Page 24 of Damron
I jerked away. “It’s nothing. I just—I just need to be somewhere safe for a few hours. After that, I’ll be out of your life again. Promise.”
His expression didn’t change, but I saw the twitch at the corner of his mouth—the precursor to a sneer, or maybe a smile. “You really think this is just a couple of threats? You think you’re gonna sleep it off in the back room?”
The words hit harder than I expected. I tried to stand taller, but my body wouldn’t listen. “You always said you’d help if I needed it. That’s all this is, Damron. I need help.”
He stepped forward, cutting the gap to nothing. “Help, or a shield? ’Cause I don’t see you bringing the feds, the State Troopers, or that band of Ivy League dipshits you call a campaign staff.”
“I’m not here for politics,” I spat, and it sounded so sad and broken that I almost laughed. “I’m here because I don’t want to die.”
For a moment, the mask dropped. He let out a breath, slow and deliberate, and ran a hand over his buzzed scalp. “Fine,” he said. He grabbed a napkin off the table, wrapped it around my bleeding arm, then squeezed tight enough to make me gasp. “Hold that. We’re leaving.”
“Where—”
He cut me off. “Somewhere they won’t find us. You still trust me to pick?”
I nodded, trying not to wince as he yanked my purse out of my grip, slinging it over his own shoulder like it weighed nothing. He motioned toward the door, but before I could move, he did something that caught me completely off guard: he put his hand—rough, scarred, familiar—on the small of my back and guided me forward. It wasn’t sexual, wasn’t even gentle. It was a reflex, a muscle memory. For half a second, I let myself lean into it. Outside, the night was full of wind and the distant whine of police sirens. The parking lot was a graveyard of bikes, most of them black-on-black and chromed within an inch of their lives. Damron walked me straight to the only Harley in the lot that looked like it could eat the others for breakfast. He pulled a helmet from the seat, shoved it into my hands, and didn’t say a word as he swung a leg over the bike. I managed to get the helmet on, even though the world was spinning like a bad carnival ride. He fired up the engine, the noise drowning out everything but the hammering in my chest. I climbed onto the back, arms circling his waist, fingers digging into the leather of his cut. For a second, I felt safe. Then he kicked the bike into gear and we tore out of the lot, leaving the clubhouse and every ghost in it behind.
###
The ride was like getting shot out of a cannon and praying you remembered to pack a parachute. I’d always been good at hiding fear—public speaking, live debates, even that time a protester lobbed a dead rat onto my campaign stage. But there’s no faking it when you’re glued to the back of a Harley at ninety miles an hour, your thighs locked around the man you once promised to love until the world caved in. If he decided to throw me off the back, I would understand why.
The city lights vanished in the rearview before I could catch my breath. We tore past the dying strip malls and gas stations with bulletproof glass, then hit open road so fast my stomachtried to climb out through my throat. The wind was ice water in my lungs. I dug my hands into Damron’s leather cut, fingers finding the old ridge of a knife scar just above his hip. I’d stitched that wound myself once, with a sewing kit and a bottle of Wild Turkey, the night before our wedding. That was another lifetime, one where I still believed in happy endings.
He didn’t talk. Just gunned the throttle and let the Harley scream. I clung, pressed in so tight it was like I was trying to fuse our spines. He must’ve felt it, the way my nails bit into him every time he shifted gears, but he didn’t slow down. Didn’t say a word. When I started to shiver—part cold, part adrenaline, part the memory of blood soaking through my shirt—he reached back with one hand, found my knee, and squeezed. Not a comfort. More of a command: Hold on. Don’t fall.
I held on.
After forty minutes of nothing but asphalt and fear and the taste of panic on my tongue, we peeled off onto a side road so narrow I thought he’d missed the turn. The bike fishtailed on loose gravel. I gasped, probably louder than I meant, but he just corrected and kept riding. The road climbed, twisting into mountains I’d only seen from airplane windows. There were trees now, thickening with every mile, the darkness between them so total I wondered if we’d crossed into another country, or maybe just another set of rules. He cut the engine at the end of a dirt track. Silence crashed down, absolute and holy. For a second, I couldn’t hear anything but my own blood in my ears. Then: a faint ticking as the engine cooled, the shriek of some coyote off in the brush, and the whisper of wind in the pines.
The cabin was just there, a black outline crouched beneath the trees. No lights, no movement, nothing to say a human had lived here in a decade. Damron dismounted, boots hitting the ground with a crunch. He peeled the helmet off my head and tossed it into the dirt, then caught me under the armpits as I tried toslide off. My legs went to jelly as soon as I hit earth, but I didn’t let him see me stumble. He didn’t waste time on pleasantries. Just grabbed the keys from his pocket, stomped up the porch, and shouldered the door open with a sound like a gunshot. I followed, knees shaking so hard I thought they’d rattle right off.
Inside, it was colder than outside. The air stank of dust, old wood, and something metallic. There was a single room: a bed against one wall, a wood stove with a pile of gray logs beside it, a table and two chairs, and nothing else. No pictures, no curtains, no hint that anyone had ever called this place home. It looked like a hideout from a shitty horror movie.
Damron lit a match, then a kerosene lamp on the table. The room glowed a dirty yellow. He yanked off his cut and slung it over a chair, then went to work on the stove, stacking logs and crumpling newspaper until a blaze caught. The heat was instant and almost painful against my numb skin. I stood in the doorway, trying to unpeel my fingers from the death grip they’d welded to my phone. I looked around for cell bars, knowing I wouldn’t find any, then finally powered the fucking thing down. My mind buzzed with all the reasons I shouldn’t be here, but my body disagreed. It wanted warmth, quiet, and the illusion of safety, even if it was temporary.
He finished with the stove, then turned and stared. Not at me—at the blood seeping through my blouse. “Sit,” he said, and pointed to the table.
I obeyed. He rooted around in a drawer by the bed, came back with a first-aid kit and a bottle of something clear and unlabeled. He poured a splash onto a clean rag and handed it to me.
“For the pain,” he said, then grinned. “Or just pour it on your arm if you’re feeling brave.”
I took the bottle and slugged it. Moonshine, probably. It burned like napalm but got the job done. He set to work peeling back the bandage, hands gentler than they had any right to be. Iwinced as he checked the wound, then let myself look at his face. It was softer in the lamplight, but there was nothing soft in his eyes. Just focus, and maybe—maybe—a flicker of something old and dangerous. It was the look that made me swoon back in the day. For a moment, he was the man I fell in love with long ago.
He dressed the wound, wrapped it tight, and when he finished, he put his hands flat on the table and leaned in until we were close enough to share a single breath. “No one knows about this place,” he said. His voice was low, barely above a whisper. “Not even Nitro.”
I believed him. And in that moment, I knew exactly how fucked I was.
###
For the next twenty minutes, we circled each other in the cabin like two drunks at a knife fight—never getting closer than we had to, never letting the other out of sight. Damron built the fire up with military precision, hands moving so steady and quiet you’d never guess he’d killed a man with those same fingers. I paced the floor, arms tight across my chest, sweat drying sticky on my skin. Every time I looked at the bandage, I got mad all over again—at the shooter, at the campaign, at myself for coming here in the first place. The first words hung in the air so long I thought they’d freeze solid.
“You should’ve let me handle this my way,” he said, without turning from the stove.
“Yeah,” I snapped, “because the biker solution to everything is so fucking elegant.”
He grunted. “Worked for a while.”
I drifted to the window, peering out into the black. Nothing but trees and the faint gleam of chrome where the Harley crouched by the porch. “I still don’t get why you brought me here. Why not just keep me at the clubhouse with your army?”
