She whispered into his ear.
“My mommy knows you.”
For the first time that afternoon, Mason’s composure slipped.
He looked at her.
“What?”
“That's why I came here.”
“I’ve never met you.”
“I know.”
“Then how did you know to come to me?”
Lily pointed toward his shoulder.
“The wolf.”
Mason felt a coldness move through him despite the summer heat.
“What about it?”
“Mommy said if things ever got really bad, I had to find the wolf.”
Behind them, Darren said, “Lily, stop talking.”
Mason didn’t even look at him.
“Keep talking, sweetheart.”
“She said he’d help me.”
“Who?”
“The wolf.”
Mason stared at her.
There were thousands of wolf patches in America, thousands of bikers, thousands of tattoos, jackets, pendants, and club emblems built around the same animal.
It meant nothing.
It had to mean nothing.
Then Lily reached into the pocket of her shorts.
Darren moved.
“Don’t.”
Preacher stepped sideways into his path.
“Man said wait.”
Lily’s trembling fingers emerged from her pocket holding a thin silver chain.
Something small dangled from it.
Mason saw the shape.
And the entire diner disappeared.
Not literally.
The ceiling fan continued turning.
Coffee continued dripping behind the counter.
A tractor-trailer continued roaring past outside.
But Mason heard none of it.
Because hanging from Lily’s hand was a small silver pendant shaped like a wolf beneath a crescent moon.
His wolf.
There was a scratch running diagonally across the moon.
A tiny imperfection near the wolf’s front leg.
Mason knew both marks.
He knew them because he had worn that pendant against his chest for nearly four years.
He knew them because he had bought it from an old silversmith outside Santa Fe when he was thirty-three, back when grief had turned him reckless and the open road had seemed like the only place wide enough to contain his anger.
He knew it because there had only ever been one person to whom he had given it.
Mason’s face lost its color.
Lily held the pendant toward him.
“My mommy said this belonged to the wolf.”
Mason’s scarred hand rose.
Stopped.
For reasons he could not explain, he was suddenly afraid to touch it.
“Where did you get that?”
“Mom gave it to me this morning.”
“What did she tell you?”
Lily swallowed.
“She said if Darren got mad again, I had to run. She said there was a diner down the road with motorcycles because she saw them when we drove past. She told me to look at their jackets.”
Mason could barely hear his own voice.
“And?”
“She said if I saw this wolf…” Lily pointed at the patch on his vest. “…I’d know it was you.”
Nadine had gone completely still.
So had Caleb.
Both of them knew enough of Mason’s history to understand that something impossible was unfolding in front of them.
Mason finally took the pendant.
The silver was warm from Lily’s palm.
Twelve years vanished beneath his fingers.
He saw another diner.
Another counter.
Another woman.
Dark honey hair falling over one shoulder while she laughed at something he had said.
A cold Tennessee morning.
His motorcycle waiting outside.
A silver chain lying across a woman’s palm.
If you ever need me, look for the wolf.
He remembered saying it.
God help him, he remembered every word.
Mason looked at Lily again.
For the first time, he noticed her eyes properly.
Hazel.
Green near the center, brown around the edges.
Exactly like—
No.
His heart struck painfully against his ribs.
“Lily.”
She waited.
“What’s your mother’s name?”
Behind them, Darren stepped forward.
“That conversation is over.”
Caleb rose.
Nadine moved closer.
Preacher folded his arms.
Mason didn’t see any of them.
His entire world had narrowed to the frightened nine-year-old standing in front of him.
“Sweetheart,” he said, and although he tried to keep his voice steady, it came out rougher than before, “what’s your mom’s name?”
Lily looked at Darren.
Then at the pendant.
Finally, she looked into Mason’s eyes.
“Rose.”
Mason stopped breathing.
Lily continued, unaware that one word had just torn open twelve years of buried grief.
“Rose Hart.”
The pendant nearly slipped from Mason’s fingers.
Across the diner, Caleb whispered something under his breath.
Nadine closed her eyes.
They knew that name.
Mason had spent years pretending he didn’t dream about it anymore.
Rose Hart.
The woman he had loved.
The woman he had left for what was supposed to be two weeks and returned months later to find gone.
The woman he had searched for until every trail disappeared.
The woman whose absence had eventually become one of those wounds a man learned to live around because he could never learn to live without it.
The world had been different when Mason first met Rose.
He had been thirty-four, angrier than he liked to remember and grieving a younger brother whose death he had never fully forgiven himself for. His brother, Danny, had gone down on a wet mountain road during a ride Mason had organized, and although every investigator, every rider, and even Danny’s widow told him the crash had been an accident, Mason spent the year afterward riding too fast, drinking too much, and provoking men who looked capable of hitting him hard enough to make the guilt go quiet.
Rose had been working nights at a diner in Chattanooga.
The first time she saw Mason, he had walked in at one in the morning with blood running from a split eyebrow.
She had looked at him, looked at the blood, then handed him a clean dish towel.
“Press that against your head before you stain my counter.”
Mason, surprised enough to obey, had pressed the towel against the cut.
“Aren’t you going to ask what happened?”
“No.”
“Most people ask.”
“Most people enjoy stupid stories.”
He had laughed despite himself.
That was the beginning.
Rose was five-foot-six, sharp-eyed, stubborn, and unimpressed by men who confused volume with authority. She could carry five plates along one arm, remember fifteen coffee orders without writing them down, and reduce Mason to silence with one raised eyebrow whenever he started pretending that not caring was the same thing as being strong.
They had not fallen in love quickly.
They had irritated each other first.
Rose told him his motorcycle was too loud.
Mason told her coffee could strip paint.