I was still taking backward steps toward my car as I screamed at Asa, searching the crowd for any sign of my baby brother and finding none. He wasn’t there. Oh God, he wasn’t there.

I’d started to panic by the time Asa reached me and didn’t hear much of what he said as he pried the Taser from my fingers. My heart was so loud in my ears, and my breath was coming at such a fast pace, that I knew it was only a manner of minutes before I passed out. It had happened once before, and though I tried to beat it, I just couldn’t get enough air in my lungs. Oh God, where was Cody? Why wasn’t he there, in between me and Asa, making peace and wrapping his arms around me? He had to have heard us yelling; if he were there, he would have come for me by then.

When Asa tossed the Taser to the ground, effectively disarming me and making me completely defenseless, I snapped. Completely and utterly lost it.

I swung my fist at his face, grazing his jaw as he twisted to dodge it. I didn’t stop there, though. I was on autopilot, using every single move I knew to hurt him. I wanted him to hurt as much as I hurt. I wanted to punish him and I set out to do it with a single-minded intent that would have scared me, had I been thinking clearly. He let me hit and kick him for a few seconds before wrapping me up in his arms and lifting me off the ground. When I swung at his face again, he pressed it into my neck where I couldn’t reach, so I pounded on his back instead. My mind was completely blank beyond the need to hurt him, my throat making little sounds of distress that I wasn’t even aware of.

The harder I struggled, the gentler he became; his arms more comforting than punishing, even though I was acting like a crazy woman. When I ran out of options and my arms and legs felt like lead, I made a last ditch effort to punish him and bit down on his shoulder as hard as I could, tasting blood but refusing to let go.

His voice broke through when my body became too exhausted to fight anymore and my mind finally began to clear.

“It’s okay, baby. He’s fine. He’s fine. It’s okay. Shhh,” he told me quietly, rubbing my back softly even though it must have hurt like hell where I had my teeth clamped down on the muscle of his shoulder. My breath caught on a sob as I finally relaxed my jaw and let my body go limp, instinctively knowing he would never let me fall. I tilted my head back and looked up at him through my tears, silently begging him to fix things. He brushed my face gently, rubbing at the blood on my cheeks as my entire body jerked with silent sobs.

“Fuck, baby, what were you fuckin’ thinkin’?” he asked me before sliding his mouth down over my nose to my lips.

While surrounded by angry bikers, with his blood on my mouth and tears running down my face, he kissed me for the first time in three years.

God, I loved him.

Chapter 1

Callie

5 years ago…

I shouldn’t have been at the party. It had been a bad idea from the very beginning, and that was before my ride had vanished into the upstairs of the house to have a drunken one-night-stand with a guy who had more acne than facial hair. It wasn’t my scene. I’d prided myself on being the wild child of my high school, but nothing had prepared me for that part of town. I didn’t know the names of the drugs that were spread across the coffee table, and I didn’t want to know—I didn’t even want to be near them.

I had decided to flip my parents the bird by going out with a friend that I knew they thought very little of. They’d grounded me the night before for breaking curfew by a measly ten minutes, but then they did me the favor of going out to dinner with my dad’s boss, leaving me all alone and full of teenage spite. I called Mallory to pick me up, and within fifteen minutes of their departure, I was on my way to Chula Vista with a girl who smoked pot while she drove and carried a flask around with her at school.

When we arrived, I stuck close to Mal, practically holding her hand as we walked through the house full of people who were both older and harder than anyone I’d partied with before. High school house parties, where we’d stolen our parents’ liquor and spent the night with kids we’d known since grade school, hadn’t prepared me for what we walked into. Mal seemed to blend into the crowd. She laughed at jokes I didn’t understand, and nonchalantly nodded her head to the music blaring through the speakers, while I stuck out like a nun at a Rob Zombie concert.

I’d dressed to impress, pairing low-waist jean shorts with a skimpy tank top that showed a sliver of my belly. I felt almost reckless when I left the house, as if I’d turned into a sluttier version of myself as a final fuck you to my overly strict parents. But when we got to the party, my version of slutty was a joke compared to what the other women were wearing. And they were women—older than us by at least a couple of years in age and hundreds of years in experience. It was mortifying, like we were playing at being grown-ups.

I was hell-bent on proving a point to my parents; I could do what I wanted. I wasn’t going to be treated like a child when I was practically an adult. So, even though all of my internal warning systems were screaming, I accepted a cup of some sort of alcohol from a man I’d never met. Then I smiled how I’d practiced—with my mouth closed tightly over my teeth and my left cheek showing off a dimple.

The house was full of people dancing, drinking, and yelling over rock music that I’d never heard before. It’s not that I didn’t listen to rock, I listened to everything really, but this was angrier than I preferred. I couldn’t even understand the words—where was the fun in that type of music? I was sitting in the corner, on an ottoman that had been pushed aside to clear the floor, and trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. I wasn’t feeling rebellious anymore. I wasn’t angry at my parents and I was no longer trying to prove a point.