He points the gun emphatically at me. “I’m not rich, like Rockstar. Girls don’t just fall over me unless I can supply them with drugs. And now this. How was I supposed to know that of all the bitches that came through Rockstar’s bedroom, you’d be the one he kept asking after at the roadhouse? That he’d decide to marry you? This is all your fault!”
No…not my fault.
From the looks of him, Rowdy was the reason that shipment came up light. And how many leftover women had he felt entitled to, even after they said no? I think about all his affable offers of drugs at the roadhouse in a new light…also, how Griff and I blacked out the night we took his purple pills. How much of his friendly dealer behavior had been about getting whatever he wanted from girls who wouldn’t have given consent if they were sober?
But he’s the one with the gun. And I’m the one with everything to lose. So instead of doubting him out loud, I tell him, “You don’t have to do this. Just put the gun down, and we’ll get you help. Rehab. Counseling. Whatever it takes.”
“What dream world do you live in?” He screws up his face. “That’s not how the Reapers work. He’s marrying you. I thought maybe it was just a child support thing. But at the pre-ride party, he kept on talking to everybody about you and this kid. I knew if he ever found out about that night, he wouldn’t understand. He’d just have Waylon shoot me point-blank in the face—it wouldn’t matter that I’m a Reaper. As soon as you ran off and he chased after you—I knew it was all over for me.”
Rowdy’s words about what Griff said to him in private would have warmed my heart. If he wasn’t also pointing a gun at me.
“I can talk to him,” I repeat. “I can make him see reason. This doesn’t have to end in bloodshed. All you have to do is put down the gun.”
Rowdy lowers the gun.
And I let out a sigh of relief.
But then his face turns ugly with bitterness. “Yeah, actually, I think there does have to be bloodshed.”
He pulls back the slide and raises the gun.
“Rowdy, no. Do—”
The gunshot sounds before the plea is fully out of my mouth.
I squeeze my eyes shut, and my whole life flashes in front of me.
All the good times.
All the bad.
O2…Griff…The beautiful future I won’t get to make with them. My heart shatters when I think of that…and how I never told Griff that I loved him too in the garage.
But then I open my eyes and see that I’m still alive.
As it turns out, Rowdy was wrong….
Griff didn’t send Waylon to shoot him point-blank in the face.
Griff shot Rowdy himself, hitting him in the thigh.
Rowdy cries out and drops the gun as he falls to the ground, grabbing at his leg.
And Waylon appears out of nowhere to push me behind him.
Meanwhile, a lone Griff walks over to the fallen biker and calmly kicks the gun out of reach.
Rowdy was all bitter and “poor me” before, but now he holds a hand up to Griff. “Please, man. Please, man, don—”
This time he’s the one who doesn’t get to finish his plea.
Griff looks Rowdy straight in the eye—and coldly shoots a bullet into his chest. And then another into his stomach.
Then he looks over at me.
“You all right?” he asks me.
I don’t realize I am…I am all right until he asks. I mutely nod.
“Good,” he says with a grim look. “I’m glad you didn’t promise him anything from me. I know you always keep your promises, and I’ll love you until the day we die. But there are limits to that love. He touched you. He hurt you. And you are mine. Even before he decided to come into our house with a gun, he was never going to make it out of this state alive.”
Allie’s texted words suddenly whisper through my mind: He might be legitimate now. But he’s still a Reaper. And those guys don’t forgive. They’re ruthless. It’s literally in their name.
As it turns out, Allie was right.
“I had to deal with him. That’s the only reason I didn’t come back to the house with you after you tried to end things with me,” Griff informs me while Rowdy suffers at his feet, gurgling blood. “I’m never going to not love you. Or not protect you again.”
Griff tells me his violent truth.
And then he shoots Rowdy point-blank in the face.
I stare at the man on the other side of the gun. Not a man, actually. Not a monster either. Something in between. A Reaper to the core.
And this Reaper used the word “tried” when referring to our break-up.
The world blurs as my eyes fill up with tears. This is crazy. I need to scream. I need to send him away and tell him we’re too toxic to be together.