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“It probably will be.”
At least he’s honest.
He leaves the door open and walks away, his footsteps disappearing beneath the noise coming from the rest of the clubhouse.
I close the door and lock it, then check the window because twelve years of running doesn’t disappear because an angel tells me I’m safe.
By the time I sit on the edge of the bed, someone has cranked the music up in the main room. Laughter carries down the hallway, followed by a yell, the crack of pool balls, and enough cussing to tell me nobody around here plans on going to bed anytime soon.
I should be listening to all of it. Working out who’s still awake, how many people are between me and the front door, whether that window really is my fastest way out if shit turns bad.
Instead, my mind goes straight back to the outside of the clubhouse.
Amber eyes.
A hand wrapped around his throat.
His mouth opening for words that never came…
Carnage.
For a place this fucking noisy, he is the one thing I can’t stop thinking about.
Chapter Eight
CARNAGE
The garage is the one place in this compound where nobody expects a single word out of me, which is exactly why I’m out here at two in the morning with my hands buried in the guts of my bike instead of lying in a bed I can’t sleep in.
Metal, I understand. Metal doesn’t ask questions I can’t answer. It doesn’t watch my mouth open and close around nothing, and then look at me like it’s waiting for the punchline that never comes.
I drag the wrench loose, feel the give of the bolt finally surrender, and let that small victory sit in my chest instead of the useless, silent fury when the door creaks.
My eyes stay where they are, but every hair along my arms lifts as awareness prickles down my spine. My hellhound reacts a second later, going alert beneath my skin, and that strange fucking frequency of hers brushes through me again.
I know who’s standing in the doorway before her scent reaches me.
Echo.
Salt and rain drift into the room with her, clean and sharp against the familiar mix of leather, beer, smoke, and whatever the fuck Ruckus spilled earlier.
Silence stretches between us.
She stays in the doorway, watching me, while my hellhound pushes closer beneath my skin, listening for that quiet pull only he seems able to hear.
She crosses to the stack of crates against the far wall, climbs onto the tallest one, and gets comfortable without asking if she can stay.
Apparently, she can.
Most people would have started talking by now. Filling the room with pointless shit because sitting this close to someone who can’t answer makes them uncomfortable. My brothers have been doing versions of it all fucking night, talking enough for both of us or stumbling over themselves when they ask me something and remember too late that I can’t respond.
Echo gives me none of that.
She rests her boots against the crate below her, folds her hands loosely in her lap, and watches me work like the silence between us is the easiest-fucking-thing in the world.
I tell myself to ignore her.
Five seconds later, I’m looking at her again.
