Epilogue
Ride With Me
Steel
The clubhouse yard smells like smoke, grilled meat, gasoline, and bad decisions.
So, basically home. The sun hangs low over Vegas, bleeding orange across the compound, turning chrome into fire and making the rows of parked bikes look like beasts resting after a hunt.
Music pounds from inside the clubhouse, something heavy enough to rattle bottles and poor enough in taste that Fury must have picked it.
Men laugh too loudly. Women yell louder.
Prospects run around like terrified waiters in cuts, carrying trays of meat, beer, and Mama M’s orders.
Nobody is bleeding, and that’s how I know the party is going well.
I stand near the garage with my back against the open bay door, beer untouched in my hand, watching Harper argue with Milo over a plate of ribs.
She is wearing dark jeans, boots, and a black tank top that shows the faint scar at her wrist where the rope cut too deep. The bruises are gone, the stitches are out, and her lip is healed. I know because I kissed it this morning until she threatened to be late for work. Then I kissed it again.
She’s laughing now, head tipped back, hair loose around her shoulders, sunlight on her face like the world hasn’t tried to take her from me more than once.
My hand tightens around the beer bottle as the memories threaten to flood me.
One month. Thirty-one days since the slaughterhouse. Thirty-one days since Reaper learned that breathing can become a punishment. Thirty-one days since Harper looked at my bloodstained hands and chose to hold one anyway.
Now, she comes to the compound when she wants, and leaves when she wants. She works her shifts, drives her car, and keeps her apartment. She also yells at me when I park outside her station too long, which I still do because I am not a reformed man, only a better-supervised one.
And she rides with me. Not every day and not because I demand it. But because sometimes she walks out of Station Eight, helmet under her arm, eyes tired, mouth sharp, and says, “Take me somewhere that doesn’t smell like antiseptic.”
Sometimes we end up at the desert overlook. Sometimes we end up in my bed. Sometimes we don’t talk at all. And that might be the closest thing to peace I have ever known.
Across the yard, Milo raises a rib like a weapon. “I am telling you, sauce belongs on the side.”
Harper stares at him like he has insulted her ancestors. “That’s the weakest thing you’ve ever said.”
“I have boundaries.”
“You have issues.”
Raven, sitting on the tailgate of Savage’s truck with sunglasses on and a beer in her hand, lifts her bottle. “I’m with Harper, sauce is a major commitment.”
Milo points at her. “I expected better from you.”
Raven smiles. “That was your first mistake.”
Savage stands between her knees, one hand resting on her thigh like he thinks he is subtle. He’s not, but nobody tells him that because he is the President and because Raven already knows.
Mama M storms out of the clubhouse with a bowl in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other. “Who put an empty tray back on my table?”
Every prospect in the yard goes still. Fury points at Tyler. Tyler, still a little fragile after almost dying, even though he’s mostly healed, points at Fury. Saint points at both of them because he enjoys accuracy.
Mama M’s eyes narrow. “All three of you. Kitchen. Now.”
Fury groans. “I’m an officer.”
“You’re a man who can carry potato salad,” Mama M snaps. “Now move.”
Harper laughs, and the sound goes straight through my ribs. I would let the world burn for that sound, and I should know because I almost did.
“Staring again,” Saint says, appearing beside me like a shadow with a beer.
I don’t look at him. “Are you attached to your teeth?”
“Moderately.”
“Then talk less.”
Saint watches Harper and Milo argue while Raven judges them like a queen at a particularly violent picnic. “She looks good here.”
I grunt.
“That was agreement?”
“That was a warning.”
His mouth twitches. “Sure.”
The back gate opens, and Dante walks in with two guards behind him. Conversation dips, and everyone turns in his direction.
He is thinner than the last time I saw him.
Still pale. Still moving like his body has not forgiven him for almost dying.
He’s not sporting a Vulture patch or any cut at all.
Just a plain black shirt, jeans, and the face of a man who knows he is alive because a woman he helped endanger refused to let him bleed out on a clubhouse floor.
Harper sees him and her laughter fades. My body pushes off the garage before thought can finish forming. Saint’s hand closes briefly around my wrist, but he releases me after I shoot him a dirty look.
Dante stops ten feet from Harper with his hands visible. Harper studies him for a long second while Milo shifts closer to her, and Raven sits up straighter on the truck. Savage watches without moving.
Dante clears his throat. “Harper.”
I’m already halfway across the yard. She glances at me once, and I stop, waiting to see if she needs me to intervene.
Dante swallows. “I’m not here to bring trouble.”
Harper folds her arms across her chest. “That would be a refreshing change.”
