Ride Me Into Ruin: Iron Reapers MC

We

LEXIE

The drive back to Harlow felt longer than the drive out, the sun had moved across the sky while we were sitting in that hospital and the light coming through the windshield was that late afternoon gold that made everything look warmer than it probably was.

I had my head tipped back against the seat and my eyes half closed, I was not sleeping, I was just existing, which felt like enough for the moment.

Chaos drove the same way he always did. One hand on the wheel, unhurried, like he had nowhere more important to be. The radio was on low, something old and guitar-heavy that I didn't know the name of.

"His daughter got there before we left," I said at some point.

"I know, she called the bar."

"She cried a little in the hallway."

"She does that," he said. "Harlan pretends it annoys him."

"It clearly does not annoy him."

"No," he agreed. "It does not."

I smiled at the window. "He called me wasted," I said.

Chaos glanced over. "Said I was wasted counting pills." I turned my head against the headrest to look at him. "Which is probably the nicest thing he's said to me since I started working there, so I'm choosing to take it as high praise."

"It is," Chaos said simply.

I looked back at the window, something about the way he said it settled somewhere in my chest in a way I didn't examine too closely.

We pulled into Harlow just as the streetlights were starting to think about coming on. The town looked the same as always, going about its evening like nothing had happened anywhere in the world today.

I had always found small towns slightly irritating before. Right now I found it enormously comforting.

Chaos parked outside the bar. I climbed out and stretched my back and he came around the front of the truck and we walked in together without planning to.

The bar was in that easy early evening state, not busy yet, not empty either. A couple of club members were at the pool table.

Mia looked up from behind the counter the second we walked in, her eyes went straight to my face, then to Chaos, then back to me. "How is he?" she said.

"He's stable," I said, sliding onto a stool. "Blood pressure. They're keeping him overnight but his colour was good when I left and he was already arguing with the nurse about the IV, so I think he'll live."

Mia let out a long breath and pressed her hand flat on the counter. "Thank God." She looked at me properly then. "And you? How are you?"

"Me?" I blinked. "I'm fine. I wasn't the one on the floor."

"You were the one who kept him off the floor longer than he would have been." She was already reaching for the coffee pot. "Sit. You look like you need something warm."

I didn't argue, she poured two cups and pushed one across to me, then came around the counter and sat on the stool beside me.

Chaos disappeared somewhere toward the back, giving us the space without making a thing of it.

I wrapped both hands around the mug, the coffee was good, nothing like the cardboard flavoured water from the hospital machine.

"You were scared," Mia said.

"I was focused," I said. "There's a difference."

"There is," she said. "But you can be both."

I looked at her sideways. She was watching me with that steady, warm look she had, the one that made you feel seen without feeling exposed. I had noticed early on that Mia had a talent for that, making people feel like they could say things.

"I was a little scared," I admitted. "He's grumpy and difficult and calls me mouthy at least twice a shift, and I was scared."

Mia smiled. "That means you care about him."

"Don't tell him that. His head's big enough."

She laughed and sipped her coffee. We sat quietly for a minute, the comfortable kind.

"Can I ask you something?" I asked.

"Sure."

"How did you end up here? In Harlow." I turned my mug slowly on the bar. "You said once that you thought you'd only stay a month. That was four years ago."

Mia was quiet for a second. She looked at her coffee and something moved across her face, quick, there and gone.

"I came here running," she said. "Different road than yours, I think, but the same feeling behind it." She paused. "I was with someone for three years. He was charming and funny and everyone loved him and behind closed doors he was someone else completely." She said it simply.

"I left with what I could carry and drove until I ran out of the road and Harlow was where I stopped."

I looked at her. "Chaos found me sleeping in my car outside the bar," she said, and laughed softly at the memory. "He knocked on the window at seven in the morning and I screamed so loud Brick came running out thinking someone was being murdered." She shook her head. "He offered me breakfast and a job and I said yes to both and never really left."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that." She shrugged one shoulder. "This place has a way of holding onto people who need holding."

I looked down at my mug. "I've noticed."

Mia turned her cup in her hands and didn't push, she just sat beside me in the easy quiet of someone who wasn't going anywhere.

It was that quiet that did it, more than anything she had said. "His name is Drake," I said.

Mia went still as she listened.

"We were together for two years. Engaged." I kept my eyes on the counter. "I thought I knew him. I thought I was the luckiest woman alive." I paused.

"Turns out I was just next in a long line of people he decided belonged to him." I turned my mug once. "When I found out who he really was I tried to do the right thing, that went badly. So I ran."

I finally looked up at her. "He doesn't lose people he thinks belong to him," I said. "That's the part that keeps me moving, not anger or pride, just the understanding that he will look until he finds me."

Mia held my gaze for a long moment. Her eyes were steady and serious and completely without pity, which was the exact right thing.

Then she reached over and put her hand over mine on the bar and squeezed once, firm and certain. "Then we make sure he doesn't find you," she said.

Those words hit me harder than almost anything had in months.

I looked at her hand over mine and felt something loosen in my chest, some tight held thing that had been wound up for so long I had stopped noticing the strain of it. My eyes stung briefly and I blinked it away and cleared my throat.

"You're going to make me emotional in public," I said. "That's very inconsiderate of you."

Mia smiled and squeezed my hand once more before letting go. "Drink your coffee."

I drank my coffee and we talked for another hour about small things. Harlan's daughter, the new shipment at the drug store, something funny Crow had done that morning involving a wrench and a bet he lost badly.

When I finally went upstairs and climbed into bed and pulled the blanket up, I lay in the dark and took stock of how I felt, not safe exactly, but not scared either.

But for the first time since I started running, I didn't feel alone in it, someone knew his name, someone had looked at me and said *we.*

That meant a lot to me.