Page 56 of Diesel’s Desire

We stay tangled together a while longer, adjusting clothes eventually, though neither of us hurries. When we finally step back out into the afternoon light, her hand finds mine automatically, fingers lacing together like they’ve been doing it for years instead of weeks.

“So,” she says as we walk back toward the clubhouse, “about this PI thing.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to need an office. Something that doesn’t scream conflict of interest.” She glances sideways at me. “And I’m definitely not putting Wicked Sinners on my client intake forms.”

“Fair.”

“But if I need muscle. Or information. Or someone who knows how to get into places I legally can’t⁠—”

“I’m your guy.” I squeeze her hand. “Whatever you need, Penny. I mean that.”

She stops walking, turning to face me fully, something soft and certain settling over her features. “I love you, you know. I know I said it that one time and then panicked, but I meant it. I’ve meant it since I was a teenager.”

“I know.” I bring her hand up, kissing her knuckles. “I’ve loved you since before I knew what the word meant. Just took me seventeen years and losing a ring on some backroad to finally do something about it.”

“We should probably head back,” she says, though she doesn’t move. “Before Ace organizes a search party.”

“Let him.” I pull her back into me, resting my chin on top of her head. “I’m not in any hurry.”

For the first time, neither of us is.

28

EPILOGUE

PENNY

The BBQ smoke curls up over the back lot, and somebody’s got the same string lights from Sasha’s wedding wound through the oaks again, because apparently this club doesn’t own two sets of decorations. Sharon’s kids run circles around the picnic tables, and Lucy’s baby sleeps through the whole racket in a portable bassinet that Stray hasn’t let out of arm’s reach once since I got here.

I press my hand flat against my stomach without meaning to, then catch myself and drop it.

I’ve had my license for three months now. Three months of skip traces and cheating spouses and one genuinely satisfying afternoon spent proving an insurance claim was fraudulent. Three months of showing up here often enough that Ruth stopped looking at me like I might be recording everyone and started handing me a beer the second I walk through the gate.

Not everybody’s come around. Carol still watches me the way you’d watch a stray cat that wandered into the kitchen—tolerated, not trusted. And Bone gives me a nod now instead of nothing, which Evan tells me is basically a parade in Bone-language.

I found out this morning. Sitting on my own bathroom floor at six a.m. with Thunder’s head on my knee, staring at a stick that turned pink faster than the box promised it would.

I haven’t told him yet.

“You’ve been staring at that potato salad for two minutes.” Sasha slides onto the bench across from me, sunglasses pushed up into her hair, Jenson’s ring catching the light when she reaches for a chip. “Everything okay?”

“Fine.” I force my eyes off the bowl. “Just tired.”

She studies me a beat too long, the way she’s started to since we got close enough that she can tell when I’m lying, and then mercifully lets it go, launching into some story about Ruth trying to teach her to can tomatoes. I laugh in the right places. I don’t hear half of it.

Evan finds me twenty minutes later, a bottle of wine in one hand and two plastic cups in the other, grinning like he does when he’s had exactly enough sun and beer to be pleased with the whole world.

“Figured you’d want this.” He holds the bottle up. Something decent, not the box stuff Gunner usually drags out. “Ryder brought it. Says it’s the same kind we had at The Depot.”

My stomach turns just looking at it, and not from nausea.

“I’m good,” I say. “Not really in the mood.”

He pauses with his hand on the bottle’s cap and looks at me properly for the first time since I sat down. Evan doesn’t miss things. It’s the thing that makes him impossible to lie to, and right now I can see him running through every version of me that doesn’t turn down wine on a Saturday afternoon.

“You’re never not in the mood for wine,” he says slowly. “Even the bad kind.”