This ride is bittersweet.

I’m still wrapped around him tighter than ever, but tears are staining my face. I keep the visor on the helmet pulled all the way down so he can’t see it.

He needs to swing by the bar before taking me home, something about paperwork, and I don’t care. If I could extend this ride for the rest of my life I would do it in a heartbeat.

It just can’t happen right now. No matter how explosive our lovemaking is, no matter how great of a guy he is deep down—underneath the cut, the leather, the club—and no matter how hard I’m falling for him, now is not the time. I need to dump all my focus into my future career, and I haven’t quite let go of my past enough to trust him fully. Even worse is the looming possibility that once he finds out about it, once he finds out I rolled over on a drug kingpin to save myself, he could kill me. If he doesn’t, his father surely will.

Playing cool took everything in me. Watching disappointment wash over his face damn near killed me. I don’t want this to be our last ride, and maybe someday I can tell him the truth, pour my heart out to him, but it’s not fair to ask him to wait for me to get my personal shit straight.

The plan is to hang out outside the Bucktail Saloon, and keep my helmet low. I don’t need Olive seeing me here with him. Neither does he. We’d both be in for a lecture that neither one of us needs right now.

All I need right now is the cool breeze on my back and the smell of the leaves getting ready to turn flowing through my blood. It’s time for all of us to let go.

We pull into the gravel parking lot, and he doesn’t say a word. He just slides off the bike around me and keeps on walking. He doesn’t even look back and it breaks my heart in a million pieces.

I sit there perched up against his motorcycle as I watch a group of men pull in. They’re wearing the familiar patch, and I’m sure I know some of them from the hospital. I’m sure they all know exactly who I am just from where I’m standing. I don’t want to wave. I don’t want to make niceties.

They’re fucking criminals, Sloan, I remind myself. The kind of men I vowed I’d never get tangled up with ever again. They would rip your heart out and feed it to you if they had any idea who you really are.

This will probably be the last time they see me anyway. By this time next week, Gavin will move on to his next conquest, and no one will ever speak my name again.

They say your whole life flashes before your eyes right before a near-death experience. In my case, things slow down. Super slow—like sludge, mud, cement—this rain of bullets litters the parking lot and I see each one whirring around me before I have the mind to get to the ground.

It’s noise, it’s chaos. The visor of my helmet is keeping the dust from my lungs, but I am choking. I feel like I’ve been laying here for hours, trying to catch my breath.

Then silence.

I wiggle my fingers and toes. I nervously run my hand over my body, making sure I’m coated in gravel and not shrapnel. Nothing feels bloody, nothing feels broken.

Now that I know I’m ok, I go into that mode. That place where I am a healer, I am a problem solver. It’s time for me to put the pieces back together. I toss the helmet aside and slowly stand up, peeking out from behind the bike.

“Is anyone hurt?” I shout, sprinting over to the group of men on the ground.

“I think I’m hit!” I hear someone scream. He’s cradling his shoulder as blood pours onto his hand.

“Let’s get that arm up over your head,” I say. “You don’t worry about anything. I’m a doctor.”