Page 6 of Damron (Bloody Scythes MC #1)

“You need to rest,” she said, peeling the blood-crusted bandage from his side. “No heavy lifting, no driving, no alcohol for at least—”

Damron grunted, which was all the answer she was going to get.

He yanked on his shirt, wincing as it tugged at the stitches.

She tried to hand him a paper bag full of painkillers and paperwork; he left it on the chair.

At the lobby, the discharge clerk wanted a signature.

Damron made an X on the line and walked out before she could ask for ID.

The sun was brutal, cutting through the parking lot in white-hot slabs. A prospect waited near the curb, sweating through a brand new Bloody Scythes vest, hands tucked awkwardly into the pockets of his cargo shorts. Damron didn’t know the kid’s name, but he respected the punctuality.

“Your bike’s out back, sir,” the prospect said, eyes pointed somewhere over Damron’s shoulder.

“Call me Damron or call me Boss. ‘Sir’ gets you punched,” Damron said, limping past.

They circled to the loading dock. The Harley was there, gleaming but with a smear of dried blood on the clutch lever.

Damron ran his hand over the tank, felt the heat, the memory of the fight stitched into his skin.

He swung a leg over, every muscle in his side screaming, but he didn’t let it show.

The prospect tried to offer a helmet. Damron waved him off.

“Go get me a fifth of something worth drinking,” Damron said. “And none of that plastic bottle shit.”

The prospect blinked. “You want me to—”

“Go,” Damron said, and the prospect vanished in a blur of nervous compliance.

He started the engine. The vibration rattled his teeth, but it was better than the hum of hospital machines.

He rode one-handed at first, the other clamped to his ribs.

Every bump in the pavement sent a fresh bolt of fire up his spine, but he didn’t slow.

He just adjusted his angle, steered into the pain instead of away from it.

At the first stoplight, he caught his reflection in the shop window.

The face was gaunt, jawline sharper than he remembered.

He checked his left hand, saw the empty strip of skin where the wedding ring used to live.

The sun glared off it, so he turned the hand over and gripped it tighter.

The liquor store was a cinder block cube on the corner.

He parked the Harley at the door, ignored the stares from the woman in the minivan and the guy stocking the ice machine.

Inside, it was cold and smelled like wet cardboard.

The clerk barely looked up when Damron dropped a bottle of high-end whiskey on the counter and paid with a twenty and a handful of dimes.

He twisted the cap off before he was out the door.

Took a mouthful. Let it burn. He forgot about the prospect.

Back on the bike, the world spun for a second, but he held steady.

He’d always been good with pain, better with anger.

He put both hands on the bars, gunned the engine, and left the parking lot in a snarl of tire and smoke.

He didn’t think about the house. He didn’t think about what he’d find there.

He just rode, all the way home, never once letting up on the throttle.

The house looked wrong. Not broken into, not trashed, just wrong.

The front steps needed sweeping and there was a newspaper rotting in the weeds, but that was normal.

What wasn’t normal was the air inside: empty, no radio, no argument, no footsteps from the back room.

Just stillness. Damron closed the door behind him, listened to the sound of it latching.

He waited, half-expecting to hear the echo of another pair of boots, the thud of a body on the couch, the scuff of a chair in the kitchen.

Nothing. He walked into the living room and dropped his keys on the side table, the jingle too loud in the silence.

He set the whiskey on the coffee table, took a long drink, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.

The room was bigger than he remembered, or maybe it was just that half the shit was gone.

The bookshelves were stripped down, no more legal pads or campaign folders.

The couch was bare except for a single throw pillow—her favorite, the one she used to prop behind her lower back when she was working late and didn’t want to admit it hurt.

It looked like a joke now, a prop in a room no one was watching.

He moved to the kitchen, each step echoing on the hardwood.

The magnets on the fridge were rearranged, the calendar blank for the next three months.

There was a sticky note on the counter with a takeout order from last week.

He read it, then tossed it in the trash.

He opened the cabinet above the sink— her coffee mug, the chipped blue one she called “old faithful,” was missing.

The hook where it hung was empty, a dumb little wound.

He went down the hall to the bathroom. The counter was wiped clean, no lipstick, no hairbrush, no perfume bottle in the shape of a naked woman.

Only his razor and a bar of soap with a hair frozen inside it.

He stared at the sink for a full minute, trying to remember if he’d ever seen it this empty.

Maybe not since the day he moved in. He found the note in the bedroom.

It was on his nightstand, propped against the bottle of Advil she’d left for him.

Her wedding ring was next to it, the gold so bright it looked fake.

He picked up the ring, rolled it in his palm, then set it down again. He unfolded the note.

The handwriting was tight, almost angry.

“I can’t do this anymore. Not after last night.

I’m sorry.” That was it. No signature, no name, like a ransom demand.

He crumpled the note in his fist, held it there until the skin on his knuckles went white, then let it fall to the floor.

He noticed the photo next. The wedding picture, face-down on the dresser, the back of the frame dusty and scratched.

He picked it up and flipped it over. They looked happy, idiots with no clue what was coming.

She’d hated the picture—said she looked drunk, said he looked like a thug. Maybe she was right.

He hurled the photo against the wall. The glass shattered, the frame splintered, and the picture fluttered to the ground. He didn’t move to pick it up. He just stood there, breathing hard, the room finally as empty as it felt. He took another swallow of whiskey and waited for the pain to fade .