Page 36 of Bram

I waited for Julie to speak. She just sat, both legs on one side of the bike, hands in her lap, looking at nothing. After a minute, she said, “Are we safe?”

“For now,” I told her.

She nodded. “Good.” The word was empty, but she needed it.

I offered a hand to help her down. She took it, surprised by her own weakness, and steadied herself against my chest for one long second before pushing off. We stood there, the two of us, shadows stretching out behind us in the dirt, and I wondered how long it would take before either of us could close the gap.

Kodiak had already dismounted and was heading for the main house, not a word to anyone. Rusty stayed with Emma, both of them just standing in the sun, not looking at each other but refusing to step away.

Julie’s voice came out softer than I expected. “Thank you, Bram.”

I didn’t answer. There wasn’t anything left to say.

We went inside together, the air cooling around us, the desert shutting its jaws behind our backs.

fifteen

Julie

Emma stared at the fingers the club medic held up in front of her. “Two.” She spat it out, then looked away, back to the wall where the cinder blocks had cracked into a map of nowhere. Her jaw was already swelling, the color gone from last week’s peach to this week’s raw liver.

“How bad is it?” I asked.

“Cracked, maybe broken,” the medic said, feeling along her ribs with the backs of his knuckles. “You’ll live.” He said it with the hard certainty of someone who saw worse every day, but he wrapped the ribs anyway, snug and efficient. Then he wiped her cut lip, dabbed antibiotic, and set out pills in a plastic cup like it was all just a normal Wednesday night at the Jackson Brothers MC.

“I feel like shit,” Emma said. She looked at me. “I want at them!”

“We’ll let the club do what they do.” I glanced at Bram, looking for backup. I knew he wouldn’t disappoint.

I stood in the corner alone at first, but then Bram drew a chair up next to me, his knees wide and his elbows set on them, hands open but empty. The sight of his hands always made me feel some impossible thing, even before all this shit went down— the knotted scarring, the half-moons of road grit embedded along the knuckles, even the new stitches above his hip. He looked like a man who could crush granite, or the world for yours truly, but the way he sat made it seem like he was afraid to touch anything delicate. Like me.

“Tell me you have a plan to make this all stop.” I motioned at Emma. “Family is all I have. Fuck the DA job.”

“Still love me?” Bram asked and chuckled.

“To the moon and back,” I said. “Unless, of course, that includes getting fucked up by a gang of bikers on the way.”

“You’re not allowed to leave my sight. Not until this is all over.”

“Fuck that,” I said. “I’m not letting these assholes dictate my life.”

Bram stood, towering over me, the smell of leather and biker man overwhelming. He held my chin up with a single finger. “I’m not going to let another fucking thing happen to you, babe. You’re under my protection. You don’t have a choice.”

“You can’t keep me here, Bram.”

“Watch me.”

“I’ll burn it down.”

Bram chuckled and pulled a lighter from his pocket. “Start blazing, baby.”

“You’re acting as if you own me.”

“Acting?”

“I’m a motherfucking DA; nobody owns me.”

He moved his lips to my ear, kissed the lobe gently, and then whispered, “I know you’re wet, Julie. I can even see your pulse almost beating out of your fucking neck. You want me as bad as I want you.”