I shift the truck into park, kill the engine, and glance over. “I’ll just be a minute. Gotta hit the head.”
She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t blink. Just stares out the window, her jaw tight, her posture still, but not relaxed.
No. She’s too still.
Too rigid.
Like a wire pulled taut, waiting to snap.
Something claws at the back of my mind. A thought I can’t quite catch. Still, I step out, letting the door thud shut behind me. I walk toward the restroom, but every step feels wrong. Heavy. The kind of heaviness that warnsthis is the moment everything changes between us.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I head toward the men’s room. I move fast. In and out. My mind is spinning with contingency plans for Vegas—where we’ll stay, how we’llplay it with Sin when we check in with him at Las Vegas Defiance, what I’ll say to get Clover to understand. But even as I splash water on my face and stare into the mirror, something is gnawing at me.
A cold twist in my gut that won’t go away.
“Get it together, Wes,” I mutter. “She needs you. You just gotta be strong enough for both of you.”
I dry my hands, shoot a half-assed paper towel free-throw into the bin, then yank open the door, and stall, giving myself a pep talk before I exit. “You gotta be tougher,” I whisper. “She doesn’t see it now, but you’re doing this for her.”
Engines hum outside. A horn honks lazily. Tires roll across gravel. Just the usual.
But then, I hear it, tires screeching. They’re high-pitched and urgent, completely out of place at a truck stop like this. My eyes widen, my heart slams into my chest, and I shoot out of the restroom as if I’ve taken a bullet to the spine, sprinting across the pavement.
And that’s when I see it.
The truck—my truck.
Rolling out of the lot, picking up speed.
Tires spitting gravel as it pulls onto the road.
And behind the wheel?
Clover.
Time slows. A single second stretches out like an eternity as realization slams into me with the force of a freight train.
She’s running.
She’s leaving.
She’s going back to LA.
Back to danger.
Back to the Cartel war.
Back to everything I swore I’d protect her from.
And fucking leaving me behind in the process.
I break into a sprint so fast my boots barely touch the ground. My lungs burn immediately, breath tearing out of me in ragged gasps, but I don’t stop.I can’t.The sound of blood pounds in my ears louder than the wind.
My thighs ache. My calves scream, but I push harder.
The world narrows to that one object in the distance—my truck, and thegirlinside it.
ThegirlI would burn the world down to protect.
