The feel of her contracting around me was my undoing. Unable to hold back any longer, I pushed into her three more times and roared out my release, my voice cut and raw, weak from today. I came with her hand in my hair and her voice whispering, “I forgive you. I love you. It is time to be free.”

My head fell into the pillow. For a brief moment, there were no faces in my mind, there were no voices in my ears. There was just us.

“I love you,” Bella whispered.

“I love you too,” I said raggedly. “You have been the only good I’ve ever known. You’ve been the heaven I was searching for after all. Not the faith, or the prayers . . . just you . . . only you.”

Love filled Bella’s face, and she shifted beneath me. I moved from inside her and she curled up on the bed. She laid her head on my chest, her arm over my waist. Her warm breath drifted over my skin as I played with her damp hair.

The room was silent. Almost as if she was reading my mind, Bella said, “The men in the bar are quiet . . . they must have gone to bed too.”

“Yeah,” I said in return.

Bella’s sleepy face tipped up toward me. “Sleep, baby. Everything will be better tomorrow. Everything is always better when the sun rises again. It will bring a new day. It will lighten the burden from your soul.”

My heart squeezed at her words. Her eyes began to drop with sleep. Before they closed, I said, “Thank you, Bella. Thank you for loving me . . . for it all. You’ll never know how much you have meant to me. How much peace you have given me.”

“Thank you.” She smiled. “Thank you for saving my life.”

Bella was asleep in minutes. Her breathing deepened and I knew she was sleeping well. But my eyes stayed open. I watched as the lightning outside grew brighter, the distant storm closing in. The rain beat louder on the windows, and the thunder growled up ahead.

I looked at the clock on the table and took a deep breath. I had to go. I gently moved Bella from my body and laid her back on the mattress. I froze as she moved in her sleep, but her breathing evened out again. I looked down at the woman who had stolen my heart. I tried to drink in her every feature. Commit every part of her to memory.

I would never forget this night. In all my life, I had never truly been told I was loved. Eight letters, three simple words, that smashed into your soul with the force and devastation of a comet. “I love you,” I whispered, needing to tell her again. “Happiness is waiting for you, baby. Only good from now on. Only freedom.”

I padded over to the bathroom and picked up my leathers from the floor. I didn’t even care that they were covered in dried blood. It wouldn’t matter soon enough.

I couldn’t look at Bella as I crept out of the room. I hadn’t bothered with a shirt. My feet were bare. The bar was a ghost town as I walked through—glasses abandoned half-finished, pool games half-played.

I went out of the back exit and into the yard. The warm rain pelted down as I headed down the grass verge. My feet sank into the wet, muddy ground. My hair stuck to my back.

With every step I took, I pictured Bella in my head. And I smiled. I smiled for the life she would have. The things she would do and see . . . the person she would love. And as much as it pained me to think of her doing these things without me, loving someone else, it brought a peace to my heart that I never thought I would ever feel.

Bella free . . . safe.

It was good.

I saw the dim light up ahead as I broke through the line of trees. The door of the old barn was already open and waiting for me. I counted my steps as I approached. In twenty steps I made it to the door. I paused at the threshold. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and walked inside.

The barn was silent as I roved my eyes around the room. One by one the brothers turned to see me. I met each of their eyes as they stood, some to the left, some to the right, a man-made path leading the way to where they wanted me to pay.

I took a deep breath and walked forward. The brothers, all dressed in leathers and cuts, watched me as I passed. But I kept my eyes straight forward. The sound of hands twisting on crowbars and the clanging of knives accompanied my journey. I arrived at the front. I tipped my head up and saw two chains hanging from the roof. Metal cuffs hung at their ends.

I moved directly under the chains, then turned to face the brothers. A sea of my former friends glared back at me. The humid storm brought sweat to their faces, their bare chests. Most were covered in residual blood, having not showered after the massacre at the commune.

I supposed there was no point.

I looked over the brothers I’d hurt with my actions: AK, Tank, Bull, Viking, Flame. I saw the new brothers I’d never got the chance to know: Hush, Cowboy, Tanner . . . And then there was Smiler. He was standing to the back of the brothers, a fucking tormented expression on his face. His long brown hair was tied back, and he held nothing in his hand. My stomach fell. He was the only one. Smiler was the only fucking one.