A soft hand on my hair pulled me from my dreams, my eyes slowly peeking open. It took a lot of effort, I was utterly exhausted and my body ached. The doctors were weaning me off the strong painkillers because I was set to head home tomorrow.

To which home, though, I really wasn’t quite sure.

“Hey, baby girl,” my mom whispered, her hand gently stroking my hair back from my face, a gentle and warm gesture which reminded me of what she used to do when I was sick.

“Hey, Mom.”

She smiled.

She’d been to visit me every day for the almost two weeks I’d been in here. Spending hours just sitting in the corner reading, keeping to herself, while the others came in and out—Ham and Romeo, Ripley and Huntsman. Eventually, my dad would drag her away, grumbling about giving me space to heal and not crowding me.

I could already feel the difference in her. It was in her smile. It was in the way she seemed like she was finally at peace.

I knew there was a conversation we needed to have, and with my time here coming to an end, I wasn’t sure if I would get another opportunity to ask her the questions I needed to hear the answers to, and also tell her one thing.

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

Her eyes widened before her brow creased between her eyes. “What do you mean?”

I swallowed the nervous lump in my throat.

This was it.

I needed to say what I needed to say.

“I’m sorry for the past few months. How I treated you. How I argued and fought with you…” I stopped and cleared my throat, trying not to get emotional. “You didn’t deserve that.”

Her face settled, the tenseness leaving as she seemed to understand what I was saying.

“I was a brat—”

“No, Meyah. You weren’t a brat. You were right,” she admitted, reaching for my hand and squeezing it tightly. “You’re so much stronger than I was at your age. You have this amazing and beautiful power inside you, and that’s something to be proud of. I let things break me down so easily, and I didn’t fight back. First with Huntsman’s wife, then with Mom and Dad dying…” she clenched her jaw, “… and things with Isiah.”

“That would have broken anyone,” I assured her, lacing my fingers through hers.

She shook her head. “No. It wouldn’t have broken you. You’re so much more than that, and I’m so proud of you for fighting for what you want.”

I cleared my throat and blinked back the tears, her words warming my heart. “What about Denver?”

Her body jerked like she’d been struck by a bullet. She took a moment to fill her lungs again before looking at me with tears in her eyes. “Maybe one day I’ll have to tell him… but I hope that day never comes.”

My heart ached for my little brother, who drove me crazy on the best of days, but who was going to get to an age where he wanted to find his dad too.

Thinking about it that way, I almost lucked out with Huntsman compared to what Denver was going to have to face, and the emotions it might make him feel about himself.

“He’ll be okay,” Mom assured me, patting the back of my hand. “He’s going to have a lot of family to get him through the tough stuff and teach him how to be strong. I’m sure the club won’t let him break down.”

My heart skipped a beat, and my mouth fell open.

She laughed. It was free. It was laid back. It was her finally letting go of the past and having it control her. I could see in her eyes, the way she smiled, the tone of her voice. Things had changed.

“Close your mouth, you catching flies or something?” she teased playfully. “I’m never going to be perfect, Meyah, I’m still going to try and protect you in ridiculous ways. I’m still going to nag you, and I’m still not going to be the biggest fan of the MC because I know the danger that comes with them. But I’m also not going to stop you from doing things or being with someone who makes you as happy as Ham does.”

I laughed as tears poured down my cheeks. “I love you, Mom.”

Things were going to get better, I could tell. She would still have her opinions, and I could tell there would be things we would disagree on, but who gave a shit. Because all that mattered was that we were both happy.

I knew no one would likely tell me what happened for her to get this kind of peace and understanding over her life and the world around her, but I didn’t care. Whatever it was, she needed it.

We needed it.

“I have one more question,” I grinned as I wiped the tears from my cheeks.

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “What?”

“Are you and Huntsman going to start something?”

She started to laugh, her head shaking back and forth.

“So fucking funny, is it?”

I jumped out of my skin, looking over to see Huntsman leaning in the doorway, a smirk on his face.

“I’m not good enough for you now I’m old?” Mom didn’t even bother to turn around, just rolled her eyes. “And don’t roll your eyes at me, woman.”

“Exhibit A,” she muttered, pointing to my father.

I don’t know if I’d been hoping for it or not, but it was obvious there was no electric spark between my parents, even though they seemed to be getting along pretty damn well the past two weeks. And my mom hadn’t told me, but Ham informed me she was even staying at The Exiled clubhouse.

“We were never meant to be,” Mom carried on. “I love him, but only because he helped me create you. There isn’t anything else there.”

“The past is gonna stay in the past,” Huntsman agreed, nodding at Mom when she looked over her shoulder at him. “Future is all that matters now.”

I nodded, smiling at both of them. “I second that.”

