The nausea subsided, and Bulldog put his hand on his nightstand and used it to help himself stand. He took long, deep breaths and managed to take a step. And several more as he inched his way into the bathroom.

  Someone had stopped the bleeding in his shoulder, but they hadn’t cleaned him up. Bulldog had dried blood on his face and neck, and he angled his body to see the wrap on his shoulder covered quite a large area. A groan came out of his mouth as he used the wrong hand to reach for the faucet.

  He’d been shot in the right shoulder, and he was right-handed, so his instinct had triggered him to use his injured arm. Clumsily, he managed to get a washcloth wet with hot water and wipe himself down. He couldn’t go out in public smeared with blood.

  He had no idea where his phone was, and the tasks in front of him started to mount. He needed to get dressed. Find food and painkillers. Inspect every room in the clubhouse to see who was still here.

  And his first stop needed to be Daddy’s rooms.

  He needed to find his phone, and his keys, and figure out if he could hold himself upright on a bike, along the curvy roads that led back to Grand Central.

  He needed to call his sisters—and Dani.

  Desperation clogged his throat, and he steadied himself against the bathroom counter. “One thing at a time,” he told his reflection. He was clean now. So he’d get dressed.

  By the time he’d pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt, he was panting and had to sit down on the couch. He managed to get a bottle of water out of his fridge, and he sipped it slowly while his body calmed down. He took a few painkillers with the water and sighed.

  He got up again once he could, and he approached the closed door. His nerves made him jumpy, but he pulled open the door smoothly and waited. Nothing happened. No one appeared.

  He poked his head out and looked both ways down the hall. It was utterly silent in the clubhouse, the way it was early in the morning when Bulldog got up before everyone else.

  In the kitchen, he found cupboards standing open. They were empty. The fridge was empty. Dishes and trash remained from the party, as no one had focused on anything but the contest vote at last night’s church.

  “Maybe it wasn’t even last night,” he said to himself. His legs shook and he paused to lean against the bar. He had no idea how much time had passed since he’d been shot, though the sun was shining in through the entrance doors to his right.

  He found salt and pepper shakers in one cupboard, along with a roll of paper towels. But no food. So he navigated back to his room and picked up one of the apples he’d taken for Dani several days ago.

  He took a bite and thought about the woman that had blown open his whole life. It seemed strange that they’d only worked together for a few days and yet he felt so strongly about her.

  It felt like he’d been seeing her, kissing her, for months, not days. She’d gotten him to trust her. To sit on the beach with her. To open himself up to the possibility of a future outside of this clubhouse that included a real, loving relationship.

  He’d never thought his future would have that, though he’d dreamed of life beyond these walls.

  Starting to feel human, he left his room again and went back to the rec room. Past it and down the hall to Daddy’s rooms. Still not a sound met his ears, and no one stood guard outside his rooms. The entire place had an abandoned feel to it, and Bulldog checked the office and the piano studio before he went into Daddy’s bedroom.

  He wasn’t there.

  Bulldog relaxed a little as he left the suite and started exploring the rest of the clubhouse. The bottom floor was empty, and climbing the steps was a real bear. But he did it, moving from room to room, finding no one. Things had been packed in a hurry, and Bulldog found himself back in the mechanic bay, and he could see everything that had happened.

  The chairs were in complete disarray. Blood stained the floor and some spots on the walls. He remembered Daddy’s bloody face and Razor’s high-pitched laugh.

  On the corkboard across the room, a paper had been pinned with his name scrawled on it. He stumbled over the chair in front of him, his focus on the letters written in Rooster’s handwriting. A set of keys hung from the tack too, and Bulldog ignored the stitch in his side and the flare of pain in his shoulder as he hurried across the room.

  Bulldog pulled the paper down and read a note on the back of it. After he’d passed out, the vote had been finished. Even Razor had voted yes, and Daddy was thrown out. Rooster and Sampson had cleaned up Bulldog, and everyone had decided to leave for a while.

  “Out of fear,” Bulldog read. Daddy was unpredictable, and he’d always landed on his feet. He had strong ties to a deadly club down south, and Rooster hadn’t known where he’d gone.

  So they feared he could return, with more men and more firepower, and no one wanted to be around for that.

  We’ll come back if you want to continue the club, Rooster had said. Sorry was his last word on the paper, and Bulldog let it drift to the ground.

  He didn’t want to continue the club. He wanted to watch it burn.

  He grabbed his keys and went through the metal door that led outside. His bike sat there, with his cellphone on it. He called Rooster, who answered with, “Finally, Bulldog. You’re awake.”

  “I don’t want to continue the club,” he said.

  “I figured as much,” Rooster said with resignation.

  “Where are you?”

  “Mav set up some temporary shelters for anyone who needs them. He’s got his place above Ruby’s, as well as some makeshift beds in the shop itself. And then some space in, uh, that high-rise we went to last year.” He cleared his throat, and Bulldog knew exactly how he was feeling.

  “All right,” Bulldog said.

  “Where are you going?” Rooster asked, and Bulldog noted that he hadn’t said where he was exactly.

