Page 30 of Wilder’s Mistake

“They took you because Chains sold his brothers.”

“That ring gave them a way to hurt you.”

I cup the back of her neck. My thumb rests below the bruise because I can’t touch it without wanting to turn around and finish what I started.

“I woke up married to the woman I’d wanted for years,” I say. “Then I came home and she was gone because a brother used my name to take her. Don’t call that weakness.”

Her eyes shine. “What do I call it?”

“Love.”

Lucy presses her palm over the Road Captain patch on my chest. “I’m staying married to you.”

I kiss her with one hand cradling the back of her head and the other locked around her waist. There is nothing careful in it except the place beneath her bruise. She opens for me, grips my cut and gives back every desperate thing I can’t say in front of my brothers.

When we break apart, my forehead stays against hers.

“You chose me instead of chasing him,” she whispers.

“Every time.”

“And Perdition?”

I look toward the dark track where their engines have faded.

“They touched my wife.” She sees the promise in my face and doesn’t ask me to soften it.

Tonight I take my wife home.

Chains and Perdition can use the head start.

They are going to need it.

EPILOGUE

EIGHT WEEKS LATER

LUCY

The second time I stand in front of Wilder and promise to remain his wife, I’m sober enough to notice every detail.

Nora stands beside me in dark blue. The cheap rhinestone ring from Vegas is safely tucked away with our marriage certificate, even though it turned my finger green within a week. Tonight, a dark sapphire rests in its place.

We’re already legally married. This isn’t a replacement for the neon chapel or an attempt to make that night respectable. It’s just a small celebration inside the Kingdom Come clubhouse, with Nora present and both of us clearheaded enough to mean every word.

Cash stands in front of us with an online ordination certificate he bought hours before the ceremony.

“Nobody needs your legal authority, by the way,” I remind him.

“That was a tragic waste of nineteen dollars.”

Wilder looks at him. “Get on with it.”

The brothers fall quiet. The clubhouse remains exactly what it is. Guns sit beneath cuts, and smoke drifts through the open doors. Chains has been removed from an old photograph on the wall, leaving a pale tear beside Griz.

Wilder wears his Road Captain cut as he takes my left hand. A plain, heavy band waits for him in Nora’s palm.

Cash nods to me. “Lucy.”