“Sit down,” Lucy said, pushing myself off of the chair to head into the kitchen. It was the morning after our kiss, and Lucy was busying herself in the kitchen making me and Delfino breakfast. “I’ll get it for you.”

But just as I was about to get up, Lucy turned, closing the distance between us with what had to be superhuman speed, and pressed her hand to my chest, pushing me back down into my seat. It hurt. Kind of a lot.

“No,” she said as she stood in front of me, blocking me from getting up. Her eyes flickered in the direction of Delfino’s bedroom. “You’re not supposed to be lifting a finger while you recover.”

“I just don’t want you to have to do everything yourself,” I said, once again attempting to get up from my seat. But Lucy had no intention of letting me stand anytime soon.

“You need to play along,” she whispered over the sound of dresser drawers being rummaged through from the master bedroom. “Wait until Delfino leaves, and then you can do whatever you want.”

“Is that a promise?” I asked, a devilish grin crossing my face.

“Shut up!” she hissed, as her cheeks flushed scarlet, her voice dropping to a range that was just barely above a whisper. “Do you know how much trouble we’ll be in if he hears you?”

Despite her protests, I couldn’t help catching the slight smile forming on her lips. That alone gave me enough hope to suffer through playing the part of an invalid while Lucy attended to my needs for as long as Delfino was around. I hated acting so useless. I wasn’t the kind of man to let anyone wait on me when I was capable of doing it myself.

And even if I wasn’t capable… goddammit, I still wanted to try.

“I hope you two are getting along,” came Delfino’s voice from the hallway that led to his bedroom.

Both Lucy and I turned toward the noise as the old man came sauntering out of his room, wearing a crisp black suit that reminded me all too much of a priest—only there was something about it that seemed off, aside from the missing collar, or even the fact that the man in it wasn’t at all godly. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Lucy had said, about the grip that this man supposedly had over the entire town.

“Of course we are,” Lucy said, shooting me a quick look before she glided over to the old man. “What would you like for breakfast?”

Her eyes seemed almost dead, a blank stare masked by a practiced smile as she awaited his request. To see that look in her eye, that mix of despair and lifelessness, broke my heart, but I knew that unless I pushed her, that spark buried deep down inside of her would never see its way back to the surface.

“Nothing this morning Lucy,” Delfino said, patting her on the shoulder as a reward for her attentiveness. “I have a great deal of business today.”

Lucy closed her eyes a moment as he turned away from her, an expression of relief on her face as she watched Delfino walk toward the front door. It was strange the way he always seemed to be in such a hurry to leave, and never departed without a reminder to Lucy of her “duty” to me. When she accompanied him to the stoop, she kissed his cheek. I wasn’t sure how she did it without throwing up.

As soon as she’d closed the door behind him, she leaned against it with a tremendous sigh, as if she’d just finished running a marathon.

“Are you okay?” I asked, walking over to her as I heard Delfino’s car pull out of the driveway. She looked exhausted, a sheen of nervous sweat making her forehead glisten.

“I’m just glad he’s gone,” she said, looking up into my eyes. She tried to force a smile, but I could see right through it. I’d seen that expression enough times looking in the mirror to know better.

“But what’s really bothering you?” I asked. “Did he say something out there?”

“He told me again about how I need to take care of you,” she said, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. “But the way he said it seemed… strange.”

I drew her close to me, making sure to take it easy with just how strongly I pulled her into my body. “What do you mean?”

“I need to ask you something,” Lucy said against the fabric of my shirt, pulling me from my thoughts. “Something that I’ve been wanting to ask ever since you left.”

“Anything you want to know,” I told her. “I’m an open book for you, babe.”

“Why did you leave?” she asked, four simple words that posed more difficulty in answer than if it had been a thousand. “Why didn’t you take me with you?”

At first I wasn’t sure how I could answer her, how I could explain all the complex machinations that had happened between then and now to lead us both to this point. I closed my eyes and held her tight against my chest, running my fingers through her hair. She had the most beautiful hair—soft, curly locks that fell through my fingers like water.

“I need you to understand before I continue that I never actually wanted to leave,” I said into that silken curtain. I was reminded of that night we’d shared, of the way I’d held her in my arms afterward in the rosy afterglow. That night was the best, and worst, memory I had.

“Then why did you?” When I looked down at her, I could see the shimmer of tears in her eyes. The way they refracted the light threatened to rip my heart right out of my chest. It was a simple question, but the answer… it was complicated enough that it might tear us apart.

