Page 36 of Crusher's Illusion

Steel sits back. “This isn’t a vote. Not yet. But if her being here puts this Club in deeper shit, I’ll be the one to pull the trigger. Don’t make me choose between you and keeping my men safe.”

My chest tightens. I nod once. “Understood.”

But it feels like something fractures under my ribs.

Nevaeh finds me in the garage, chain-smoking like the smoke might cloud out the memories. But they don’t leave. They never do. Smoke curls around me, clinging to the rafters like ghosts, and I breathe them in like it’ll burn the past out of my lungs. It doesn’t.

Her hair’s tied back, but her piercing blue eyes are soft. Searching. She wears my hoodie like it means something.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” she says. No accusation. Just a fact.

“Been busy.”

“That’s not it.”

I lean back against the workbench, arms crossed, heart tight. “We’re in the middle of a war, Nevaeh. You being here makes shit worse.”

“I didn’t ask to be here,” she says, stepping closer. “I didn’t ask for you to care.”

“But I do,” I bite out. “That’s the problem.”

She flinches. Just slightly, and I hate myself for it.

Jordan’s face cuts through the haze, clean and sharp. Like it always does when the silence gets too loud.

“He was fifteen.” I start, surprising myself. “Just a kid with scuffed sneakers, a busted laugh, and a heart too damn big for a world that chews people up and spits them out. He worethis beat-up denim vest, stitched with patches he made himself. Little crooked things that saidhope,fight,free. Said he wanted to earn a real cut someday. Said he wanted to ride with purpose.

“Jordan volunteered at the shelter with me. No one asked him to. He just showed up with a backpack full of stale granola bars and second chances. The kind of kid who offered his coat to someone sleeping under a bridge and didn't brag about it later. Only difference between us? He still believed people were worth saving.”

I take a deep breath and sit on the workbench. Nevaeh joins me. Our shoulders brush. The heat from her body gives me the strength to continue.

“I told him to stay out of it when he overheard a trafficker bragging about moving a girl across state lines. Said it wasn’t our fight. Said the world doesn’t reward heroes, it buries them. But Jordan? He didn’t listen. He slipped the girl a burner phone. Gave her a plan. Risked everything because he believed helping someone was worth more than staying safe.

“She made it out. He didn’t. I found him behind the Mt. Pleasant Youth Restoration building. Stabbed. Left like trash. Just enough life left in him to make me believe I could fix it. I dropped to my knees on the concrete, hands soaked in blood, before I even touched him. Pressed down hard on his wounds to stop the bleeding. Told him he’d be okay. Lied straight through my fucking teeth.“Stay with me,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

I flex my hands into fists, still seeing them coated with blood. “But his breath rattled out like a whisper, soft and final. His fingers twitched once and went still. Sirens screamed in the distance, late like always. Too far. Too slow. He died in my arms with his patched-up vest clutched in one hand and my name in his mouth.”

“After that, I changed. I stopped believing in heroes. Stopped thinking that doing the right thing would save anyone. Good intentions don’t mean shit when they bleed out on your hoodie. I buried him in the only jacket he ever loved. That beat-up denim vest with the patches he stitched on himself.Hope,fight,free. The same one he wore every day like armor. Like belief.”

I point to a few patches on my cut.Hope, fight, and freeare stitched in the worn leather. “Now I wear patches just like his. It wasn’t a club cut. It wasn’t earned. But it meant something to him. Maybe it meant something to me, too.”

“Maybe dressing him in that vest was the only way I knew how to say sorry for not stopping him, for not saving him, for not getting there fast enough. Or maybe it was just one more lie I told myself… That something about it mattered. I never let anyone close again. Not fully. Not really. I learned how to patch wounds and patch engines. Learned how to build fences between people and call it strength. Learned how to bury grief in steel and silence and backroads. Until now.” Until her.

I stop talking and we sit in silence.

Nevaeh's name doesn’t have to be said. It’s just there, stitched into the seams of the silence like she’s always belonged. And that’s the part that scares me the most.

Because if I let her in...

If I care…

If Ilove…

And they come for her like they came for Jordan, I’m not sure I’ll survive it this time.

I look into Nevaeh’s piercing blue eyes, and my heart skips a beat from the truth. “Jordan helped someone, and it got him killed. I made a vow after that. I don’t take in strays. I don’t save people anymore. Because good intentions don’t mean shit when they bleed out in your arms.”

Nevaeh swallows, eyes glassy. “You think I’m going to die?”