Page 55 of Summer's Edge

He hugs her tight too, then holds her at arm's length and looks at her.

“You’re covered in blood,” he says. “Are you cut?”

She looks down at her t-shirt which is red with blood. Then she gasps and looks at me.

“It’s your blood, you’re bleeding, he cut you.”

It would appear that he did, all over. Blood is oozing from my arms and my stomach. But I don’t feel any pain.

“It’s fine, just a few scratches. I heal fast.”

Which is especially true now that she’s in my arms again.

I can’t read the look on Ice’s face. I never can. But he’s looking at me like he’s trying to read something off mine.

“This is serious then?” he asks.

“Yes, it’s very serious,” I say and Summer just nods.

He continues looking at me for a few more moments and this time I know exactly what he’s thinking. He doesn’t even have to say it.

“Hurt her and I’ll end you,” he says it anyway.

“Never.”

Then he cracks a grin and claps me on the shoulder. “Welcome to the family. Now let’s get you sewn up.”

My cuts aren’t as bad as all that. I have no trouble lifting my bike off the guy I ran over. He’s not quite dead yet, but my brothers will take care of that.

And I have no trouble riding out of the woods with Summer on the back of my bike, leaning against me and holding onto me tight like she’ll never let go. And I don’t ever want her to.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Summer

If it were up to Edge, we’d just go back to my apartment and get lost in each other. His words. Not mine. And I wanted that too. But I made him take us to Sanctuary so Doc could take a look at his many cuts anyway. Except for the large gash in his forearm which will need stitches—a gash that had probably saved his life as he blocked a slash from above. All the cuts on his body saved my life.

Doc is suturing him up now. I kept leaping up each time fresh blood started oozing from somewhere. So he asked me to go wait outside. I’m sitting in the gazebo near the entrance to the big mansion that is Sanctuary, an ornate white thing that’s been standing here since they built this place back in the nineteenth century. Sanctuary used to be a convalescent hospital back then, a place where the rich could go and get well or die peacefully. But after World War Two, the sole heir turned it into the HQ for the biker club he’d founded. In one way or another, he had lost his entire family to the war. Some fell in battle, others died of grief. No wonder Devil’s Nightmare MC became what it is. A band of killers. However much Cross tries to turn the business around, make it just about selling guns, they always return to what they’re best at—killing. And right now, I’m so grateful to them for that.

I’m trying hard not to think of any of that though.

Hunter got married right here in this gazebo just a few short months ago.

Harper played the new songs she’d written for the family here after she’d been abducted and saved. Some of those made me cry, others smile with joy. My mom taught me and Eden how to make garlands out of spring flowers here once, a million years ago.

But try as I do to focus on all the good memories, my mind keeps going back to that clearing where I almost lost my life tonight.

My head covered by a black cloth bag, so I couldn’t see much, the zip ties cutting into my wrists, so I couldn’t move my arms, and my heart racing, sending my blood through my body so fast it was all I heard.

The guy with the knife was almost on top of me, I could feel his heat. I could smell his nasty breath. I thought I was dead.

Then a bike came roaring into the clearing. And I knew it was Edge even before I saw the outline of his body that I’d recognize anywhere as he slammed into the idiot that was about to end my life.

I heard them fighting, but saw almost nothing. Then someone finally freed me from the mask and restraints. The guy who took me was unconscious on the ground by then, his face gone, but Edge was still hitting him.

I stopped him because I needed his arms around me. Only then did I know it was all over.

“There you are,” my dad says as he walks up out of the darkness. “Aren’t you cold?”

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