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Calli

Sixteen Years Old

Fighting my way through a crowd of leather cuts and club patches wasn’t an easy feat given I was all of five foot and the men that filled the bar around me were heavy, hardened bikers who didn’t move their asses for anyone—especially not a teen girl trying to make it back to her tent before her MC president father realized she was out after curfew, and, also drunk.

I kept my head down and my hood pulled up, trying to avoid any unwanted attention while I made my escape, but it wasn’t easy. My heart felt like it could pound straight out of my chest at any second.

Or maybe that was the bass from the music playing.

Every damn year I was blown away by how the little city of Kingston in the Arizona desert came alive for Scorch. The event had been running since well before I existed and had grown exponentially every year since.

Scorch celebrated the summer solstice and the longest day of the year. Dad said it started a long time ago with clubs from up north who spent a lot of the winter not being able to ride because of snow and ice, so they’d travel somewhere hot at the start of summer to celebrate being back on the roads.

But it had become so much more than that. It was a place where rival clubs set aside their grudges under an unspoken truce for one week out of the year. Where entire chapters met from across the country. And where MC members or not—people celebrated their love for the open road and the brotherhoods it brings.

And they do it with parties and endless supplies of alcohol.

A lot of which I’d consumed myself tonight with some other club kids—after my father strictly told me not to—and now I was desperate to get back to the club’s camping site before he or someone else noticed I was gone.

Finally reaching the edge of the crowd, I sucked in a long, deep breath, grinning as I reveled in the cool night air, relieved to be out of that sauna. My body was heavy and swayed as I trudged through the event grounds, people everywhere, drinking, laughing, and throwing sticks onto bonfires.

I kept my head down and checked my watch—2:07 a.m.

He better be there, or I’m screwed.

My stomach twisted, and my mind instantly flicked through backup plans.

Can I walk to the club’s camping area?

Is anyone else here who could give me a ride and won’t tell my dad?

At what point do I just call him and admit I snuck out?

The idea of that alone scared the shit out of me, so when I rounded the next corner and saw a shadow out at the street, leaning back against an old truck with a cigarette glowing between his fingers—I almost said a little fucking prayer.

With a relieved breath, I hurried over. He turned before I reached him as if he felt me coming, and when his dark eyes locked on mine, the grin that tugged at his lips was enough to make my knees weak. “Took you long enough.”

I rolled my eyes as I closed the space between us. “You’re impatient.”

“You’re late.”

I shrugged, stepping up in front of him and tugging on his club cut, my fingers lingering on the slightly worn leather, but it was the Hell’s Bandits MC patch stitched across the front that made my heart stall every damn time. It was a reminder of everything that was wrong with this—everything that should’ve kept me far, far away.

And yet, in the past five years at Scorch, Mason and I had only grown closer. It started with secret meetings at Walmart when we were younger, where we wandered the aisles for hours, discussing our favorite music and foods.

Year after year, we learned a little more.

We grew closer, we got bolder with our meetings. Every stolen moment, every secret glance, had only deepened our shared connection.

He was the first boy who had the balls to talk to me despite everyone knowing exactly who my father was and the weight that came with that information. Most people steered clear, keeping their distance out of fear or respect for the Exiled Eight. But Mason? He didn’t give a damn.

He was the first boy to hold my hand—like it was something sacred, something worth fighting for. And my first kiss—though it was stolen behind old buildings in downtown Kingston, hidden in the shadows where no one could see—it wasn’t romantic by anyone’s standards, but I’d never been one to need flowers and chocolates to feel special.

I felt stronger about what someone would do to show me they cared rather than how expensive their gifts were.

And he was risking it all.

His patch, his standing with his club, a war with my father—and his life to top things off.

The Exiled Eight MC and Hell’s Bandits MC weren’t what you would call sworn enemies or anything like that, but there’d been tension between the clubs before. Dad would never give me all the details, and neither would Mason, but from what I could gather, it was bad enough that neither would see the two of us dating as something positive.

It was that whole Romeo and Juliet kind of story, except I hoped maybe neither of us had to die in the end.

But I honestly couldn’t say for sure.

“You keep looking at that patch like it’s going to bite you,” Mason said, his voice low and teasing as his hand brushed mine where it rested against his chest.

“One day it will, I’m sure. Right in the ass,” I shot back, trying to sound braver than I felt. The truth was it wasn’t the patch I was scared of. It was what it represented—the line I kept crossing every time I saw him, the line we weren’t supposed to be anywhere near.

He tilted his head, his gaze softening. “We’ve got time, Calli,” he insisted, hooking his finger under my chin to lift my eyes to meet his. His heat, his scent—leather, smoke, and something distinctly him—wrapped around me, and I couldn’t stop myself from leaning in, craving it like I always did. “All we’ve got is fucking time. And we’ll take every minute, hour, day, month, or damn year until we figure out how to make this shit work.”

I swallowed hard, falling back against the side of his truck. “I don’t want it to take another minute. Or hour. Or day,” I complained, knowing I was acting like a pouty child.

He pressed against me, his hand cradling my jaw as he drew my lips to meet his. They barely brushed, our breaths mingling and my heart racing. “One day, I’m gonna claim you,” he whispered, gathering my hair in his hand as he pulled it back from my face. “One day, you’ll wear my patch for the rest of your life. So, if we have to wait another minute. Hour. However long, it will be so fucking worth it.”

His hand curved down around my ass, hooking under my legs and lifting me off the ground. I wrapped them around his waist and held tight to his neck, pressing my forehead to his. “Mason…” I whispered, trying to find the words—something to say, but they were all lost in my throat.

I grew up in this world. I knew the importance of patches and just how much power they held. Club life and its customs were inherently a part of me.

But being Mason’s old lady and wearing his property patch would mean a lot of changes and a lot of choices, some of which I couldn’t even fathom approaching right now in a way that wouldn’t cause more issues and problems between our clubs.

And yet, it didn’t make me want it any fucking less.

In fact, suddenly, the patch on his club cut wasn’t so scary.

I dropped my hand to his chest, brushing my fingers over the embroidered letters. “You think this would look good on me?”

The look in his eyes shifted, something raw and uncontainable sparking behind them. A smile spread across his face, wide and genuine, a rare glimpse of unguarded happiness that stole my breath away. His arms tightened around me as if to anchor himself to the moment, and he pressed a fierce kiss to my forehead, his voice husky with emotion.

“Good? Baby, it’d be fucking everything. You’d be everything.”

For that second, that one perfect, shattering second, I felt it—a surge of hope so strong, it almost made me believe that one day, it might just be enough.

“Only time will tell, though, right?” I whispered, nuzzling my face into his neck where I could feel his heart beating, the constant, reassuring thud.

“Speaking of time,” he murmured, and I let out a disappointed groan as he lowered me to my feet.

“How about we leave right now, take the road out of town, and see how far we can get before they find us?” I joked, though a part of me desperately wanted him to say, “okay.”

Instead, he chuckled. “Get in the truck, princess.” He pressed a kiss to the top of my head before reaching for the door handle. “Let’s get you back to your tent before you turn into a fucking pumpkin.”

Reluctantly, I slid into the passenger seat, and we settled into a comfortable silence as he drove me toward the Exiled Eight’s camping grounds, nestled on the outskirts of town. Maybe I should have been worried by the ease of it all, the way we looked at the future with a quiet hope as if time were on our side, as if everything would eventually fall into place.

Because, unfortunately, we were wrong.