Page 55 of Carnival’s Playground

Her green eyes are wide and shimmering with tears she refuses to shed. "Cowardice from what?"

"From staying. From letting somebody look past the leather, past the scars, and see that there was a broken bastard underneath who wanted something real. You looked anyway, Avery. You cursed me out, you matched me punch for punch, and you never flinched from the dark."

A ragged sob catches in her throat, and she laughs through it, blinking hard against the morning glare. "That's sickeningly romantic for a biker who asked me if my eyes were decorative four weeks ago."

"I've evolved, spitfire." I pull her face up and crush my mouth down onto hers. The kiss is slow, deep, and heavy with pure, unyielding possession. No sirens in the distance. No severed wires waiting to spark. Just the hot, sweet taste of her mouth and the ironclad certainty that I'm never letting this woman go.

She murmurs against my lips, her fingers tangling in the hair at my collar. "We need to roll. Before Dutch tracks us down and demands an inventory of the novelty vampire teeth."

"Don't even joke about that shit." She laughs, a bright, clear sound that rings across the empty fairgrounds, settling deep into my chest where it has carved out a permanent home. We roll out of Grimwood Crossing side by side, my heavy V-twin engine thundering in sync with the rumble of her truck tires as we hit the two-lane blacktop heading north. The water tower and the empty carnival grounds shrink in my side mirrors until they're nothing but a faint gray silhouette against the Texas horizon. Twenty miles out on the open highway, she taps her brakes and pulls onto the gravel shoulder near an old, rusted neon diner sign that reads Pearl's, Best Pie in Three Counties. I drop my gears, pulling my Harley up right alongside her driver-side door, cutting the ignition as the engine ticks in the crisp morning air. I pull my heavy riding gloves off. "What's the emergency, spitfire?"

She leans her elbow out the open window with that radiant, wicked grin on her face. "No emergency. Just wanted to look at your ugly mug without five hundred pounds of screaming steel between us."

"You're completely shameless, woman."

"Takes one to know one, biker."

"Fair enough." I lean through the open window to take her mouth in a slow, searing kiss that leaves both of us breathing hard in the quiet roadside dust.

She's already slamming her truck into drive. "Race you to the interstate cutoff."

I swing my leg over the frame. "You're going to eat my dust, Avery!"

She sprays gravel from her rear tires as she punches the throttle onto the asphalt. "We'll see about that, Carnival!" I let out a loud, savage laugh, kicking the starter into gear, the engine roaring to life beneath my thighs as I dump the clutch and launch onto the black ribbon of road, chasing her red taillights into the wide-open morning.

For twelve years, the road was a weapon I used to outrun my own ghost, town after town, job after job, leaving nothing behind and carrying nothing forward. Wyatt was a name buried in old arrest records. Carnival was armor forged from asphalt, gasoline, and distance. Watching her truck lead the way through the golden Texas sunlight, heading toward our rented dirt in Bellwether, toward Cinderwood, Valentine's Day, and whatever hell the independent circuit throws at us next, the truth settles deep into my bones.

The road isn't an escape anymore. With her, the road is home.

THE END