The word father lands with the sting of a cold slap.
Of course he is. Sometimes I forget Chuck has a kid. Candace doesn’t come around much anymore. The older she gets, the less I see her. She’s just another stubborn teenager with too much attitude and not enough respect. Another kid acting out. Chuck’s one of us. Her old man. Whatever’s going on between them is just the usual father-daughter drama.
Still, something about the way her voice cracked—not with weakness, but heat—makes something in me pause. Just for a second. Just long enough to wonder if maybe I’ve missed more than I realized.
I remember when he started showing up around the club. He was loud and magnetic. At first, I barely noticed him. I was too busy trying to survive the wreckage of my own house. My fatherhad just killed my mother and older brother. That year was all fire and silence. Seeing Chuck walk in as if he belonged, carrying something worth showing up for, should’ve made me angry. Maybe it did. Or maybe it just made me want something I didn’t have and didn’t know how to name.
A door slams hard enough to rattle the wall, and Candace storms past me without a glance, fury in her bones, shoulders tight with unshed pain. I don’t move. Don’t follow. Just listen to her boots echo down the hallway, sharp, staccato bursts that feel more threat than retreat.
Then I walk out of the room on autopilot, boots heavy against the hardwood, every footstep louder than it should be in my skull.
Outside, the air hits harder than I expect. It smells of pine sap and diesel, distant rain clinging to the sky, and the faint sour edge of oil on warm gravel. The clubhouse behind me feels alive in a different way now. No longer a refuge, more a kingdom propped up by bloodstained oaths and memories that never stop bleeding.
Candace stands on the porch. She leans against the railing, arms crossed tight under her hoodie, a cigarette held between her fingers with practiced defiance, as if she knows it looks cool even if it makes her gag. Her sleeves are shoved up. Her jaw is set. The air around her hums with tension, a wire pulled too tight.
She lifts the cigarette to her lips and inhales. Immediately coughs, sharp, choking, real. I watch her mutter something, curse under her breath, and try again. This time she draws in less, blows it out fast, chasing the illusion more than the habit.
“You don’t smoke,” I murmur.
She doesn’t look at me. “Maybe I do now.”
I step out fully, taking the opposite post on the porch. She stays turned away, staring into the dark as if it holds answers.
“You didn’t have to come,” I say.
“I know.”
A pause stretches between us, thick enough to fill the space. “Then why?”
Her mouth pulls tight. She exhales slowly through her nose. “So I could watch the club crown another king and pretend it means something.”
I look at her. Really look. She doesn’t meet my eyes, but she doesn’t need to. Her posture says everything. She’s sixteen going on scorched earth. Shoulders braced, daring someone to push her.
“You think I’m going to ruin it.”
That makes her laugh. Bitter. Short. Ugly. “I think it’s already ruined.”
Her eyes don’t land on me, but the weight behind her words does. Maybe she isn’t pointing fingers, not yet, but that doesn’t mean the shadow of blame isn’t already circling. The kind that starts as smoke and ends in fire. Not my fault. Not yet. But I can feel it shifting. Brewing. Deep down, I know the day is coming when she’ll stop holding back.
I don’t react. Not outwardly. But it cracks something anyway. Her tone is even. Not dramatic. Not loud. But it hits as strongly as a gut punch all the same.
Before I can ask what she means, she flicks the cigarette away and grinds it beneath her heel, as if it’s offended her. Her movements are sharp and clipped, every gesture tight with the effort of holding something back.
The silence that follows isn’t empty. It thrums. Hot. Humming. Then she speaks again, voice lower now, threaded with something that feels part resignation, part resentment.
“You only see what you want to see.”
That’s it. No explanation. No context. Just that.
She doesn’t wait for a response. Doesn’t give me a chance to ask what the hell she’s talking about. She turns and walks down the stairs, shoulders squared, head high, vanishing into the dark as if the night is the only thing left she trusts.
I stay frozen, the railing digging into my palms, her words echoing louder than they have any right to.You only see what you want to see.
The worst part is I don’t know if she means me, the club, or all of us. But I know it matters. Because whatever she means… I’ve already missed it. And maybe that’s the problem.
I stand there for a while, hands curled around the porch rail until my knuckles ache. The cut on my back feels heavier with every breath, the leather clinging to my sweat-damp shirt.
Then, as it always does when things go quiet, the memory hits.
