Outside. Daylight, cold air, bikes in the lot. Her hand was shaking in mine.
"You came alone," she said.
"Yeah."
"Into a room full of men who wanted to kill you."
"Yeah."
"Why?"
I looked at her. This woman who'd walked into my bar and seen me when nobody else ever had. Who'd carried our child alone for weeks and had been brave enough to face her father.
"Because you were in there," I said. "And I'm done being anything other than yours."
She kissed me. In the Jackals' parking lot, in daylight, with thirty bikers behind the windows. I kissed her back. My hand on her jaw, firm, firm, making sure she was real.
We got on my bike. Her arms around my waist, her cheek against my back. I started the engine.
We rode out. The engine opened up on the highway. The mountains rose on both sides. The road stretched ahead of us, empty, clean. Late afternoon light turning the valley gold. She held onto me, her arms tight around my waist, her face pressed against my back, and I could feel her breathing. In, out, in, out.The rhythm of a woman coming down from the worst hour of her life.
I rode the speed limit. No rush. We had time now. The crisis behind us, the truce holding, the road home a straight line through country that looked different to me than it had an hour ago. Brighter. Wider. The world expanding to make room for what I was carrying back to the compound. Lola and the child growing inside her, yes, but also the fact that I’d walked into a room full of killers and walked out alive because I’d meant every word and Stone had been able to see it.
The invisible man, visible. Still breathing. Still whole.
She held on and neither of us looked back.
EPILOGUE - GHOST
Eleven months later
The cry cameat three in the morning.
Soft at first, a hiccup of sound through the baby monitor, then louder, building into the full-throated wail of a seven-week-old girl who wasn't interested in waiting.
Lola stirred beside me. Warm, half asleep, her hair across the pillow.
"Your turn," she murmured.
"I know."
I was already moving. Feet on the cold floor, sweatpants, the hallway dark. The house was quiet. A three-bedroom place on the edge of Forsaken that I'd bought two months before Lily arrived, because a room at the end of a clubhouse hallway was no place for a baby and the woman I intended to keep.
Lily's room was across the hall. Walls we'd painted together, a crib, a rocking chair, a lamp that threw warm light across the ceiling.
I picked her up.
She was so small. Seven weeks and I still couldn't get used to it. The weight of her, barely anything, this tiny body that fit in the space between my elbow and my palm. My dark hair, dark eyes, but her mother's jaw. She looked at me when I lifted her, face red, fists clenched, furious at the world for whatever reason seven-week-old girls found to be furious about.
"Hey," I said. "I'm here."
She screamed louder. Clean, fed an hour ago, no fever. Just awake and angry. Fair enough. I understood that particular restlessness.
I settled into the rocking chair. Held her against my chest, her head tucked under my chin, her body warm through the cotton of her onesie. I rocked. Slow, steady. My hand covered most of her back. Her heartbeat ran fast against my palm. Hummingbird-quick. Slowing as the rocking took hold.
She settled. Her hand, smaller than my thumb, rested on my collarbone. Her mouth moved in her sleep. The crease between her eyebrows smoothed out and I sat in the warm light and listened to my daughter breathe.
I stayed longer than I needed to, because putting her down meant leaving this chair and I wasn't ready to leave.
