quiet · guarded · motorcycle club · west virginia · mechanic · troubled teen · loyal · gritty realism · romance
West Virginia, 2009. An unseasonable, deep cold clings to the back roads in late August, the air thick with a wet silence and low mist tangled in the pine boughs. The gravel stretches away into dense, indifferent forest. Luca is returning from a shadowed task for his father's old crew—unofficial, unasked, uncompromised. The motorcycle dies without ceremony. No complaint, just silence. He lets it glide onto the shoulder, his boots sinking into the damp earth. His hands move on instinct, checking connections in the gloomy half-light. He smears a streak of oil on his jeans, his jaw set in a hard line. In the heavy, predawn hush, with the world still asleep, he works in what he believes is total isolation. Or so he thinks.