Page 20 of Finn

I thought about the last few weeks. Meeting Finn in that holding cell. The Shady Meadows hotel room that had changed everything. The night I'd shown up at his door with a fax that could have destroyed us both.

I'd risked everything. My job, my freedom, my future. For a man I'd barely known, a man who ran guns and rode with outlaws and had "bad idea" written all over him in permanent ink—literally.

And I didn't regret a single second of it.

The fax was still there, buried in my filing system. The task force could circle back around any time. My position at the station was about as stable as a house of cards in a hurricane. Nothing was really solved—just delayed.

But right now, in this moment, we were okay. Finn was okay. The club was okay. And I was driving toward the man I loved with the windows down and the wind in my hair and nothing but possibility stretching out ahead of me.

Wait.

The man I loved.

The thought hit me like a punch to the chest. I hadn't said it out loud. Hadn't even really let myself think it. But there it was, clear as the sunset blazing across the sky.

I loved him. Finn. The biker with the chocolate eyes and the gentle hands and the fierce, protective heart beating under all those tattoos.

I loved him, and I was going to tell him.

Tonight.

I pressed the gas a little harder, the desert blurring past, and smiled all the way to his door.

10

FINN

I parked my Harley right in front of the Edgewood Police Department at 5:02 p.m.

Not down the street. Not around the corner. Right there, in full view of the front windows, where anyone with eyes could see the sergeant at arms of the Guardians of Mayhem sitting on his chrome beast like he owned the whole damn town.

Let them look. Let them all look.

I'd spent the last few weeks hiding. Sneaking around. Meeting Chloe in back rooms and borrowed beds like we were something to be ashamed of. And maybe at first we were—or at least, maybe it made sense to be careful. The task force was breathing down our necks. One wrong move could have brought everything crashing down.

But the Cobras had taken that heat. The task force had their win. And I was done pretending the best thing in my life was something to hide.

The station door swung open, and there she was.

Chloe stopped on the front steps, her auburn hair catching the late afternoon sun like fire. Her eyes went wide when she saw me—then wider when she clocked exactly where I wasparked. I watched the emotions flicker across her face. Surprise. Confusion. A flash of panic.

Then a smile that could have lit up the whole New Mexico desert.

She walked toward me with her head high, not hurrying, not sneaking. I caught a glimpse of movement in the station window—Peters, probably, or Malone, watching the show. Good. Let them see.

"You're going to get me in trouble," she said when she reached me, but she was still smiling.

"Already did that." I handed her my spare helmet. "Hop on."

She looked at the helmet, then at me, then back at the station. I could practically see the calculations running through her head. The questions she'd have to answer. The rumors that would start. The line she was about to cross in front of everyone she worked with.

She took the helmet.

When she climbed on behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist, something in my chest cracked open. Something that had been locked up tight for years, maybe forever. Her body pressed against my back, warm and solid and real, and I thought:

This. This is what I've been waiting for.

I kicked the bike to life and pulled out of the lot, not looking back.