“Stop! Damn it,” I snapped at Ham who had been pacing the room for a little over twenty minutes as he waited for the doctor to come and hand me the release papers.

I’d been there for twelve days, my hospital room had been filled to the brim regularly with club members from fucking everywhere. Brothers had come in from all over the country, with their old ladies and whoever else they could gather.

Ham and Romeo managed to fill eighty percent of Isiah’s club with family, including guys on the doors, men out the back, and people behind the bar. Hundreds of fucking people, all with one goal—me.

“You know I hate this place,” he grumbled, continuing to pace back and forth and totally ignore me. “I’m ready to take you home.”

We hadn’t discussed where home was yet. Even Mom, Uncle Leo, and Huntsman had all kept pretty quiet about where I was going after I got out of here. And given how much they loved to make their opinion known, that was pretty surprising.

“Just let him pace,” Romeo commented from his permanent seat in the corner of the room. “He gets this way when he gets nervous. You should have seen him when he was at school taking a test, or before a baseball game. He’d practically wear a hole in the floor.”

I rolled my eyes as the doctor walked in, thankful Ham was going to be able to calm down, and I was going to be able to get some fresh air and real food.

“Meyah, I’m so happy to see you looking better,” Doctor Theo proclaimed with a wide grin before looking down at my chart and running his finger over everything. “Looks like you’ve really bounced back… extremely quickly for someone who came in like you did.”

He meant dead.

When I got through the hospital doors, I was dead.

They managed to bring me back around pretty quickly, so it seems.

But there were a couple of days where things were really touch and go. They kept me in a coma for the first two to help my body process the new blood I’d received, and to try and make my brain heal given I’d spent some time without oxygen.

Do I remember seeing some bright light calling me home? No.

But I did remember hearing Ham’s voice pleading with me not to leave. I don’t remember what he said, but I knew I’d heard his voice almost the whole time I was out. And I remember not wanting to leave him, fighting and knowing if I just got back to him, things would be okay.

He would protect me.

He was my knight in shining armor.

He always had been.

Since the moment we’d met.

I thought I didn’t need him anymore. That I wanted to be the one to stand and rescue myself. But I was starting to realize there would be times where I would need him to be that person—my knight—to help me when I felt like I couldn’t stand on my own, or to pull me back when I was getting too close to the light.

I’d always need him, no matter how independent or how strong I felt.

Because there were times when he’d need me too.

Doctor Theo scrawled messily on the form before handing it off to his nurse and giving me a piece of paper. “Look after yourself, Meyah, someone will be in touch for a checkup in a couple of weeks.”

Romeo was out of his chair and grabbing my bag from its place beside the door before I’d even taken the piece of paper from Dr. Theo’s hand, and Ham already had his hand on my back, pressing me toward the exit gently. “Time to go. Thanks, doc,” he called over his shoulder.

I was confused, so I didn’t mention anything as we left the building and Ham helped me into an SUV outside with Romeo driving and Ham climbing in the backseat with me.

“So I’m an Uber now?” Romeo asked, looking in the rearview mirror and rolling his eyes.

“Just drive, asshole,” Ham urged, narrowing his back at his little brother.

I sat back, happy to be leaving that place and starting to feel normal again. Well, as normal as I could get. I was still sore and healing, my body having taken a beating. I knew I looked like shit. My cheek still multiple colors of the rainbow and hobbling because of the surgery they’d had to do to repair my leg. But it was getting better every day.

“Where are we going?” I finally asked when Romeo passed by the exit to the airport.

“Arizona,” he responded simply.

I looked at Ham. “We’re going back to Arizona?”

I don’t know why part of me felt disappointed not to be heading home to Athens. I loved Arizona. I loved school. I missed Dakota like hell. But she’d already missed too many classes to stay in Las Vegas with me. Arizona was close to Huntsman, and Ripley, both who’d visited me every single day and bought me girly magazines and clothes and anything else I asked for. But it was miles away from Ham. And Ham was home for me.

“I want to go back to Athens.”

Romeo’s eyes instantly widened, and he gazed back at me before looking back at the road.

Ham reached out and grabbed my hand. “Why? You love it down here.” I could see the sincerity in his gaze. He wanted me to be happy, but the truth was, nowhere was ever going to be good enough without him.

“I don’t want to go back to visits on the weekends,” I told him, shaking my head. “I want to come home and talk to you about my day. I want to ask your opinion on what I should wear to job interviews. I want to argue about what we’re having for dinner.”

Romeo snorted, but the smart boy kept his mouth closed.

Ham just grinned back at me. “You’re exhausted and emotional. Let Uber man drive us to Tucson, and we can talk about it when we get there. Meyah, just trust me on this okay?”

