“That’s okay! Run away now… I’ll remember this far longer than you will, my dear,” she told him with a twinkle in her eye.

I was grinning at them both, my head whipping from side to side, when Poet spoke up from his place at the table, effectively ending our lighthearted moment. God, I was smiling and laughing. What the hell was wrong with me?

“Rose, I know that the funeral is important to you guys, but we’re gonna have to figure out what Callie’s doing. Time’s running short—I got shit to do in Oregon and my boys can’t stay here babysitting.”

“Callie, sit down, darlin’. Time to talk,” Gram told me grimly. “You too, Cody.”

The men sitting around the table backed off, a couple going into the living room and the others heading toward the front door, pulling cigarettes out of their chest pockets. Only Gram, Cody, Asa, Poet, and I were left in the kitchen when Gram sat down heavily.

“Baby girl, you’re gonna have to move,” she told me wearily, running her fingers over her bottom lip in a nervous gesture I’d seen a million times. “It’s not safe for you here.”

I watched in silence as she seemed to think over her next words carefully, and for a moment it looked like she wasn’t going to say anything else. When I was about to speak up, she started explaining what was going to happen.

“Grease is gonna take you up to Eugene. That’s where they live and they can keep an eye on what’s happening. As soon as I get all of your parents’ legal stuff and Cody’s school stuff taken care of, I’ll follow you up there.”

I felt my eyes start to water as I thought about moving all by myself, but swallowed hard and kept it together. Moving to Oregon was the least of my worries. It shouldn’t have been such a big deal, but the idea of being so far away from the only family I had left was a daunting prospect.

“Okay,” I answered her, my voice breaking a little.

“Gram…” Cody looked between us, his skin pale and his eyes worried. “What about me?”

“Well, you’ll go to school. It’ll be the same as it was before, except you’ll fly to Oregon to be with us on your breaks,” she reassured him.

She turned back to me and opened her mouth to give me more details when Cody’s voice broke through the quiet again.

“I can’t!” he told us, looking back and forth at our faces as if gauging our reactions. “My scholarship—the one that pays for school? It’s for exceptional students in San Diego County. They won’t pay for school if we live somewhere else.”

Gram and I both burst out with words of denial, but halted mid-sentence when Asa’s dark haired friend, Dragon, opened the front door and leaned inside.

“Poet! Grease! We’ve got a situation.”

Chapter 18

Callie

Poet and Asa hopped up from the table like it was on fire and moved toward the front door after Dragon slammed it shut—both reaching for guns I hadn’t noticed in the waistbands of their jeans. I’m not sure if it was the thought of cowering like I’d done before, or the thought that Asa could be in danger, but when Gram grabbed my arm I shrugged her off and followed them outside.

When I crossed the threshold, I couldn’t see anything at first. Gram’s house stayed shaded inside during the day in an attempt to beat the heat, so walking into the waning sunlight had me raising my hand in front of my face to shield my eyes. When I’d acclimated to the change, my hand dropped limply to my side as I registered what I was seeing.

There were Hispanic guys all over my Gram’s driveway and two silver SUVs with spinning chrome rims blocking our vehicles in. For some reason, I couldn’t look away from the rims of those SUVs. I’d never understood why people chose them for their cars, and the way they kept moving, even though everything else was still, felt like an omen.

“Javier,” Poet rumbled from a few steps ahead of me. “What brings you out for a visit?”

“Eh, you know, just taking a little survey in the neighborhood. It seems your neighbors don’t like having bikers clogging up their parking spaces,” one of the Hispanic men answered, causing my eyes to shift toward the group on the ground.

Our guys were standing in a semi-circle around the front of Gram’s trailer, their bodies tensed and ready, but the Hispanic men weren’t in any sort of formation. They were standing around the driveway, some leaning on the vehicles, looking like they were out for a casual stroll. There were so many of them, though, that their appearance was deceiving. Even if they didn’t look like they were ready for anything, their sheer numbers were enough to cause a tightening in my stomach.

Wait, when had I started to think of those bikers as ‘ours’?

“Well, you took your survey, now it’s time to leave. I’m feeling… mellow, today. And I doubt Rose’d like my boys using up a fuck-load of water cleaning blood off her driveway,” Poet growled back, making the hair at the base of my neck stand up.

“Your boys killed three of my men. It’s not something that can go unpunished. You know this,” the man answered back almost gently.

Poet scoffed, “Three? I thought it was four? Well, fuck me. Looks like you left one breathing,” he said, barely turning his head in Grease’s direction.

“Cabrón! I’ll have blood for this. Hand over the girl and we’re even.” The man spit on the ground, and for the first time, looked at me, causing me to sink back.