EPILOGUE
GUNNER – SIX WEEKS LATER
Myla had been living in my house long enough to start improving things I hadn’t realized needed improving, and apparently my gun safe had made the list.
I stood in the bedroom doorway holding the note she’d left on top of a neat stack of newly labeled folders.
Receipts are not a filing system. Neither is stuffing everything beside a shotgun.
Across the room, Myla sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed with her laptop open, glasses halfway down her nose and several pages of Iron Flames accounts spread across the comforter.
Her hair was piled messily on top of her head, one of my shirts hung loose around her, and there was a coffee mug beside the bed that hadn’t belonged to me six weeks ago.
The house had changed around her without either of us making much of a decision about it. There were books on the nightstand, shampoo beside mine in the shower and a plant on the windowsill that I had somehow become responsible for whenever she forgot it existed.
I liked every bit of it.
“You went through my safe.”
She looked over the top of her glasses, caught sight of the note in my hand and immediately smiled.
“I organized your paperwork. The weapons survived untouched.”
“You throw anything out?”
“A takeout menu from a restaurant that closed four years ago, expired insurance papers and a beef jerky receipt from 2020.”
“That receipt could’ve been important.”
Myla stared at me until I added, “Taxes.”
Her laugh filled the room as I crossed to the bed, and I tossed the note down beside her before taking the laptop from her knees.
She made an offended sound. “I was working.”
“You’ve been working since breakfast, sweetheart.”
“So have you.”
“Garage was quiet.”
“That doesn’t magically turn it into a day off.”
I put the laptop on the floor anyway and stretched out beside her, sliding an arm around her waist until she gave up pretending she planned to rescue it.
The bruising had disappeared weeks ago, and the knife wound had faded into a narrow pink scar along her ribs. I still noticed it whenever my hand moved across her side, but it no longer made me think of her bleeding through the clubhouse doors.
Mostly, it made me think about everything that had happened since.
Fallon had talked once it became obvious Rafe wasn’t coming back for him. The information had cost the Black Thorns money, storage sites and several businesses they used to move weapons and cash, but Rafe himself had vanished before we could close around him.
Nobody in the club believed he had simply given up.
Myla didn’t either.
The difference was that she no longer lived like he might walk through every door.
She slept through the night. The gun beside the bed stayed in the drawer. If a car slowed outside, she might glance toward the window, but she didn’t reach for a bag she kept packed because there wasn’t one anymore.
She was here.
That was enough for now.
Her fingers covered mine where my hand rested against her side.
“You’re doing that thing again.”
“What thing?”
“Thinking hard enough that I can practically hear it.”
Myla knew more about me after six weeks than people I’d known for years, and somehow I didn’t mind nearly as much as I should have.
“We’re supposed to be at the clubhouse soon,” she reminded me. “Diesel said five thirty.”
“Diesel lies.”
“About what time dinner starts?”
“About most things.”
She smiled and settled closer against me.
Sunday dinner had become a tradition nobody in the club would admit was a tradition.
Reaper showed up with Callie and Maddie, Knox came with Sarah and their kid, Diesel usually took over the grill despite having very little evidence he should be allowed near one, and Hawk spent most of the afternoon pretending he wasn’t watching Elaina whenever she moved across the yard.
Axel still came too.
He had been quieter since Fallon said Tabitha Small’s name, but nobody had managed to get much else out of him. Whatever history lived there was old enough that he had buried it deep, and Grizz had told everyone to leave it alone until they knew whether Tabitha was ever coming back.
Myla traced one finger absently across my chest.
“You worried about Axel?”
“Yeah.”
“You think she’ll show up?”
“No idea. Rafe thought she would, though. That’s what bothers me.”
Fallon hadn’t known exactly what Tabitha had on Rafe, only that he had been ordered to watch Axel and flag her name the second she came anywhere near Iron Flames territory.
Whatever she knew mattered.
But that problem belonged to another day.
Myla glanced around the bedroom, then back at me.
“He doesn’t get to ruin this.”
I knew immediately who she meant.
“This?”
“Our life.”
The words landed harder than I expected.
Not because she sounded uncertain.
Because she didn’t.
Our life.
I ran my thumb along her jaw. “Like the sound of that.”
Her expression softened. “So do I.”
For most of my life, I’d trusted what I could control: clean weapons, planned routes, locked doors and people whose behavior I knew well enough to predict.
Myla had never fit into any of that.
She had arrived with secrets, fear and a stubborn streak wide enough to drive a truck through, then somehow become the part of my life I felt least interested in controlling.
I only wanted her to keep choosing it.
I kissed her slowly, pulling off her glasses when they got between us. Myla smiled against my mouth before wrapping both arms around my neck, and when I drew back a little, her fingers stayed in my hair.
“I love you.”
The words were quiet.
Simple.
They still knocked the fucking air out of me.
