body leaves goosebumps on my arms. His eyes scan mine for half a second, enough to see the exhaustion, guilt, and distance.
He doesn’t have to say anything because I already know. Someone died. Maybe more than one. I also know he’ll blame himself for all of them.
Instead of staying back like I did when he went to the garage, I follow him down the hall a few minutes later. He’s at the sink, scrubbing his hands like he can wash the day off. Water runs red, then brown, then clear.
“You’re bleeding,” I say.
He glances up. “Just a scratch.”
“That’s what everyone says before infection sets in.”
That earns a ghost of a smile. “You sound like Daisy.”
“She’s smarter than most of you.”
Tiny snorts. “No argument here.”
I grab a towel and reach for his hand before I can think better of it. The contact hits like an electric shock. His skin’s rough, warm, trembling under the surface. I wipe the water from his knuckles, slow and steady.
Tiny doesn’t pull away, but he doesn’t look at me either. “You shouldn’t see this.”
“I’ve seen worse.”
“Not from me.” That breaks something between us. The air feels thick, heavy, and charged.
I swallow. “It’s not your fault, you know. Whatever happened out there.”
He finally looks up. “Everything’s my fault, Syv.”
“No,” I whisper shaking my head. “Not this time.”
For a heartbeat, the world narrows to his brown, steady eyes full of storms. His breath brushes my cheek when he leans in closer. I think he’s going to kiss me, and the terrifying part is that I want him to.
But he steps back instead, grabbing the towel, drying his hands like nothing happened. “Thanks,” he says roughly. “You should get some rest.”
I nod, though rest feels impossible. “You too.”
He gives a half laugh. “Not in this lifetime.”
He leaves first, boots heavy against the floorboards, disappearing down the hall. The door to his room shuts with a low thud.
I stand there alone for a long time, the sound of dripping water the only proof the world’s still moving.
Back in my room, Peanut curls beside my pillow. I grab my paints and an old scrap of canvas. My hands still shake, but the brush steadies them. I start with the black of her fur, his cut, the way he always holds her like she’s the last soft thing in the world.
By the time I’m done, the sun’s gone, and the shadows have swallowed the room. I leave the painting outside his door before I can change my mind.
A silent thank-you. A promise. A warning. If he keeps breaking himself to protect me, one day I’ll stop him, or break with him.
By morning, the painting is gone. No note. No words. But later, when I pass Tiny’s room, the door’s cracked open just enough for me to see it leaning against his dresser, dry and safe. That’s answer enough.
For a while, the clubhouse feels calm again.
The kind of fragile quiet that sits just before the storm.
Peanut curls up on the windowsill, sun-soaked and lazy.
Nadia’s playing soft music, dancing with her son on her hip, her belly growing with their second child. It should feel normal, but it doesn’t.
When Red bursts into the main room midafternoon, calm shatters like glass.
“Los Demons weren’t done,” he says, voice hoarse. “They waited for the second crew on the way back from the docks.”
The words stop everything. Trigger’s comm cuts out halfway through his report, static and blood in his tone. Torch’s bike came in smoking. Dagger’s hands are still shaking when he walks through the door.
“Jesus Christ,” Nadia whispers. “They were supposed to be in and out.”
My chest locks tight. The room spins slowly. “Is everyone okay?”
Nadia looks at me, eyes wide, mouth working, but no sound coming out. That’s all the answer I need.
I don’t remember sitting down. I just remember the smell of gasoline, smoke, and blood. Same as before. Same as when Lattimer let me go. My stomach turns over, bile clawing up my throat. I barely make it to the bathroom before I’m sick.
The floor tiles are cool against my cheek when I sink down, shaking. I can’t breathe right. Can’t stop seeing Tiny’s face under that same smoke, broken and bloodied.
He’s fine, I tell myself. He’s fine. He has to be.
The knock on the door comes too soft to hear at first. Then louder. “Syvannah?”
Pearl. Of course.
“Go away.”
The door creaks open anyway. She slips inside, perfume so thick it chokes. She crouches down, voice syrup-sweet. “Rough morning?”
“Don’t,” I warn, but my voice cracks.
Pearl smiles, the kind that never reaches her eyes. “I know that look. I’ve had that look. You want it to stop, just for a little while.”
“I said no.”
She leans in closer, whispering, “One last hit won’t hurt, babe. You’ve earned it.”
I flinch. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I do,” she says softly, like she’s telling a secret. She sets something on the edge of the sink. A small bag. White powder glinting like it’s alive. “It’s what helps me sleep after they come back smelling like that.”
The sight of it hurts worse than the memory. I tell myself I’m strong enough to walk away. Then the shaking starts again.
Pearl folds my fingers around the bag like she’s placing something sacred in my palm, as if she’s offering salvation instead of poison. “You’ll thank me later.”
When the door clicks behind her, I stare at my reflection in the mirror. I look like a ghost. And ghosts don’t win battles, they haunt them.
