Page 12 of Bram

She nodded, still breathing hard. “You’re bleeding,” she said.

I looked down. The thin one had gotten me in the side, just below the rib. Not deep, but enough.

“I’m fine.”

She shook her head. “That is not fine, Bram. You need a fucking doctor.”

I pressed my hand to the wound. The blood was warm and sticky, already soaking the shirt.

“We should go,” I said.

She moved close, her hand on my arm, guiding me back toward the bikes. “Give me your keys.”

“I can ride.”

She looked up at me, green eyes wild and alive. “Don’t be an asshole. I’m driving.”

I didn’t argue. I let her take the keys. She got me into her car, climbed in, and we headed out.

The lot behind the Slaughterhouse glowed orange in the dark, three bodies cooling in the dirt, the air sharp with the taste of blood and exhaust. We left them there, no hurry. The ride back was slow, the hum of the road just enough to keep my mind from slipping away.

At the edge of town, she pulled over. She pressed her palm to my side, holding the wound closed. The blood ran over her fingers. I called the club for two prospects to go get my bike. I didn’t tell them why.

“You need a hospital,” she said.

“No hospitals,” I said. “Just get me back to the compound.”

She gave me a look, equal parts rage and worry. “Stubborn bastard.”

I smiled, or tried to. “That’s why you like me.”

She pressed harder and made me wince. “You have no idea if I like you. In fact, I’m pretty sure I hate you.”

“You don’t.” I smiled and felt like the young punk in high school I once was, trying to pick up the most popular girl in school, failing miserably. I’d lost my fucking touch.

She wrapped her jacket around my ribs and tied it tight. We rode the rest of the way in silence, her hand on my side, blood soaking into the denim. I’d killed at least two men for her and saved her life. Fuck no, I wasn’t losing my touch. This was just a bump in the road.

six

Julie and Bram

My mother always said you could judge a man by the way he bled. I’d seen enough of both to know she was right. Still, I wasn’t expecting Bram Jackson to start bleeding out in the passenger seat of my Mercedes, grim-faced and silent, with the kind of patience you usually only saw in livestock about to get put down.

The wound was bandaged, sort of, but blood still seeped between his fingers and pooled on my WeatherTech mats. He had one hand clamped to his ribcage, the other resting on his thigh, and his head lolled against the glass with a slow, methodical rhythm. If he was feeling anything, it didn’t show.

I pulled up to the compound gate. The prospect on duty couldn’t have been more than nineteen, acne flaring red against pale skin. He stepped in front of my car, hand on the butt of his radio, eyes darting between my face and the man beside me. There was a moment—a full, honest moment—where I expected him to wet himself.

“Can’t come in,” he said, voice barely above the engine tick.

Bram didn’t move. “Open the fuckin’ gate or find a new club.”

That did it. The kid scurried back to the shack, fumbled at the switch, and the steel mesh rolled open with the sound of a dentist’s drill. I eased through, gravel popping under the tires, and parked as close to the front door as I could get. I killed the engine. For a second, the silence was so complete I could hear Bram’s breathing: short, controlled, measured out like lines on a ledger.

“I’ll walk you in,” I said. There’s this scene in the first Indiana Jones movie, where Harrison Ford falls into a room full of snakes, and he says something like, “Snakes. It just had to be snakes.” That’s the way this place made me feel. Just had to be bikers. The very thing I loathed, for good reason.

He didn’t argue, just let me shoulder his weight, one arm slung across my back. He was heavier than I expected, and I had to dig in my heels to keep from tipping us both into the gravel. My left sleeve was already ruined, the dark smear of blood seeping from cuff to elbow. I could smell it, sharp and metallic, mixing with the musk of his sweat and the faint chemical tang of whatever they used to clean gunshot wounds.

“You really know how to show a girl a good time,” I said.