Page 60 of Sinful
I start the bike and head out.
The ride feels endless.
Every mile, I'm arguing with myself.
Turn around. This isn't your fight. She made her choice. Let her deal with the consequences.
You're here for the alliance. For Phantom. For the Shotgun Saints.
Not for some girl who lied about her name and fucked you once.
But my hands keep the throttle twisted. My body keeps leaning into curves. And I keep riding north.
Past midnight.
Past exhaustion.
Past the point where rational thought exists.
My back aches from hours in the saddle—I rode ten hours from Texas yesterday, and now I've been riding for hours today.
My hands are numb, my ass is screaming, and I'm running on nothing but adrenaline and something I don't want to name.
Something that feels dangerously like caring.
The highway is empty.
Just me and the broken white line and the darkness pressing in from all sides.
I think about my sisters.
Emma and Claire.
Seven and nine when they died.
Would be twenty-five and twenty-seven now if they'd lived.
Would have lives, maybe families, maybe happiness.
Instead they're ash and memory and the reason I can't stay anywhere.
I was supposed to protect them.
That's what big brothers do.
But I wasn't home that night.
Was out with friends, being a stupid teenager, thinking I had all the time in the world.
Came back to flames and sirens and the smell of burning wood and burning flesh.
Never got to say goodbye.
Never got to save them.
The guilt's been with me for eighteen years.
A weight I carry everywhere, pressing down on my chest until some days it's hard to breathe.
