I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. Danny was talking but it was as if I could only process every third word he said. Maybe even less. I watched him, focusing on the tiniest details of him. His hands were broad and strong, rough and calloused. He was bigger than I remembered. Hard muscles rippled through his arms. He wore a white t-shirt under that leather biker vest. It stretched tight over his biceps.

I drew in a breath and closed my eyes. Dead. Free. Sean was dead. I gripped the steering wheel. When I opened my eyes, I focused on Danny’s lips. He was still talking, saying words I’d dreamt about once upon a time.

“It’s over, Beth. He can’t touch you anymore.”

Touch me? Danny sat just a few feet from me. He draped one arm over the back of the seat, his fingers just inches from my hair. He hadn’t laid a finger on me, and yet his presence touched my very core. How many times had I drawn comfort from those arms, his whispered words against my ear? All those nights when I was scared to death my life would crash around me. It was Danny who held me up and helped me find the strength to keep going.

I buried my face in my hands. It was all just too much. Sean was dead. My husband was dead. Danny said I was free. Finally, I got my head clear enough to ask the questions I knew he expected.

“How?”

Danny’s eyes flickered. Maybe he’d already told me that. I don’t know. Everything was just so jumbled up inside of me. “Somebody shot him in the head, Beth.”

I nodded, then rubbed my hands down my skirt, smoothing out the wrinkles. “Was it the cartel?”

Danny rubbed his chin with his thumb, considering his answer. I knew even now he was trying to protect me.

“He was still knee deep with them, wasn’t he?” I asked. Tears stung my eyes. Even now, after all these years, it was hard to admit in words what Sean was. He was a drug dealer. My tormentor. For years, I hadn’t wanted to believe it. I’d been so naive. We were only eighteen when we got married. I had stars in my eyes over him. I saw Sean in my mind’s eye as he’d been that day he drove me to the courthouse. Strong. Handsome. Virile. He’d made me a thousand promises. He had money. Security. He’d offered me a lifeline out of the hellhole I grew up in and I grabbed it with both hands. I just didn’t know at the time I was stepping into a different one.

“We hadn’t talked in over a year,” Danny said. Danny. Deacon. I couldn’t stop staring at the patch on his leather vest. Danny was a Dark Saint. I still wasn’t sure I believed it. I could blink my eyes and still see him wearing church robes and ministering to the sick on Sundays. He wasn’t ordained, but one night long ago, I’d made him hear my confession. Neither of us had ever been the same since.

“But yeah,” he said. “He’d been moving up the ranks over the years. We chased him out of town at least half a dozen times but he kept turning back up. A few months ago, he tossed my mom’s house.”

My stomach flipped. “Was she hurt?” No. God, no. I couldn’t bear to hear it. We’d made so many sacrifices to get out from under Sean Wade’s dark choices.

“She wasn’t home,” Danny said. “She’s not ... she’s got dementia, Beth. I’d made arrangements to move her into a home. Sean caught wind of it and got into the house.”

It was involuntary. If I’d taken half a second to think it through, I never would have reached for him. But I did. I pressed my palm to Danny’s cheek. Electric fire sparked between us and he squeezed his eyes shut, bracing through it.

He brought his hand up, gently circled my wrist, and drew my hand away. His eyes glinted with pain as they met mine. It was still there. The pain he’d endured all those years ago when he came to me one night in anguished despair. It hadn’t left. Being near me brought it all back up.

I folded my hands in my lap and leveled a hard stare at him. “Was this retaliation then? Did the club take care of him?”

Danny’s eyes narrowed. In the span of a second, he became something else. It was as if the man I used to know faded away and now I could only see the man he truly was. It was just like he said. Danny was gone. He was Deacon now, member of the Dark Saints, M.C.

“No,” he said. “I did not have my own brother killed. Though it’s not like I hadn’t thought about it a hundred times over the last ten years. But no. This wasn’t the Saints.”

“So it was the cartel then? Sean finally bit the hand that fed him, or whatever?”

Deacon shrugged.

“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked. Ten years. He was a different man than the one I knew. I was a different woman too though, wasn’t I? And yet, I did know this man. I knew the pain in his eyes. I understood the hardness. I’d witnessed the things that put it there.

“Deacon,” I said. The sound of his new name coming from my lips seemed to startle him. Then he settled into it, lifting his eyes to mine.

“I’m telling you everything you need to know, Beth. Sean is dead. Whatever ties he had to you are gone. You’re safe. He can’t hurt you. He won’t come after you. The cartel has no reason to do it either. I just wanted you to know that. I wanted to answer the questions I knew you’d have. I wanted you to hear it from me. So that I could tell you …”

“Tell me what?” My tone turned sharp. A flood of emotions poured from me. I couldn’t sort through them. Anger. Relief. Sadness. Grief. I settled on a kind of rage. Even if Danny didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of it, it gave me a sense of control I desperately needed.

“Beth …”

“No! Tell me what? Exactly what am I supposed to do with this?”