The silence feels louder than gunfire. The bag’s small enough to disappear in my palm, but it feels like it weighs a ton. I stare at it. The soft, white powder inside catches the light. A lie that sparkles.
My pulse starts to throb in my throat.
I tell myself I don’t want it, that I’m stronger now, that I’ve survived worse, but the craving doesn’t care about logic or promises. It lives under the skin, in the quiet between breaths, and it knows exactly where to whisper.
One last time, Syv. Just one more time to stop shaking.
I drop the bag on the counter like it burned me. My reflection in the mirror looks wrong. Pupils too wide, lips too pale. I look like her again. The woman who crawled out of that motel months ago with blood under her nails and nothing in her veins but poison and fear.
I grip the edge of the sink until my knuckles turn white. “You’re not her,” I whisper. “Not anymore.” But the memory answers anyway.
The first time, after Josiah, after the screaming, after the cuffs came off and the club found me, I couldn’t stop shaking.
I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t eat. Every sound was his boots.
Every shadow was his face. Someone handed me a line and said it would stop the noise.
They were right. It made everything go quiet.
I hated myself afterward because the calm felt good, and that terrified me more than the chaos ever had. It felt like peace, and I didn’t think I deserved it.
Now, staring down at that same white lie, I hear Pearl’s voice again. You’ll thank me later. I laugh. A broken, hollow sound that doesn’t belong to me. My hands shake so hard I can barely open the damn bag.
“Just a breath,” I tell myself. “Just enough to stop the noise.”
The second the cocaine hits my system, the world slides sideways. The walls exhale. The ceiling sways. The panic dissolves into warmth, a soft hum beneath my skin.
It’s not peace, not really. It’s forgetting. For a few blessed seconds, I can’t see Tiny’s soot-covered face. I can’t smell the blood. I can’t feel the ache in my chest that never goes away.
I close my eyes and let the numbness take me. It’s easier to drown in it than to remember how it feels to survive. Then everything turns black.
I wake to the sound of running water. A voice I know, low and shaking. “Stay with me, Syv. Come on, come on, baby girl.”
My body jerks. The world swims. I’m half on the bathroom floor, half in Tiny’s arms. His shirt’s soaked, and his hands grip my face, patting my cheeks hard enough to sting.
He drags me upright and shoves me into the shower. Ice-cold water hits my skin like fire. I gasp and cough, my lungs fighting for air.
“Breathe,” he snarls. “You hear me? You don’t get to quit now!”
I try. The air won’t stay. Everything inside me hurts. The tiles blur, his voice fades, then comes back sharper. “Don’t you fucking do this, Syvannah!”
His hands move fast, checking my pulse, slapping my cheek again, tearing the towel from the rack to wrap around me. His breathing’s ragged, half rage, half fear.
“Don’t you shut down on me,” he says again, his voice cracking at the edges. The fury slips. What’s left is raw, shaking, terrified.
I start to shiver. My body convulses against his chest. Tiny holds me tighter. The smell of soap, smoke, and sweat surrounds me, and for once, it doesn’t make me flinch.
When I finally manage a breath that doesn’t scrape like glass, his forehead drops against mine, trembling. “Jesus, Syv,” he mutters. “Why would you do this to yourself?”
“I didn’t…” The lie dies halfway out. Tears spill before I can stop them. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know.” Tiny’s voice breaks. “I know.”
He pulls me closer, and I collapse against him, sobbing until there’s nothing left.
For a long time, we just sit there on the cold tile floor, water pooling around us. Peanut is meowing somewhere outside the door like she knows something’s wrong.
When Tiny finally speaks again, his tone’s softer, wrecked. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“I scared myself.”
He tilts my chin up, eyes searching mine. “You can’t keep doing this alone.”
“I wasn’t trying to.”
“Yeah, you were.” He sighs, brushing wet hair from my face. “You always do.”
The silence that follows feels sacred. Heavy but human. For the first time, I see Tiny clearly, not as the man who saved me, but as the man who’s still fighting to save himself.
His gentleness isn’t a weakness. It’s armor. The kind that comes from surviving too many fires and walking out, burned but still breathing.
Tiny presses a towel against my skin again, careful, methodical. His fingers tremble when they touch mine.
“You’re gonna be okay,” he says quietly. “You hear me? You’re staying.”
I nod, voice barely a whisper. “Only if you do, too.”
Something flashes in his expression. Pain, maybe hope, but he doesn’t answer. He just keeps holding me, both of us shaking, two broken things clinging to each other in a world that won’t stop breaking.
When the water finally runs clear, and my heartbeat evens out, he helps me stand. “Come on,” he murmurs. “Let’s get you warm.”
When Tiny gently wraps a dry towel around me, I realize I’m crying again. Not from shame. This time, the tears feel different, like something inside me is thawing instead of breaking.