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I open my eyes and look at her.

My side pulses with pain. My head feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton and sandpaper and regret. I’m so fucking tired.

I take a breath. It hurts.

“June,” I say.

She opens the driver’s door, leans in. “Yeah?”

“Are you okay taking over?” The words come out rougher than I intended. “I need to rest and...” I pause, because what comes next is harder than anything I’ve said to her in all the years I’ve known her. “I trust you.”

She stares at me.

Her eyes are wide, hazel shot through with gold in the morning light, and I can see her processing what I just said. Looking for the angle. The manipulation. The place where this is actually just another move in whatever game she thinks I‘m playing.

But there is no angle.

There’s just me, bleeding and tired and admitting that I can’t do this alone.

“You trust me,” she says slowly.

“Yeah.”

“To keep driving. To be in control.”

“To drive. To make decisions. To...” I gesture vaguely, because I don’t have the words for what I’m actually saying. “To handle this.”

Something shifts in her face. The suspicion drains out of it, replaced by something else. Something that looks like wonder, or maybe relief, or something else I have no fucking words for.

Then she smiles.

Wide and genuine and reaching all the way to her eyes. It transforms her face, makes her look younger, less guarded, like someone who just got permission to be happy.

I’ve never seen her smile like that.

Not once.

She slides into the driver’s seat, and before I can process what’s happening, she’s leaning across the center console. Her hand comes up to my face, fingers light against my jaw, and then she presses her lips to my cheek.

The kiss is soft. Tender. It lands just below my cheekbone and lingers for a heartbeat longer than necessary, and I feel it everywhere.

She pulls back and her face is close to mine, close enough that I can see the faint freckles across her nose.

“Thanks, Wraith.”

Chapter Twenty

June

I start Wraith’s truck, pull us out of the parking lot, and as we go down the road, my mind searches for the answers. Responsible answers. New Life, New June kind of answers. Like a functional, independent adult who knows how to deal with a crisis involving being hunted by killers sent by a violent motorcycle gang while also managing the health of her abusive, but not-so-bad-currently, ex-boyfriend who is recovering from a knife wound and a brutal beating sustained while defending her from said killer sent by a ruthless motorcycle gang, I run through our options. Out loud.

“We need to find somewhere safe to crash so you can rest,” I say.

“Obviously,” Wraith says.

I give him a look. That ‘obviously’ carries a tired tone that isn’t helpful.

He looks appropriately chagrined.