“You’ve done a great job raising me.”

“Bartending, waitressing, being away from you at night and on the weekends. Just because I wanted to be the one to take you to school in the morning. Because I wanted to be the mom who brought the cupcakes on party day and then picked you up. Because it’s the job that made me financially free from the Terror. But it wasn’t enough. I should have been home. I should have a better job. I should have found someone else to take care of you. I should have never relied on the Terror.”

I wonder if she gets tired of the same fight. “They’re my family.”

“But that doesn’t make them a good family. Even James knew that.”

Lightning strike to the chest. “What?”

Mom grabs her purse and places her hand on the door handle. “Nothing. I’m just mad.”

I’m not ready to let that go, especially with Skull’s accusation still hanging around me like a noose, but most wars are won and lost on timing. Pushing her on my father now, a subject she hates to begin with, would be the equivalent of charging a field full of defenders without a helmet.

“Bad things happen to normal people,” I say.

“They do,” she concedes. “But not like this. Never like this. Stay in the truck, Chevy. I need a few minutes by myself before I start work.”

Meaning she needs to find a way to center herself before she flirts her way into tips to pay for rent. The passenger-side door squeaks open and Mom leaves. Kills me not to walk in with her. My skin crawls with the idea I’m not eyeballing the men at the bar. Scaring the hell out of them so they’ll pass on to others not to mess with her.

But she needs space and I need to quiet the roaring in my head. Mom doesn’t go straight in. Like a taunt she leans against the side of the building and has her head tilted up as if there’s something to see. Me? I wait.

* * *

The clubhouse is so packed full of people I have to park on the grass closer to the narrow path that leads from the main road to Cyrus’s place. The moonlight glints on row after row of motorcycles and here and there men stand in groups near them. To the right, a couple is doing the deed on a Harley Softail.

I ignore them and lift my chin to the guys who call out my name. Pigpen and Dust have already told me, multiple times, that lots of brothers are ready and willing to buy me as many beers as I can drink tonight, tomorrow night, forever. All I need to do is walk into the clubhouse and make my way to the bar, but I don’t feel like drinking.

Before I left to pick up Mom, Eli promised me he’d keep Violet safe. I trust him, but there’s a hole inside me since she left my bed at the hospital and I’m damn cold with the wind blowing through it.

The trees circling the log cabin and the clubhouse have messed-up shadows. Half of the trees still bushy with leaves. The other half skeletons extending their spiny branches like fingers into the night.

The porch light to the log cabin isn’t on, but the windows have that warm glow I used to associate with Olivia. If she was in the house, the lights were on. She told all of us a hundred times that the light would be left on for us whenever we decided to return home. I always thought that meant she would be there when I stepped past her threshold.

Olivia died this summer. Her death still makes my chest hurt.

Two prospects stand guard at the bottom of the porch steps. They aren’t there to keep Violet in. They’re there to make sure no one takes her again.

It’s a family party, and if she entered that clubhouse, she’d be hugged and worshipped by almost every guy there, but Violet’s not into club parties. Most people think it’s because of her father’s death, but I know better.

I climb the steps, and as I reach for the door, a silhouette down the wraparound porch catches my attention. Violet sits on the bench, her leg propped up on a wooden crate. She stares out onto the field, the crowd, the chaos, the bonfire closest to the cabin.

I grew up with Violet. Played in the mud with her, caught fireflies with her, even got into a few shouting matches over bad calls at kickball. But I’ll never forget the first time Violet stole my breath.

Razor, Oz and I sat on this porch, holding welcome-home signs Olivia forced us to make, when Violet’s mom pulled up in the minivan. We were about to start high school and Violet had spent the summer at the shore with her mom and brother. The back door to the van slid open and I felt like I had been born.

Until that moment, the world had been black-and-white and I had never known color. And then a vibrant explosion. Her hair was longer, a deeper red than I had remembered, and the ends were curled. Her blue eyes were bright, like a calm sea, and when she saw me, Violet smiled.

Smiled.

The type of smile that men drive all night in a blinding rainstorm on their bike to see. The type of smile that keep men fighting brutal wars for years in the vain hope of seeing it again. The type of smile that made me come to my feet, because if I didn’t, I’d fall to my knees.

She smiled.

Not much I wouldn’t give to see her smile at me like that again. Hell, doesn’t have to be at me. Just for her to genuinely smile.

The firelight dances across Violet’s face and highlights her hair. She’s still the most beautiful girl on the planet with those long lashes and perfect red lips. Just right for kissing.

My blood runs warm with the thoughts of all those nights we had kissed. Some nights were sweet. Some nights we could lie in bed holding each other forever. Then there was the night after our big homecoming game last year. In the backseat of the Chevelle, rain pattered onto the hood, her body was nestled under mine and we both moved, kissed and gasped to the point every window fogged.