  “My sister’s place here,” he said. “Then Lila’s in Forbidden Lake.” He omitted Dani’s, though it would’ve been easier to stop by her place before riding down the lake to the next town.

  “Is Dani there?” Rooster asked.

  “Should she be?”

  “Yeah, she said she’d come get you,” Rooster said. “Yesterday.”

  “Yesterday? What day is it today?”

  “Tuesday.”

  Bulldog had lost a lot of time, but it didn’t seem to matter. If Dani had been at the clubhouse, he hadn’t found any evidence of it. He looked at his phone, and the last time she’d called was early on Monday morning. Middle-of-the-night early.

  He stuffed his phone in his back pocket, the movement with his left hand awkward. Bulldog didn’t want to acknowledge what he already knew.

  Dani was gone.

  He went back into the bay, anger and frustration fueling him now. Truth be told, he was sad too. He’d lost everything. Maybe not in the way he’d thought he would. But he had, nonetheless.

  His brothers in the club were all gone. He and Dani had never defined anything between them, but he’d thought of her as his girlfriend. His. She was gone too.

  This building had to go as well.

  He managed to lift a container of gasoline and take it into the rec room. The furniture here would be the most flammable, and with the room being in the center of the building, the fire would spread quickly.

  After drenching two couches in gasoline, his chest heaved and his heart pounded. He limped into the kitchen, looking in the drawers with plastic forks and ketchup packets until he found a box of matches.

  He’d have to hurry once he struck the match, and he steeled himself to fight through the pain.

  He drew in a deep breath.

  He pulled the match along the side of the box, a thrill running through him as the flame burst to life.

  Then he tossed it onto the couch, and the flames roared to life instantly.

  Bulldog moved then, running as fast as he could back to the bay and out the door. He grunted as he threw his leg over his bike and got the engine rumbling. The scent of smoke was already filling the air, and Bulldog motored around the corner of the building.

  He paused, needing to watch.

  It didn’t take long for the flames to lick their way toward the extra oxygen, and the glass doors exploded as the heat from the fire intensified.

  Bulldog shielded his face, but he sat far enough away to be outside the blast zone. Heat and smoke filled the air now, lifting into the air as the clubhouse burned and burned and burned.

  Bulldog wanted to leave everything behind here except his body. His name. The man he’d been. All of it. He hadn’t returned to his room for anything—not his leather jacket with his Hawks patches. Not his cuts. Not even a spare pair of boots.

  The sound of crackling filled the air, then a terrible crash as something inside the building gave in to the flames.

  It was then that Tyson revved his motorcycle and got it moving, the fire, the building, everything but what he wore and what he rode, in his rear-view mirror.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Mama,” Jonas said, but Dani didn’t look away from the television. She’d been flipping through channels when she’d caught sight of the special broadcast, the red stripe with horizontal words scrolling along the bottom of the screen.

  A fire was raging in the woods north of town.

  Instinctively, Dani knew it was the Hawks’ clubhouse that was burning.

  What she didn’t know was where Tyson was.

  She’d never gone to get him yesterday. She hadn’t called or texted. She’d made her decision, and now all she could do was live with the consequences.

  Her stomach writhed, as she hadn’t eaten all that much in the past couple of days. She hadn’t left the house either, and she’d been frugal with the cash Tyson had given her. She could afford to go another week without looking for a job, and the very thought of that had her wishing with everything inside her to be back in that cramped, paper-strewn office.

  With Tyson.

  How had he gotten under her skin and inside her heart so quickly?

  She didn’t know. What she did know was that she couldn’t contact him now. He wouldn’t stop by her place, and she reasoned he was long gone by now. Probably slipped over the Canadian border, off somewhere she’d never see him again.

  A tear splashed her cheek, and she changed the channel before swiping it away.

  “Mom.” Jonas appeared in front of her, and she sucked in a breath.

  “What, baby?” When she looked into the eyes of her son, she saw Reid. She’d lost her husband, true. But she had a reminder of him staring her in the face, every day.

  What could she use to remind herself of her brief time with Tyson?

  Cabana forty-seven, on the southern shores of Lake Michigan.

  “You wanna go to the beach today?” she asked.

  Jonas cheered, and Dani smiled as she stood up. “All right. I just need to call and get a spot.”

  Everything she did after that seemed to happen in slow motion. It took forever to find a can of sunscreen that had enough for the whole day at the beach. She cut up celery and carrots, and that took eons. The first and second times she called Sunshine Shores, she got a message.

  She put four bottles of water in her beach bag as the line rang for the third time. “Sunshine Shores, how can I help you?”

  “Yes,” Dani said, more relieved than necessary that someone had answered the phone. “I want to reserve a cabana for today.”

  “Okay, let’s see….”

  “Number forty-seven, if you have it,” she said.

  “That’s on the first row,” she said. “It’s not free for first row.”

  “I know,” Dani said, because anything worth having in life wasn’t free. She realized in that moment that she’d given up Tyson too easily. If he was worth having, he was worth fighting for. He was worth an hour of her time to drive and pick him up.

  And she hadn’t done it.

  Misery coated the back of her throat no matter how hard she tried to swallow it away.