Myla’s confidence wavered when I didn’t answer immediately, and I caught the back of her neck before she could start taking something back that belonged to me now.
I brushed my thumb across her cheek.
“Ain’t had much practice saying shit like this, sweetheart.”
“With loving someone?”
“With letting somebody matter enough that losing them scares the hell outta me.”
The teasing disappeared from her face.
That was the truth of it. I’d cared about people before her, but Myla had gotten into every corner of my life without asking permission, until the idea of her not being here felt less like losing someone and more like losing part of the future I had started assuming would happen.
“I love you too.”
Her smile came back slowly.
Then she kissed me.
The next few minutes made us late for dinner.
I wasn’t sorry.
Myla pulled me over her, hands sliding beneath my shirt while I kissed the curve of her throat, and the little sound she made when my palm moved down her stomach went straight through me.
There was no hesitation between us anymore.
No watching every touch to make sure fear hadn’t been mistaken for want.
I knew the difference in her body now, just as she knew mine.
By the time I pushed her underwear aside and worked two fingers inside her, Myla was breathing my name against my mouth.
Grant.
Still hit differently from her.
I took my time until her thighs tightened around my hand and her body shuddered beneath me, then kissed her through the last of it before reaching for the nightstand.
She watched me roll on the condom with a smile that promised we were about to be significantly later.
“Diesel’s going to complain.”
“Diesel always complains.”
I moved between her thighs and pushed inside slowly.
The piercing caught the way I knew she liked, and Myla’s eyes closed as her hands tightened against my back.
“Still unfair,” she murmured.
I kissed her neck. “Never heard you complain.”
She answered by wrapping her legs around me and pulling me deeper.
Whatever clever response I had disappeared after that.
The rhythm stayed slow at first, the kind of sex that only happened when there was no threat waiting outside the door and nowhere either of us needed to run. When Myla came again, she buried her face against my shoulder and said my name like it belonged there.
I followed not long after.
For a while we stayed tangled together while our breathing settled.
Then Myla said, “I’m blaming you when everyone asks why we’re late.”
“Fine.”
“You’re not even going to defend yourself?”
I kissed her once.
“Worth it.”
We reached the clubhouse almost an hour late.
The yard was already crowded with bikes, picnic tables and kids running wherever adults had specifically told them not to. Music played near the garage, and smoke rolled from the grill in quantities suggesting Diesel had once again mistaken burning food for adding flavor.
Maddie had modified his apron too. KISS THE COOK had become KISS THE BIKER in thick permanent marker, and he was wearing it without admitting he liked it.
Myla laughed when she saw him.
That sound still got me.
Nobody made a big deal about her arrival anymore, and that might have been my favorite part of the whole damn thing.
Callie waved her over while Sarah shifted along the bench to make room, and Maddie intercepted Myla before she reached either of them, dragging her away to deal with some urgent crisis involving napkins.
Six weeks earlier, Myla had entered this compound bleeding, armed and suspicious of every man wearing a patch.
Now she walked through the yard without checking where I was first.
Reaper appeared beside me with a beer and followed my gaze toward her.
“You good?”
I knew what he meant.
“Yeah.”
He nodded and handed me the bottle.
That was all either of us needed.
I stayed there for a while, watching the usual chaos move around the compound. Knox was arguing with Diesel about what his kid had already eaten, Hawk sat beside Elaina with one arm stretched behind her chair, and Grizz was complaining about somebody parking badly enough to block half the garage.
Axel stood near one of the bikes with a beer in his hand, listening to Diesel with a faint smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
Then the gate buzzer sounded.
Nobody reacted immediately.
Deliveries came through often enough, and one of the prospects wandered toward the monitor while the rest of us kept talking.
A few seconds later his voice carried across the yard.
“Hawk?”
Something in the tone made everyone look up.
Hawk crossed toward the monitor with Grizz behind him.
The prospect pressed the speaker.
A woman’s voice came through, faintly distorted by the old system.
“I need to speak to Devon Ellis.”
Axel went completely still.
Nobody called him Devon.
Grizz turned toward him while the prospect looked back at the screen.
“Who are you?”
The pause lasted barely a second.
“Tabitha Small.”
The bottle slipped from Axel’s hand and shattered against the concrete.
Nobody laughed.
Across the yard, Myla looked first toward the gate and then at me.
Six weeks ago, an unexpected stranger outside locked gates would have sent her searching for an exit.
Instead, she walked straight across the compound and slipped her hand into mine.
I closed my fingers around hers.
Whatever Tabitha Small had brought with her, whatever old wound had just opened behind Axel’s eyes and whatever Rafe Maddox had planned next, none of it belonged to Myla’s story.
Not anymore.
She had already survived hers.
Myla’s thumb brushed across my knuckles, and when I looked down she smiled.
For the first time in a long damn time, I didn’t need a plan for what happened next.
I had her.
She had me.
And she wasn’t going anywhere.