“Chapter 5
Shreveport was four hours away, a drive through a landscape of pine trees and neon truck stops that felt like a fever dream. I rode through the night, the wind whipping at my face, clearing the smell of the grave from my clothes.
I found Beth’s sister’s house at dawn. It was a small, neat ranch in a neighborhood where people cut their grass on Saturdays and didn’t know the difference between a prospect and a patch-holder.
Beth’s SUV was in the driveway.
I parked the Panhead and sat there for a moment, my hands resting on the handlebars. I was covered in dirt, my shirt was torn, and I hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. I looked like a man who had crawled out of the earth, which wasn’t far from the truth.
I walked to the door and knocked.
Beth’s sister, Sarah, opened it. She saw me and her face hardened into a mask of pure, suburban disgust. “You have a lot of nerve coming here, Logan.”
“I need to see her,” I said.
“She’s sleeping. Or trying to. She’s a wreck. What did you do to him?”
“He’s gone, Sarah. He’s not coming back. Not to her, not to this town.”
“Did you kill him?” Her voice dropped to a terrified whisper.
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to her.”
A shadow appeared behind Sarah. Beth. She was wearing an oversized t-shirt, her eyes swollen and red. She looked at me, and I saw the question in her gaze—the same question Gary Miller had asked before he ran.
“Sarah, give us a minute,” Beth said.
Sarah huffed but retreated into the house, slamming the kitchen door. Beth stepped out onto the porch, hugging herself against the morning chill.
“You’re alive,” she said.
“I’m out,” I said. I held up my empty hands. “The vest is gone. The club is done with me.”
“And Gary?”
I looked at the roses in the flowerbed next to the porch. They were bright red, thriving in the morning sun. “He’s alive, Beth. I let him go. But he’s never coming back. He’s running, and if he’s smart, he’ll never stop.”
She closed her eyes, and a long, shuddering breath escaped her. She didn’t look relieved. She looked… hollow.
“He told me he loved me, Logan. He told me we could have a life without the fear.”
“He lied,” I said gently. “He used you to get to me. He used you to get to the club. He was never going to take you anywhere but a courtroom or a morgue.”
She looked at me then, really looked at me. “And what about us? What was I to you? Just a project? Someone to keep the house clean while you went out and played outlaw?”
“You were the only thing that wasn’t dirt, Beth. You were the only thing I didn’t have to bury.”
I stepped toward her, but she stayed where she was. The distance between us wasn’t just the length of a porch; it was a canyon filled with three months of betrayal and a night of violence.
“I can’t go back to that house, Logan,” she said. “I can’t look at the kitchen table and not see him. I can’t look at you and not see the man who almost killed him.”
“Then don’t go back,” I said. “I’m not going back either. I’ve got a little money saved. We can go west. Somewhere dry. Somewhere where the ground is hard and the dead stay where you put them.”
She looked at the horizon, where the sun was beginning to burn through the morning haze. “I don’t know if I can, Logan. I don’t know who you are anymore. And I don’t know who I am.”
“I’m the man who dug a hole for your lover and then filled it back up,” I said. “That’s who I am. It’s not much, but it’s the truth.”
I turned to walk back to the bike. I didn’t expect her to follow. I didn’t expect a movie ending. I’d spent too much time in the dirt to believe in those.
“Logan?”
I stopped.
“Wait,” she said. She didn’t move toward me, but she didn’t go back inside. “Give me… give me some time. Just a few days. I need to see if the shaking stops.”
I nodded. It was more than I deserved.
I rode away from the ranch house, heading toward a cheap motel on the outskirts of town. I checked into a room that smelled of stale cigarettes and lemon polish. I stripped off my clothes, showered until the water ran clear, and collapsed onto the bed.
I dreamed of the cemetery. I dreamed of Shovel. In the dream, he was digging a grave, but it wasn’t for Miller or Jax. It was for me. And as he threw the dirt over me, he whispered, “The ground always wins, Logan. But sometimes, it lets you up for air.”
Chapter 6
Two weeks later, I was back at Pine Haven. Not as a gravedigger, but as a visitor.
I’d come to say goodbye to Shovel. I’d found a job in Arizona, working maintenance for a national park. No bikes, no clubs, no graves. Just rock and sun and a lot of empty space.
Shovel was in Section 4, leaning on his rake. He looked exactly the same, as if he were part of the landscape, as permanent as the oaks.
“Heard you’re moving on,” he said, not looking up.
“Time for a change of scenery. The humidity is getting to my bones.”
“Arizona, huh? They say the dirt there is like powder. Doesn’t hold a shape. You can’t dig a proper grave in sand.”
“That’s the idea,” I said.
I looked at the spot where I’d filled in the hole for Miller. The grass was already starting to grow back, a bright, stubborn green.
“Deacon came by,” Shovel said. “Asked if I’d seen any ‘ghosts’ lately. I told him the only ghosts in this place are the ones people bring with them.”
“He’s a good man, in his own way,” I said.
“He’s a man who’s tired of carrying a shovel. Just like you.”
Shovel finally looked at me, his milky eyes sharp. “You did the right thing, Logan. Not for him. For you. You bury a man in anger, you’re just digging a hole for yourself right next to him.”
I thanked him and walked back toward the gate. I felt a strange lightness in my chest, a sensation I hadn’t felt since I was a child.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
It was a text from Beth. “I’m at the house. I packed the rest of your things. Sarah’s driving me. We’re leaving in an hour.”
“Where are you going?” I typed back.
“West,” she replied. “I hear the air is better there.”
I felt a small, cautious spark of hope. It wasn’t a promise. It wasn’t a “”happily ever after.”” It was just a direction.
I hopped on the Panhead. I’d sold it to a guy in town, but I had forty-eight hours before I had to hand over the keys. I took the long way out of the Parish, riding past the clubhouse one last time.
The “”Iron Thorns”” sign was still there, creaking in the wind. A few bikes were parked out front, but the energy felt different—diminished. I didn’t slow down. I didn’t look for Deacon. That part of my life was a closed casket.
As I hit the highway, the sun began to set, casting long, purple shadows over the bayou. I thought about Jax. I thought about my mother. I thought about the man Gary Miller would become—a man forever looking over his shoulder, a man who had lost everything but his breath.
I realized then that the most powerful thing you can do to an enemy isn’t to kill him. It’s to let him live with the knowledge of what he is.
I pushed the bike to seventy, the wind roaring in my ears. The road ahead was long, stretching out across the flat, swampy land until it hit the rising hills of the west.
I wasn’t a gravedigger anymore. I wasn’t a biker. I was just a man with a heavy past and an empty truck, moving toward a place where the sun could actually reach the ground.
The Louisiana state line blurred past. I didn’t look in the rearview mirror. There was nothing behind me but dirt, and I’d spent enough of my life looking at that.
I reached out and touched the scar on my shoulder through my jacket. It didn’t throb anymore. It was just a mark. A reminder of the hole I didn’t fill.
I rode into the dusk, the smell of the swamp finally fading, replaced by the scent of dry grass and the open road.
The ground hadn’t won this time.”