  “Forty-seven is available,” the woman said.

  “Great,” Dani said. “I’ll take it for the rest of the week.” She needed to get out of Grand Central. She’d never wanted to leave her hometown, but something nagged at her now. The police had been at the Hawks’ clubhouse only a couple of days ago. She’d given them her name. What if they came questioning her?

  Not that she was guilty of anything, but she still wanted to get out of town for a few days. She could move some cash over from her savings, which contained the last bit of Reid’s life insurance to pay for a hotel, food, whatever.

  She thought about relocating permanently—and not just to Forbidden Lake. She could go anywhere, find a job in any city. It would certainly be easier to find employment, especially good employment, in a bigger place.

  She had to use her card to reserve the cabana for the rest of the week, which she did. After that, everything started moving faster, and before she knew it, she’d pulled her coverup over her swimming suit and shouldered her bag.

  “Ready?” she asked Jonas, who’d been wearing his swimming trunks for the past hour.

  “Yep.” He slid off the chair at the dining room table, where he’d been playing on an ancient tablet Dani had gotten from her sister.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’re going to go say hi to daddy before we go.”

  “And grandma and grandpa?”

  Dani’s throat closed at the thought of her parents. She’d lost them during her junior year of college, and she’d been so distraught she’d never gone back. She was suddenly tired, but she knew it wasn’t physical exhaustion. She was tired of letting bad things dictate her life.

  “Yep,” she said as merrily as she could. “Grandma and grandpa too.”

  Jonas had never met them in the flesh, but Dani could sometimes feel the presence of her parents, particularly her mother. She let her hand drift over the top of Jonas’s head as he stepped past her to go out into the garage.

  The doorbell rang, and Dani turned back to the front door. “Wait a second, baby,” she said.

  Before she could get Jonas to come back in the house, loud pounding landed on the front door, and Dani gasped.

  “Dani,” Tyson called, and her heart started doing cartwheels.

  “Go in the backyard,” she said to Jonas, watching him do as she said before she faced the front door and started walking toward it.

  Tyson had covered the peephole with his hand again, but Dani opened the door anyway. Only a couple of inches, but enough to see the hope and fear on his face.

  “Dani,” he said, much quieter now. “You’re okay.”

  She could’ve said the same thing about him, but she couldn’t get her voice to work.

  “It’s over,” he said, and she was still trying to process the fact that he was there. Alive. Not in handcuffs. And his motorcycle sat on the curb too. How she hadn’t heard him pull up, she wasn’t sure.

  “Over?” she repeated.

  “Yeah,” he said. “The Hawks are no more.”

  She wasn’t sure how he felt about that, as his face held a mixture of emotions she couldn’t sort through and identify fast enough. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to Forbidden Lake right now,” he said. “I’d sure like it if you thought about leaving Grand Central.” He dropped his gaze to the ground. “I know I have no right to ask you that. We’re not together or anything.” He shrugged one shoulder and winced as a hiss of pain came from his mouth.

  So he was hurt.

  And his injury could’ve just as easily been hers. Or Jonas’s.

  “Anyway,” he said. “I just wanted you to know it was over.”

  “Where’s Daddy?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, and she didn’t detect any dishonesty in his voice. Tyson never had lied to her, not about anything important. He’d tried to hide things, and she’d learned them anyway.

  She exhaled, imagining the cold-eyed biker pulling up outside her house one day…when she was alone….

  She shivered, though it was plenty warm.

  Tyson knocked on the doorframe. “All right. See you later.” With that, he left, his step a tiny bit stuttered but otherwise strong and sure.

  He walked right out of her life, and Dani stood there and let him do it. The roar of his motorcycle filled the neighborhood, and Dani watched him drive away without looking back at her.

  He’d come to see if she was all right, and she was.

  Dani told herself that was the only reason he’d come, but deep down, she knew it wasn’t. He’d come to see if they were together or not, and Dani had answered that question by saying less than ten words, none of which were exclamations that she was so happy he was okay and to come in and have a cup of coffee.

  Her neighbor across the street came out onto the front porch, and Dani realized she was still standing in the doorway. She lifted her hand in an acknowledging wave and stepped back, closing the door and locking it quickly.

  She didn’t want to go to the beach anymore, but she didn’t want to stay home either. Instead of sliding down the door and crying, she turned around and went through the back door to the backyard. “Come on, Jonas,” she called to her son, who swayed on the swing set near the back fence.

  Her son ran toward her with the biggest smile on his face, and Dani wanted to give him the whole world. She laughed as he turned his run into a gallop, and she caught him up in her arms.

  “You ready for the beach?”

  “Yep,” he said, his childish giggles reaching right into her heart and holding on. She loaded him into the back seat and started the drive toward the beach they both loved.

  She told herself that he was all she ever needed, and in some respects, that was true.

  But Tyson’s face crept into her mind every few minutes, and she knew she’d also be very, very lonely if she raised Jonas by herself.

  She arrived at the beach, got the umbrella stand set up for her, and tossed her heavy bag on the other half of the cushioned cabana. Jonas ran toward the water, properly sunscreened and with his arm floaties on, and Dani relaxed.