A few men laugh under their breath and Dante almost smiles, but it dies fast. “I wanted to say thank you.” She says nothing. “For saving me,” he continues. “At the clubhouse. In the van. At County. I know I gave you every reason not to.”
“You were bleeding.”
“Yeah.” He looks at the dirt. “That was kind of hard to miss.”
Harper’s mouth twitches and my chest eases a bit.
Dante looks up again. “I told Savage everything I knew. Reaper’s remaining men are gone, and their routes are shut down. No one is coming for you because of me.”
“They better not,” Milo says.
Dante glances at him, and Milo lifts his chin like he isn’t standing in a biker compound wearing a neon pink t-shirt that says I’m The Fun Paramedic.
Harper puts a hand on Milo’s arm. “Thank you for telling me.”
Dante nods. “And I really am sorry.”
She studies him, really studies him, before she nods once. “Stay alive long enough to make it mean something.”
Dante’s throat works. “I’ll try.” He steps back.
I move then, not to Harper, but to Dante, and he goes still, proving he does indeed have good survival instincts.
I stop in front of him. “You come near her without invitation again, and an apology won’t matter.”
His face pales. “Understood.”
“Good.”
“How charming,” Harper mutters.
I look over my shoulder. “I’m trying.”
“Are you though?” She raises a brow at me.
“Yes.”
Raven snorts from the truck. “That’s him trying, unfortunately.”
Dante leaves, followed by two prospects, and the yard exhales. The noise returns slowly, like the compound remembers we’re supposed to be celebrating.
Milo presses a hand to his chest. “Well, that was emotionally draining and a little terrifying. I need carbs.”
And Harper laughs again. I watch her. Still breathing, still free enough to laugh after everything. And that’s the only miracle I believe in.
Crimson walks across the yard, and the noise dips again. He doesn’t have beer in his hand. Doesn’t have a smart-ass comment waiting. Doesn’t have that old suspicion curled around his mouth like he’s chewing on broken glass.
He stops in front of Harper, and my body turns. Harper feels it, and her eyes flick to me. This woman is going to put me in an early grave through restraint alone.
Crimson clears his throat. “Harper.”
She lifts a brow. “Crimson.”
Milo whispers, “Do I need to hold your earrings?”
“I’m not wearing earrings,” Harper says.
“I have emergency ones,” he offers, ever the helpful sidekick.
Raven calls out, “I want to see those.”
Crimson winces, then looks at Harper properly. “I owe you an apology.”
Even Fury shuts up, which might be the most shocking thing I’ve seen all month, but Harper says nothing.
Crimson drags a hand over his jaw. “I was an ass.”
Milo whispers, “From the look of you, I’m assuming that would be accurate.”
Saint coughs to hide his laughter, and Crimson shoots him a look before he faces Harper again. “I called you a leash. A weakness. I acted like you made Steel less than what the club needed.” His gaze flicks to me, then back to her. “I was wrong.”
Harper’s expression shifts. Not quite softening but listening.
Crimson continues, his voice rougher now. “You kept Dante alive. You saved Tyler. You kept Steel from walking blind into Reaper’s trap. You stood in our yard and didn’t flinch when men twice your size were acting like idiots.”
“Not all of them were twice my size,” Harper says.
Milo says, “Spiritually, they were.”
Raven lifts her beer. “Emotionally, they were toddlers.”
Fury raises his hand. “I object.”
Mama M shouts from the kitchen door, “You would.”
Crimson actually huffs something close to a laugh before his face sobers. “I’m sorry. For what I said. For making you feel like you had to prove your place when you were already standing in it.”
Harper is quiet for a long moment before she nods. “Thank you.”
Crimson looks surprised. “You’re not going to make me suffer more?” he asks.
Harper smiles sweetly. Too sweetly. “I didn’t say that.”
The yard erupts. Fury whoops. Raven laughs. Milo claps like a delighted menace. And Crimson drops his head and takes it because, apparently, the man has learned. Harper steps closer to him and lowers her voice, but I still hear her because I hear everything around her.
“You were an ass,” she says. “But you apologized in public and that matters.”
Crimson nods once. “You’re good for him.”
Harper’s gaze shifts to me and heat moves low in my gut.
“No,” she says. “I’m good with him.” The correction matters.
Crimson nods again. “Yeah. That.”
I hold Harper’s stare across the yard as he walks away. The whole damn party moves around us, but none of it matters. Her words have hooked into me and pulled.
‘Good with him.’
Not for him. Not because of him. With.
I cross the yard with long strides, and she watches me come, mouth curving like she already knows what I’m thinking.
She doesn’t. If she did, she would run.