“Because if I hadn’t, then…” I sighed, running my hand through my hair as I searched for the right words, words that I had practiced again and again but had lost right when I needed them most. “I was afraid of what might have happened to you if the others figured out what we were doing.”

“I don’t understand…” Lucy’s brow creased. Disbelief, confusion, and hurt marched across her features in a slow parade. “They didn’t know? Like you were keeping me some kind of secret from them? Leo… why?” She pushed away from me. “Oh my God. Were you ashamed of me?”

“Jesus, no!” I said, gently pulling her back into my arms—ribs be damned. “Let me start from the beginning.

“We had just gotten into town. I had only been with the club for a few months before I came here, and the old president had just kicked off about a week before that. The new guy, Jackal, was a real piece of shit, a complete asshole, who made it a point to let us know from the get-go that we were not to go out and get to know any of the townspeople here. Especially not the women.

“So the moment I got here, I managed to break rule number one, which would have been bad enough—but the longer we stayed, the more we started to realize just how weird things were, especially when it came to Delfino. He had Jackal spooked something fierce. I didn’t know why at the time, but there were whispers of some kind of turf war brewing. I thought it was bullshit. What one-horse town ends up as rival MC territory? I didn’t know he was mafia back then. But now that I do, it makes all kinds of sense. We were small-time, making most of our cash by riding into towns like Pleasant Lakes and causing a ruckus, then offering to leave in exchange for a payday. We were in no condition to go up against the fucking mob.

“The longer we stayed, the more Jackal warned us to keep our noses clean when it came to getting friendly with the locals, and it got to the point where the last guy to break that rule got his ass handed to him on a silver platter. The longer you and I were together, the more I risked someone finding out, and if he was willing to nearly kill one of our own, I didn’t want to think of what he’d do to you if he found out I’d brought you with me on the back of my bike.”

“But then why didn’t you just leave?” she asked, as though it would have been so simple to walk away. “The club, I mean. Why didn’t you just… take off?”

“Because,” I said, letting a sigh of frustration out through my nose, “being a part of the club isn’t just about riding… it’s about belonging to something. It’s about being a part of a family, and they’d taken me in when I didn’t have anyone else. I owed them. Or I felt like I did. And I thought that it was better to keep you safe where you were than to risk anything happening to you because of me. They wouldn’t have been kind, especially not Jackal.”

“So you chose them over me,” she said quietly. “When it came down to it… you needed them more than you needed what I gave you.”

I shook my head at her. “No, Lulu. I chose your safety over my happiness, and yours. I was trying to protect you… even if it wasn’t the right call in the end.”

“Then what changed? Why’d you come back? Why’d you leave your family?”

“Because of what I caught our ‘fearless leader’ doing,” I said, tensing as I remembered the catalyst that had proven to me my place was here, with Lucy. “We were a few towns over from here, staying in a motel like we usually did, shaking down the locals to get us gone just like we’d done here. Only this time, things went differently.

“I went to check on Jackal in his room.” Clear as day, I could see in my mind the other club members waiting downstairs for our leader to make his big entrance before our nightly ride to make sure the townspeople knew we meant business. I could smell the leather cuts rubbed slick with sweat, the faint, sharp aroma of gasoline that cut through damn near everything we touched. Gasoline and motor oil. We wore them like goddamn cologne.

“He was taking his sweet-ass time getting up. The whole damn club was stuck with their thumbs up their asses, so they sent me up to get his ass out of bed. We all figured he was still hungover from the night before, since the bastard drank like a fish. But when I opened the door… that was the least of my worries.”

I wished like hell I could forget what happened next. I wished I could erase all memory of it, wished I could take the afterimages seared into my retinas and pretend it had never happened. No, that wasn’t fair—I flat-out wished it had never happened. Because as much as what I’d walked in on disturbed the shit out of me, I knew the ones who’d suffered through it had it way, way worse.

“I saw Jackal on the bed,” I began, stomach already churning at the thought of having to say these things out loud, “on top of this girl I’d seen around the motel, which under different circumstances wouldn’t have been weird—the prez is the big boss. Our fearless leader. He can do what he likes, y’know? Even if it breaks the rules he sets for everyone else. Thing was, though… the girl he was sweating over…” I wet my lips; they felt so cracked and dry. “She couldn’t have been a day over fifteen.”

Lucy physically recoiled in my arms, and I couldn’t blame her. I’d had a very visceral reaction to the scene myself. That girl’s eyes—I could still see them. So wide. So full of fear. Her lip gloss was smeared over the lower half of her face where Jackal had clamped his hand down on her mouth to keep her from screaming. Sweat and tears had made her heavily applied eyeliner and mascara run, and the black streaks crackled when she turned her head to look at me, her vacant gaze hollow but pleading.

