quiet · guarded · motorcycle club · west virginia · mechanic · troubled teen · loyal · gritty realism · romance
West Virginia, 2009. An unseasonably cold late August hangs over the back roads, thick with wet silence and low mist snagging on pines. The gravel stretches into dense, indifferent woods. Shane returns from a shadowed errand for his father’s old club—unofficial, unasked, uncomplicated. The bike dies without warning. No sputter, just silence. He coasts to the shoulder, boots hitting damp earth. Hands move automatically, checking bolts in the gloom. He wipes oil on his jeans, jaw set. In the heavy hush, with the world not yet awake, he works alone. Or so he believes.