The club roared back to its rhythm the next few days—louder engines, louder voices, louder distractions to drown out everything they’d lost. The deal with the Vultures MC was settling into uneasy silence, Reid still in a coma, and the Highway Demons were licking their wounds with beer and bravado.
To everyone else, life moved forward.
But Ash couldn’t.
He was back in the garage, leaning under the half-fixed engine of a black Harley, wrench turning slow. He’d been staring at the same bolt for minutes without tightening it. His jaw was locked, brows drawn low, his mind replaying the same image over and over again—Cordelia, curled up asleep on his bed the night before the mission. Her fragile breathing. The bruises that had started to fade but never quite disappeared from her.
And the way