I considered arguing and demanding Romeo pull the car over and head to the airport, but I didn’t. “I trust you.”

I could see how those words affected him, how important they were. He leaned across the back seat and pressed his lips to mine. I kissed him back, searching for more, wanting to touch him and just fall to pieces in his arms. He pulled back, and I leaned forward, not ready to let him go just yet.

“Damn it, can you two not do that where I can see,” Romeo complained.

“You shouldn’t be looking, you should be watching the road,” Ham argued. He pulled my lip in between his teeth and the both of us started to laugh.

I’d learned my lesson about trusting Ham. As far as I was concerned, home was where he was. Everything else was a bonus.

“Meyah.”

I blinked, reaching up to wipe the sleep from my eyes, and bring everything back into focus. I’d ended up moving into the middle seat halfway back to Arizona and curling into Ham’s side, not caring I was probably going to drool all over his club cut and T-shirt because he was mine anyway.

I would just call it my way of claiming him. Noticing that the car had stopped and Romeo was already climbing out, I frowned. But when I looked out the window, we weren’t at my dorms. “Where are we?” I didn’t recognize the neighborhood, all I could see were large buildings, places like machine parts or repairs, building supplies, and then finally, a mechanic.

But it wasn’t that which caught my attention. It was the people standing outside.

“What the hell?” I asked in confusion, before looking at a smug Ham. “What’s going on here?”

He unclipped his belt and mine then opened the door. I followed him out, allowing him to keep me steady. My leg had started to ache a little from being in the car, but I wasn’t about to complain about it when I saw Uncle Leo, Optimus, Blizzard, my mom, Huntsman, and Ripley all standing outside this old mechanic’s building with the most infectious smiles on their faces. There were a few other men there, ones I’d recognized from the hospital and a few I didn’t.

There were a million emotions swirling in my head.

I was excited, I was confused, I was nervous, and I was happy, but I still had no idea what was going on. All I knew was it was big, big enough that there were members from other chapters here, and my father and brother.

“What’s going on here?” I demanded, trying to be stern but unable to stop myself from smiling. “Where are we?”

“Phoenix, Arizona,” Romeo offered as he walked up beside us.

Uncle Leo looked at Ham. “You wanna tell her?”

I pulled back and looked up at him. “Tell me what?”

Ham brushed my hair back from my face, I could tell he was excited, almost fucking giddy as he spoke. “When you came back to school after Macy’s birthday, I sat down with Optimus and talked to him about how I could make this work,” he explained, licking his lips nervously. “I knew I wasn’t going to stop you from being somewhere that made you happy, but I couldn’t leave the club either. The club is my family, but you’re where my heart is, which made it fucking hell.”

I knew it was taking a lot of guts for him to explain how he was feeling in front of his brothers and my parents, and I was fighting back the urge to say “excuse me” and drag him back to Romeo’s SUV for a moment.

“The Brothers by Blood doesn’t have a chapter anywhere on the West Coast, the nearest chapter is either Texas or Montana,” he explained, his smirk growing bigger the further my mouth fell open. “There’s been talk about starting a chapter up over this way for years, so we got in touch with a couple of other clubs and Shotgun, the VP in Colorado put his hand up to run it.”

He nodded toward the group of club members standing off to the side and a man raised his arm, and by arm, I meant fucking tree trunk because holy shit. He had blond hair, looked to be closer to my dad’s age, but fitter than a lot of men younger than him. He grinned and dipped his head.

“So what you’re saying is…”

“Jesus woman, he’s telling you he’s been granted a transfer down here to help start the club,” Romeo interjected, throwing his arms in the air.

Ham reached out and punched his brother in the arm. “So?” he asked, searching my eyes as if he wasn’t sure what my reaction was going to be.

“This is gonna be it?” I asked, pointing at the old mechanic’s shop. It had a main building which was two-story, then connected was a long set of six large vehicle bays with roller doors.

It was huge, and I could most definitely see the potential…

… the potential to be our home.

A new club, where we get to build a life, and a family, and to start something incredible. Where he has his brotherhood, I have school, and we can still see family as often as we want, but without any pressures.

It was close to Huntsman, it was close to Romeo and to Phee. This was where we would get to make our start.

“Yeah…” Ham said, nervously watching me take it in. “This is it. It needs some renovating. A lot of fucking work actually, but—”

“It looks amazing.”

I was picked up off my feet in less than a second, giggling, as he swung me around and peppered kissed on my face and neck. He placed me back down, holding my face in his hands, searching my eyes frantically. “You’re in?”

This was a new adventure, one we were going to take together. It would probably have its ups and downs, I’d probably want to kill him at some point, and he’ll probably want to do the same to me.

“All in.”

I didn’t care where, or when, or how, or why.

With Ham, I’d always be all in.