MOST WANTED

KACE

I still remember the way Elara hugged me.

It wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t dramatic. Just her arms around me, solid and certain, like she knew exactly how much weight I carried and didn’t comment on it. When she leaned in, her mouth close to my ear, her voice dropped.

“Be safe.”

She said it like the word meant something real.

Like it was a place you could reach if you just made the right turns.

Safe?

Even I don’t know what that is.

If I did, I wouldn’t be riding back into a country where my name still circulates in old systems and newer warnings. I wouldn’t be crossing borders with a history that doesn’t forget. I wouldn’t be moving toward the place where most of my violence learned how to speak.

And yet—something is calling me.

I wish I knew what it was. Or why it sounds like home.

The road carries me south, then curves back north again, until the air changes and the signs start speaking the language I grew up in. That’s when the familiar tension settles in my chest.

The tricky part.

The border.

I know what happened last time. I remember it too clearly—Elara pulled aside, questions piling up, hands where they didn’t belong. I’d stood there in the shadows useless, watching the line tighten around her while I counted exits that didn’t exist.

I never told this to anyone. But I needed to see.

I hope they don’t do that to me now.

I roll up to the booth and cut the engine. The woman behind the glass looks tired, efficient. I call her the border lady in my head, because names make things personal, and this isn’t.

“Passport,” she says.

I hand it over.

She looks at me once. Just once. Then back at the passport. Her eyes don’t linger. Her face doesn’t change. She types something I don’t see, then slides it back toward me and lifts her hand.

Go.

That’s it.

No questions. No pause. No second look.

“Thank you,” I say, because my mouth needs to do something.

She’s already looking past me.

I start the engine and roll forward, heart hammering hard enough that it almost drowns out the sound. Only when the road opens up on the other side—wide, indifferent, American—does it finally slow.

I’m in.

Just like that.

And for the first time since Elara’s arms fell away from me, when Rafe was patting my shoulder, I wonder if this is what danger feels like—not pursuit, not violence, but being allowed through.

I don’t head north right away.

Not yet.

Some roads have to be taken first, even when you already know where they end.

Blackwater sits off the highway like it’s trying not to be seen. A blink-and-you-miss-it town with sun-bleached buildings and a main road that remembers better days. This is where we left it the first time. This is where I left something behind.

Money.

Buried, wrapped, waiting. I knew I’d come back. Men like me always do.

I slow as I ride in, letting the engine quiet. The town hasn’t changed much. A few new signs. Fewer people. The same feeling that the ground is holding its breath. Blackwater was never innocent. It just learned how to look harmless.

The club is still there.

It used to be called Wanted Town.

Back then, the name fit. We were wanted by law, by old grudges, by the violence we carried like currency. The men inside didn’t hide from it. We wore the word like a warning.

Now the sign just says Town.

Someone painted over the rest. Sloppy job. Like erasing history instead of dealing with it.

I park across the street and sit for a moment, helmet still on, watching the door. Different bikes outside. Different men. Same posture. Same way of claiming space. Wanted doesn’t disappear—it just learns new names.

I don’t go inside.

Instead, I cut around back, to the strip of land where the fence leans and the dirt stays loose. I remember the exact spot. Muscle memory is good like that. I dig with my hands, ignoring the grit under my nails, until I hit the wrapped bundle.

Still there.

I straighten, dust myself off, and tuck it away. No relief. No satisfaction. Just confirmation. Some things wait exactly where you leave them.

On the way back to the bike, I glance once more at the club.

Town.

Cleaner. Quieter. Pretending.

I wonder how many of the men who used to sit inside it are still breathing. How many traded violence for distance. How many never got the chance.

This place was never meant to hold me. It was just a stop. A chapter I closed without finishing the sentence.

I start the engine again and point the bike north.

Blackwater disappears in the mirror, same as it always does. The road opens. The sky stretches. And somewhere ahead—past old names and buried money—something waits.

I don’t know what it is yet.

Only that it’s the reason I didn’t turn back.

Brimstone is where I stop because my body finally tells me to.

Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just a quiet insistence in my bones that if I keep riding, something will slip. A reflex. A thought. A line I don’t even know I’m still holding.

The motel room is narrow and forgettable, which is exactly what I need. One bed, one chair, a bathroom that smells like bleach and old steam. I shut the door behind me and lean my forehead against it for a second longer than necessary. The engine is still ringing in my ears. The road hasn’t let go yet.

I shower until the water starts to cool, scrubbing dust and sweat and the border off my skin. I stand there longer than I should, head bowed, letting the noise in my head flatten out into something manageable. When I finally step out, the mirror catches me by surprise.

Older. Not weak. Not soft. Just… marked.

