I glanced behind me and searched the crowd for Teddy. She wasn’t sitting at the picnic table where I’d last seen her. It only took a moment for me to find her already headed my way.
“What?” she mouthed as she sped up, hurrying toward me.
I jerked back around when Grandpa Casper yelled from the doorway.
“On me. Prospects and Hawthorne boys, stay here.”
Aces in every part of the yard rose to their feet and rushed toward us while the old ladies stopped talking and looked nervously at Casper.
“Just got a call from Charlie,” Casper said, his hand gripping my shoulder. “Said she’s at Draco’s and heard sirens. When she went to the door, cops were flyin’ through the neighborhood, and there’s an ambulance at your house.”
“Teddy,” I bellowed before I realized she was standing at my elbow.
Her face was completely blank, like she wasn’t processing anything around her. My stomach was in knots as I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward my bike. All around me, the comforting rumble of motorcycle engines filled the air, but I barely registered the sound. Tossing the helmet she’d left on the seat, I climbed onto my bike, already turning the key as she climbed on behind me.
Later, I’d remember the way my brother rode at my side. I’d remember the way others blocked off the side roads so we didn’t have to stop at any stop signs or worry about traffic. I’d recall the vision of the Aces and Eights emblems on the cuts ahead of me, leading the way back to my house because they’d never let me face anything alone.
But then, I could only curse every corner I slowed for and every mile that took years off my life. I barely felt Teddy’s hands clutching at my shirt or the way her face pressed into my back.Every part of me urged me forward, panicked and terrified about what we’d find when we got home.
There were two ambulances and at least five police cars creating a traffic jam on our street, and I didn’t even bother finding a place to park. I stopped right in the middle of the road and left my bike there as Teddy and I raced for the open front door.
“Let ’em through,” Grandpa Dragon ordered as a policeman put out his hand to stop us. “It’s their house.”
I barely registered the man’s look of surprise that some biker was ordering him around before I’d passed him. I ran up the drive and down the walkway to the door, taking the porch steps in one leap.
Stopping in the doorway, I could barely comprehend what I was seeing. My breath caught, and it felt like I was outside my body, cataloging the ruin like it was a documentary on TV and not my living room.
Teddy’s terrified moan would be a sound I heard in my dreams for the rest of my life.
Chapter 15
Jesse
“Tell Isla Isaid hi,” I sang, flopping back onto the couch as Dylan walked away, putting his phone to his ear.
Swear to God, that girl called more than telemarketers. I got it—she and Dylan had been together for years, and he couldn’t imagine being without her—but good grief, she was a lot. She was always calling and texting and making herself known, no matter what we were doing. It was like she had some kind of radar that alerted her to a moment when Dyl wasn’t thinking of her, and she had to nip that shit in the bud.
“This movie sucks,” Finn said, flinging himself onto his back. “Do we have to finish it?”
“Quitters never win, and winners never quit,” I replied, poking him with my toes.
“Dylan’s not even watching it.”
“That’s because Dylan’s p—” I snapped my mouth shut before I said something that I knew my mom would kill me for if Finn started repeating it. “Fine, what do you want to watch?”
“Marvel,” my little brother replied quickly. “Marathon.”
“That’ll take us days.”
“So? It’s summer, and you have no friends. What else are you going to do?”
“Hey,” I protested. “I have friends.”
“Only on the internet.”
“I have plenty of friends.”
Finn made a big show of sitting up and looking around the room. “Huh. Where are these friends you speak of?”
