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Raven must notice because she leans in close, her lips brushing my ear so the words don’t carry. “There’s a bar. About ten miles east. Little dive called the Hair Of The Dog. Harper and I are going. You in?”

I glance toward Walker. He’s deep in conversation, his posture relaxed but alert, one hand wrapped around a beer he’s barely touched. He won’t want me going. Not without him. Not to some random bar in unfamiliar territory.

Which is exactly why I shouldn’t go.

“Let’s do it,” I say.

Harper grins, and Raven is already on her feet. We slip out through the kitchen entrance, three women on a mission, and I feel the familiar rush of doing something I shouldn’t. We all pile into Harper’s car and drive off.

****

The Rusty Nail is everything a dive bar should be. Sticky floors. Watered-down liquor. A jukebox that only plays country and classic rock. The bartender looks like he’s been pouring drinks since the seventies and stopped caring about anything around 1984.

It’s perfect.

We claim a table near the back, and the drinks come fast. Whiskey for Raven. Beer for Harper. Tequila for me, because if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it properly.

Three shots in, and I’m loose. Warm. Laughing at something Raven says, my head tipped back against the booth, the weight of three months slowly lifting off my shoulders. Harper drags me to the tiny dance floor when a song with actual rhythm comes on, and we move together, careless and free, drawing looks from the scattered patrons that I ignore.

This is what I needed. Not the road, not the clubhouse. Just this. Girl time. Normalcy. The simple pleasure of existing without a target on my back or a mission in my head.

“I missed you,” Raven shouts over the music, her hand on my waist as we dance. “Don’t leave for that long again.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“I know.” She smiles, and it’s sad around the edges. “That’s what makes you Poppy.”

Another drink. Another song. The bar blurs at the edges, and I let it. I let myself sink into the moment, into the laughter and the warmth and the brief, beautiful illusion that I’m just a normal woman having a normal night out with her girls.

I don’t hear the door, and I don’t see him walk in. But I feel it. The air shifts and the temperature drops. My body recognizes him before my eyes do, the way it always has, a primal awareness that hums through my nervous system like a current.

I turn slowly. Walker stands just inside the doorway, shoulders filling the frame, grey-blue eyes scanning the room until they find me. His jaw is set, and his hands are loose at his sides, but there’s tension coiled in every line of his body, the kind that precedes violence or something equally intense.

He doesn’t look happy.

Raven follows my gaze and winces. “Oh, shit.”

“Yep.”

“Good luck.” She pats my shoulder and retreats, the traitor.

I meet him halfway across the bar. Up close, his expression is carefully neutral, but I know this face. I know every micro-expression, every flicker of emotion he tries to hide. Right now, beneath the calm, he’s furious.

And something else. Something darker.

“You left,” he says. His voice is low, controlled, the kind of quiet that should scare me.

“I did.”

“Without telling me.”

“I did.”

“Sneaking out of the clubhouse like a teenager slipping past curfew.” His eyes track down my body, slow and deliberate, noting the flush in my cheeks, the looseness in my posture, the way my hips are still swaying slightly to the music. “Drinking. Dancing. Having fun.”

“Is that a crime now?”

His jaw ticks. “Where’s the fun in not telling me where you were going?”