I dry off, pull on clean clothes, and lie down on the bed without turning off the light. The mattress dips under my weight like it knows how to hold men who don’t stay. My muscles hum with the kind of fatigue that feels earned.

This is when it comes.

The past doesn’t rush me. It never does. It waits until I stop moving.

I stare at the ceiling and think about being eighteen.

Really eighteen. Not the legal number people throw around like it means something. I mean young in a way that still believes time is endless and damage is optional. Back when my hands hadn’t learned exactly how much force they could deliver. Back when I thought fear was something you outgrew.

That’s when I met Erin.

I don’t remember the exact day. I remember the feeling. The way the air shifted when she walked into a room like she already knew the outcome of every conversation. She doesn’t smile much. Doesn’t need to. She carries herself like the world has already tried her and failed.

She’s the one who introduces me to Iron Havoc.

Not as a prospect. Not as a member. Just… opens the door and lets me see inside.

“You ever hear of them?” she asks, like she’s talking about a bar or a bad neighborhood.

I shake my head.

She smirks. “You will.”

Iron Havoc isn’t what I expect. It’s louder, rougher, more disciplined than the chaos I come from. Men with rules. Men who understand structure even when they live outside it. I don’t belong there yet, but no one tells me to leave either.

That’s the thing that sticks with me.

I’m always welcome.

Erin is the reason.

She’s different from anyone I’ve known. Sharp. Calm. Knows how to take a gun apart and put it back together faster than most men I meet later in life. She doesn’t posture. She doesn’t brag. She just knows. And she watches everything.

The first time I see her shoot, I don’t say anything. She doesn’t look at me afterward. Doesn’t wait for approval.

Later, when we’re alone, she says, “Don’t stare like that. It’s embarrassing.”

I laugh, because I don’t know what else to do.

She’s the president’s daughter.

I find that out the hard way.

The man terrifies me. Not because he’s loud or cruel. Because he’s precise. Because he sees through people like they’re glass. When he looks at me, I feel measured. Weighed. Found wanting and allowed to exist anyway.

He doesn’t threaten me.

He doesn’t have to.

Erin never apologizes for him. Never explains. She knows exactly who he is. She also knows who she is in relation to him, and she refuses to shrink for it. That kind of certainty is dangerous. I don’t have words for it then, but I feel it lodge itself somewhere permanent.

I don’t fall for her all at once.

It happens in pieces.

In the way she leans against a wall and listens instead of filling the silence. In the way she calls me out when I bullshit myself. In the way she treats me like I’m already something instead of someone in progress.

She takes me seriously.

That matters more than anything.

I get into a fight.

It’s stupid. It always is. Words, pride, alcohol, the wrong kind of attention. I don’t remember throwing the first punch. I remember throwing the last.

The man doesn’t get back up.

The sound he makes when he hits the ground stays with me longer than his face. There’s a moment—just one—where the world pauses, like it’s deciding whether to let me keep going forward.

It does.

The consequences come later.

They always do.

I lost my life that night. Not literally. Something worse. The version of me that still thought outcomes were negotiable.

And I lost Erin.

Not because she blames me. Not because she turns away. Because some losses don’t require intent. They just… happen.

Her world closes ranks. Mine doesn’t have that luxury.

Iron Havoc stays at the edge of my vision. I’m not in it yet, but I know I will be. I can feel the shape of it waiting for me. A structure that makes sense of violence. A place where what I am won’t be wasted.

But Erin is gone.

Not dead.

Just unreachable.

That’s harder.

I don’t build anything serious after that.

Not because I can’t. Because I don’t try.

There are women. Plenty of them. One-night stands. Familiar rhythms. Familiar exits. I learn how to be charming without being honest. How to give enough to be wanted and not enough to be missed.

It becomes easy.

Too easy.

Years stack up. The club becomes home. Brotherhood replaces intimacy. Loyalty fills the space where softness might have grown. I get good at being useful. Dangerous. Controlled.

Wanted.

Every once in a while, I think about Erin. Not in a way that aches anymore. In a way that checks something. Like pressing on an old scar to see if it still hurts.

It does.

Not sharp. Just deep.

She was serious.

To me.

That’s the part I never say out loud.

I stare at the ceiling in a cheap motel room in Brimstone and let that truth sit where it belongs. I don’t romanticize it. I don’t regret it the way people expect. It shaped me. It set the tone. It taught me what it costs to care without a net.

Outside, a truck passes on the road. Somewhere, a door slams. Life moving on without asking if I’m ready to rejoin it.

I roll onto my side and close my eyes.

Tomorrow, I ride again.

Tonight, I let the past finish saying what it’s been holding onto for twenty years.

And for the first time in a long time, I don’t push it away.