“Later,” she whispered into his ear, let him go, and turned. He watched, motionless, as she did that thing she did, skip-walking, her skirt bouncing side to side, her hair swinging, so full of energy and life even after losing her sister, even while losing her mother, she couldn’t just put one foot in front of the other like normal people.

He watched her until she disappeared into the stairwell.

Then he changed his plans.

He didn’t hightail it out of Denver.

He slept in his car. He went to school the next day, doing it late, walking through the empty halls, heading straight to Carissa Teodoro’s locker.

And finally, he popped her lock and put an envelope with her name on it right at the front, propped on her books.

After he did that, he left.

In it was one of his sketches of her. His favorite because she had her head thrown back and she was laughing.

On the back he’d written, You’ll get a beautiful life too. Because you deserve it.

He didn’t sign it.

* * *

When Carissa Teodoro opened her locker and saw the envelope, she knew exactly who it was from.

And it made her smile.

Because she believed down deep in her heart that the cute, mysterious, smart, sweet Carson Steele was right.

She was going to have a beautiful life.

Losing her sister. Enduring her parents’ mourning. Watching her mother fade away.

She’d earned it.

Didn’t matter if she did, she’d work for it.

And she was going to get it.

But she wouldn’t tell anyone, not a single soul, that she didn’t really want it with Aaron.

He was great and all, but when it happened, really happened, she wanted it with someone like Carson Steele.

Someone who had earned it too.

No, she wouldn’t tell anyone that.

Because she actually didn’t want it with someone like Carson Steele.

She just wanted it with Carson.

He’d sketched her.

Even with her mom so sick and him having run away (she knew and she worried for him but she was glad he was finally getting away), that made her happy.

Because that said a lot.

That said maybe one day he’d come back.

And then it would happen.

* * *

She was very, very wrong.

CHAPTER ONE

Shop Window

Tack

Seven years later…

“IT HIM?” KANE “Tack” Allen, president of the Chaos Motorcycle Club, sitting at the head of the table, asked the men sitting around him.

The table was made of shining wood at the edges, the middle of it Plexiglas under which was an old Chaos flag, the first of its kind, stitched by Hammer’s old lady, a stripper who was good with a needle.

Hammer was in the ground. His old lady was a great-grandmother.

The flag remained.