“Beth, I’m trying to …”

I slammed my palm against the steering wheel. The horn gave a sharp blast, drawing Darlene to the front window. She’d probably been watching the whole time. Nervous laughter bubbled up inside of me. What in the hell was I going to tell her?

“Fine,” I said, trying desperately hard to hold on to my anger. I didn’t want to show it to Danny. It had taken me ten years to form a hard, protective shell around my heart. I couldn’t afford any cracks in it now.

“You’ve told me,” I said. “Thank you. But now, what do you want me to do with it? Sean can’t hurt me anymore. Can you honestly sit there with a straight face and tell me this ends things? I haven’t seen Sean in ten years, but I don’t need to know he never changed. If the cartel killed him, it’s because he owed them something. It didn’t seem to take you much to find me after all this time. What makes you think they won’t be next?”

Danny’s face turned stone cold. For a moment, all traces of the man I used to know vanished. Gone were his kind eyes, his warm smile. Something hard and dangerous rose up in its place. Even now, I wanted to reach for him and run my fingers through his thick brown hair. The new style, shaved on the sides, made him look rougher, meaner, and yet still devastatingly handsome.

And there was still enough of Sean in him to make my heart skip. Years ago, I told myself that’s what drew me to him at first. I truly loved Sean Wade once upon a time. Then he hurt me and warped my love into a weapon he used against me. In Danny, I could almost see the promise of what could have been. Where Sean was hard and evil, Danny was pure and good. Only Sean had twisted that goodness too.

Danny reached for me. He grabbed me by the shoulders, his skin searing mine. He turned me to face him. “No one is going to hurt you. Not ever again. I made you a promise ten years ago. I told you to trust me. I’m telling you you still can. You are under my protection. The cartel knows that. And no one knows where you are except for two other men I trust with my life.”

I blanched. “And you trust them with mine?”

Danny swallowed. A vein jumped in his temple. “Yes. God ... Beth ... yes.”

A single tear fell from my eye. Danny watched the track of it down my cheek. “So now you take the Lord’s name in vain, Deacon Wade?”

He didn’t move. Not even to breathe. “It’s the least of my sins, Beth. You of all people know that.”

His words cut straight through me. The thing is, I could believe he hadn’t meant to hurt me with them. But the moment they took to the air, he saw my pain reflected back at him.

“So that’s it, then,” I said. His hands still burned through me where he gripped my shoulders. A different kind of heat melted my insides. Ten years. Ten minutes. It didn’t matter. Danny “Deacon” Wade still had the power to turn my world upside down.

“Fallen angel,” I said, hating that I wanted to hurt him with my words now too. “Is that it? Yes. We both know I’m your greatest sin.”

A storm swirled through my heart, threatening to rip it in half. I’d dreamt of this day so many times. What would it feel like to be close to Danny again? Surely the years and distance should have given us both perspective. We’d both been so lost the last time I saw him. He’d lost his father. I’d finally understood how dangerous Sean really was.

“No,” Danny said, his eyes cold as ice. “You’re many things to me, Beth. But you are not my greatest sin.”

In that moment, I believed him. Pain etched deep lines on his face. God help me, but I wanted to try and kiss them away. One desperate night a million years ago, I had. My body still ached from the memory of the pleasure we took from each other.

“Danny,” I whispered, touching his cheek. For a moment, he sank into my touch, his eyes squeezing shut. Then they snapped open and the ice came back. We let each other go.

“Deacon,” I said with cold resolve. “So you made your deal with the devil, is that it? You finally realized the church couldn’t save you so you traded in your collar for that cut?”

I traced the outline of the white patch at his breast. Deacon reached up and pulled my hand away. “I wanted to make sure you’d be okay.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant now or then. Was he telling me he joined the M.C. for me in some twisted way? I wasn’t sure I could hear the answer just then. It was all too much.

“I’m okay,” I said. “I have a life.”

Something changed in Danny’s face when I said it. As if he had another, deeper question he was afraid to ask. I realized I was harboring the same curiosity. What was Danny’s life now? Was he happy? Did he have someone? Oh yes, for now I was also afraid to ask.

“Thank you,” I said, opening the door beside me. Danny gave me a tight-lipped smile and climbed out of the cab.

As I stepped down to the ground, I hugged my arms around me. I took a few tentative steps, following Danny to his bike. He slid on his aviator glasses and climbed on the Harley. There was still that secret, reckless part of me that wanted to know what it would feel like to climb on behind him, wrap my arms around his waist, and let the road fly under us.

“What I told you is true,” Danny ... Deacon said as he settled into his seat. “No one is going to come looking for you, Beth. Sean’s shit can’t touch you anymore. You can live your life the way you want now. No more looking over your shoulder.”

I nodded. There was little else I could say. “Take care of yourself, Danny ... er ... Deacon.”

Danny revved his engine and the roar of it kickstarted my heart. He gave me one last glance before he pulled out of the driveway and zoomed down the road, leaving me breathless and shattered in his wake.