“I lost it,” I continued, looking down at Lulu. I instantly regretted it; the second our eyes met, that young girl’s face transposed over Lucy’s and bile rose in my throat. “I lost my fucking mind. There’s a lot of shit I can overlook, a lot I can live with, but rape? And of a minor?” I shook my head. “Hell no.”

“What did you do?” she asked me, lips pulled into a grimace. “I mean… he was your leader…” I could see the gears turning in her head. I knew she was thinking of Delfino, about all the shit he’d pulled and the fact that it seemed like no one had tried to stop him. Lord help that man if he’d done anything like that to Lucy. I doubted that he had, given how icy he was, but still…

“I beat the living shit out of him, Lucy,” I said with a sneer. It wasn’t directed at her, but at the image of Jackal’s devilish grin as he asked if I wanted to call dibs on seconds—and then his incredulous snort when he’d told me that she’d wanted it. Old enough to bleed, he’d begun, but I hadn’t let him finish that sentence. “I tore him off of that girl and beat him to a bloody pulp right then and there.” If I thought on it hard enough, I could still feel his flesh tearing under my knuckles, feel the crumbling of his bones.

“Before I knew it I heard the others coming upstairs after me, wondering what was happening, what all that screaming was… When they saw me standing over Jackal, I knew there wasn’t anything else I could do but run. So that’s what I did.”

Hot shame washed over me, prickling my cheeks and the corners of my eyes. I felt like such a fucking coward for not sticking around, for failing to ensure that girl was safe. It reminded me all too sharply of how I’d failed Lucy, especially when she looked at me so uncomprehendingly.

“I don’t understand… Why didn’t you just tell them what had happened? Why didn’t you explain?”

“Because when you’re in a motorcycle club, things don’t work like that,” I told her, rubbing the back of my neck. “I know it sounds bad, but you’re not there to question authority. I mean, you are… just not authority outside of…” I hesitated. The more I put into words the dynamic that existed between Jackal and the rest of the MC, the worse it sounded. “Let’s just say loyalty means a whole damn lot to people like them.”

“I thought you joined the club for a chance at freedom.”

I sighed. “So did I.”

We stood in silence for a while as I let those memories seep out of me, rejecting the poison they made bubble in my veins. Though Lucy’s line of questioning had given me pause, the last thing I needed to be thinking about right now were my former brothers-in-arms. What was going on here, now, in Pleasant Lakes—that was what was important. Not the past. Just our future.

“You can’t go back,” Lucy whispered to me. “After what you’ve done, you can’t go back to your club ever again. Can you?”

I shook my head, despair tugging at my heart. “No. I can’t ever go back there again. Shit…” I forced a rueful laugh. “One of the guys even took a shot at me while I was riding away.”

She breathed a sigh. “I won’t pretend to understand it, Leo. That world and its rules—I don’t get it. But I’m… I’m sorry. Sorry because I know they meant so much to you. Like family.” She looked away from me. “Sorry that you’re all alone in the world now.”

I pulled her back around to face me, caressing her cheek, looking down into her eyes. With a shake of my head, I whispered, “I’m not alone, Lucy. For the first time since I walked out on you, I’m not alone. I’m here, with you, exactly where I oughta be. The rest of it… I’m ready to leave it behind.”

It was true. I was ready to leave behind all the bad and start over with Lucy. Ready to disconnect myself from the world I’d once considered my home, if it meant I could have her in my arms every day and night. None of that other shit mattered anymore. I wanted a chance at something more than bad memories and stolen moments. I wanted to put down roots somewhere. I wanted a house and a home.

And that was saying something. The idea of home never meant much to me, not before Lucy. She’d changed so much for me in that short time we’d spent together, and now that we were reunited, I found myself wanting her all the more. I wanted to give her the kind of life she deserved from the kind of man who deserved her. If that meant hanging up my helmet and letting my Fat Boy rust, well… so be it.

I kind of hoped it wouldn’t, though. Secretly, I hoped I could have my cake and eat it too. That I could find both my freedom and my family in Lucy. That against all odds, I could satisfy both parts of myself. Maybe that was selfish. But with Lulu in my arms, anything and everything felt possible. Once we were out of here… who knew what the horizon held for us?

There was only one way to find out. But how long could I keep playing this game? How long before I did to Delfino what I’d done to Jackal? Could I really keep the beast of my anger at bay long enough to see us through this? We were already playing with fire, and I couldn’t help but wonder: how long before we got burned?