Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“I do,” she says. She doesn’t look away from him. “It asks for honesty. For presence. For knowing that there are nights he won’t be here when I want him, and mornings where the world will call him before I do. It asks for patience with things I don’t get to know. And it asks for the truth when the truth is ugly.” Her mouth curves, not sweet. Strong. “I can do that. I am doing that.”
Tommy’s gaze flicks to me because he’s checking whether the words line up with what he’s seen. I give him nothing except my face, which apparently says too much because he huffs like a man who believed this minute would come, but hoped it wouldn’t.
“And him?” he says, back to her. “You hurt him, and I—”
I step in before the sentence finishes because I’m done letting it be said near her. “Enough.”
Tommy turns, a little surprised, a little not. “Brother—”
“I wouldn’t bring her here if it wasn’t real.” The words come out harder than I intend. I don’t soften them. “I don’t parade women through this door. I don’t test-drive them against the bar. If she’s in this room, she’s mine. If she’s mine, she’s not your concern in what happens with me and her. That’s ours.”
Tommy’s eyes narrow, not angry, measuring. “She’s family when she’s in this room. That makes her my concern.”
“Then treat her like it,” I snap. “Not like a thief casing the place. Worry about her feelings as much as you do mine.”
The room goes quiet a foot or two around us without anyone meaning to. It’s not tension so much as attention—men doing the math on whether this is going to blow into something stupid.
Kristen sets a hand on my forearm. Not a tug. A touch. “It’s okay,” she says, soft enough that it’s just for me. “He’s doing his job. I wouldn’t respect him if he didn’t.”
“My job is to look out for you,” I remind, and I can hear the heat in my own voice and I don’t have anywhere good to aim it. “And I am.”
“I know,” she whispers. “So is he. If I’m not cut out for this, better to let me go now.”
Tommy interjects, “good for you fools she’s fuckin’ made for your ass. Welcome to the family, Kristen.”
I breathe. It feels like I’ve been holding it since the door opened. Tommy lifts both palms, a sign he’s not looking for a fight today. He looks at Kristen again, and something in his face shifts a fraction. Respect, maybe. Or the beginning of it.
“Happy for you. For real.” He offers his hand again, and this time when she takes it, it’s different—two people agreeing to try and find middle ground together.
“Thank you,” she replies, and I can hear the sincerity under it that makes men like Tommy soften against their will.
Red slaps the bar, Tripp exhales, and the room’s noise comes back like someone hit play. I slide an arm around Kristen’s waist because I want to and because the animal inside me is pacing to mark her as mine.
“You good?” I ask into her hair.
“Good,” she says, and then tips up on her toes to brush her mouth against my jaw like a punctuation mark I didn’t know I needed.
I finish the rounds quick because the more she appeals to my family, the more the need to taste her, have her builds inside me. The night passes and eventually I catch Tripp’s eye and tilt my head toward the door. He reads the exit I was giving him.
Casually, he calls out, “She fits.”
“She does,” I say to no one in particular.
Seventeen
Pretty Boy
We step into the night air and my shoulders drop a half inch. I throw her the helmet and she catches it smooth, all this time of practice closing the gap between thinking and doing. It’s all natural to her now.
We ride. The curves on highway fifty-eight pull us into a rhythm I trust. Her hands at my waist remind me what I brought into that room and what I’m leaving with. When the water flashes to our right and the bridge starts to sing under us, I decide we’re not done talking. Just not there. Not where the walls can collect the words and hold them for later
I turn for the long way home.
The bike eats miles the way fire eats dry brush. I keep the throttle steady, the bars tight, letting the machine do what it was built to do. Wind rips at us, slamming the noise of the world back far enough that there’s nothing left but road and heartbeat. Kristen presses into me, arms cinched around my waist like she knows I need the anchor as much as she does.
Halfway across, I feel it hit—this sudden gut-deep awareness that I’ve never done this before. Not the riding, not the clubhouse, not the fights. That’s second nature. What I’ve never done is share it all. Bring someone into both worlds and mean it. I’ve always kept things separate. Women stayed at the bar, at the motel, at the edge of my bed until I was done. The club stayed family, ironclad and untouched, never entangled with someone I fucked. Kristen just rewrote the rules. And I let her.