Page 1 of Tempted By Shadow

CHAPTER 1

NAOMI

The “Welcome to Tucson” sign feels like it’s giving me the middle finger.

I pass it doing seventy, my ancient car shuddering like it’s not sure it has another mile in it. Join the club, sweetheart. Neither am I.

Two years. Two years since I packed everything I owned into this car and drove to Vegas with a man who swore he was going to change my life. He did, I guess. Just not the way either of us planned.

Tyler.

I don’t even want to think his name, but it’s been rattling around my skull for the last however many hundred miles. Tyler with his stupid grin and his big plans. Tyler, who made me feel like I was finally doing something other than being King’s little sister. Tyler, who looked at me like I was the answer to every question he’d ever asked.

Turns out the only question he was really asking was, “Who’s going to pay for my next fix?”

I didn’t know about the drugs when we left. I swear I didn’t. He was charming and exciting and everything my overprotective brother would hate, which — let’s be honest — was half the appeal. King told me Tyler was a loser. King told me not to go. I didn’t listen because I never fucking listen and look where that got me.

Vegas was good for about six months. Tyler got a job at some club downtown, and I was bartending at a dive off the Strip that paid better than it had any right to. We had a shitty apartment with a view of a parking garage and we ate takeout on the floor because we couldn’t afford a table. I told myself that it was romantic. I told myself we were building something.

Then the partying got heavier. The late nights got later. The people he was hanging around started looking at me like I was something they wanted to consume rather than talk to. Tyler started disappearing for days at a time, coming back with blown pupils and excuses that made less and less sense.

I found a pipe in his jacket pocket one night when I was looking for his car keys. I threw it against the wall and watched it shatter. He looked at me like I were the one who had done something wrong.

I was already packing when he vanished for good.

Three weeks ago. I woke up, and he was just... gone. No note, no text, no explanation. His phone was disconnected. His clothes were still in the closet, but his wallet, his keys, his favorite jacket — gone.

What a prick.

I told myself I was relieved. I told myself this made it easier. I didn’t have to have the conversation, didn’t have to explain why I was leaving, didn’t have to watch him try to manipulate me into staying. He did the hard part for me.

Then I checked my bank account and found out he’d cleaned that out too.

So here I am. Broke. Humiliated. Driving back to the one place I swore I’d never crawl back to, about to do the one thing I swore I’d never do.

Ask my brother for help.

The desert stretches out on either side of the highway, all rust-colored rock and stubborn scrub brush. I used to love this landscape. Used to feel like it was mine — wild and harsh and refusing to be anything other than what it was. Now it just feels like a reminder of everything I ran away from.

I take the exit toward the clubhouse without letting myself think about it too hard. If I think about it, I’ll turn around. I’ll find some other way. I’ll sleep in my car and eat gas station hot dogs until I figure something out.

But I’ve been figuring things out for two years, and look where that got me.

The Sons of Ruin compound looks exactly the same. Chain-link fence, rows of bikes gleaming in the afternoon sun, the low sprawl of the clubhouse with its weathered wood and the painted skull-and-wrench logo on the side. I park in the visitor lot and sit there for a full minute, hands gripping the steering wheel, trying to talk myself into getting out of the car.

King is going to be a dick about this.

He’s going to say, “I told you so.” Maybe not in those exact words — King’s too controlled for that — but it’ll be in his eyes. In the set of his jaw. In the way he looks at me like I’m still the nineteen-year-old who threw a fit when he told her she couldn’t date the bassist from that shitty rock band.

I deserve it. That’s the worst part. He was right about Tyler. He’s always right. And I never, ever listen.

I grab my purse and get out of the car before I can change my mind.

The lot smells of oil and leather and desert heat, familiar in a way that makes my chest ache. I spent half my teenage years in this place and everyone knew me. I was always just the President’s baby sister. The one everyone protected. The one everyone smothered.

As I walk up to the clubhouse, I see a prospect working on a bike near the garage bay. He’s bent over the engine, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, forearms flexing as he works. Dark hair. Lean build — not hulking like some brothers, but solid. The kind of body that fills out a white t-shirt in ways I should not be noticing right now.

He looks up as I approach, and something in my stomach does a stupid little flip.