And yeah. I know that’s twisted. I know that’s selfish.
But I can’t just stop wanting her.
And I can’t pretend I don’t need her.
What Icando is take her where she wants to go—even if it’s away from me.
I was sixteen when Stone assigned me to princess duty. Emma was fifteen, home from that fancy dance academy in New York, and determined to raise hell after months of discipline and training. Stone needed someone who could keep up with her, someone close to her age who wouldn’t stand out when she went to parties or snuck off to do stupid teenage shit.
That someone was me. The scrappy kid who’d been hanging around the MC for a year, desperate to prove I was worth patching in someday. Who’d already earned a reputation for hitting hard enough to break bones—mine, theirs, didn’t matter—and for being too stubborn to quit.
“Keep her safe,”Stone said.“Don’t let her out of your sight. She comes home in one piece, you’ve got a shot at prospecting officially.”
I said yes because turning down the president’s order wasn’t an option. Because I needed that prospect patch more than I needed air. Because at sixteen, with nowhere else to go and no one else to be, the MC was everything.
I didn’t say yes because of Emma.
That came later.
At first, she was just an assignment. An annoying one. She tried to ditch me constantly—climbing out windows, sneaking through back doors, straight-up lying about where she was going. I always found her. Always got her home safe. She’d scream at me, tell me I was ruining her life, tell me she didn’t need a babysitter.
I’d shrug and show up the next day, anyway.
That was my job. Keep Stone’s daughter alive and out of trouble. Nothing more.
Except somewhere between the third time I dragged her out of a party right before it got raided and the night I carried her home after she sprained her ankle on a dare, it stopped feeling like just a job.
She was seventeen, home for Christmas break. I was eighteen, officially prospecting by then. We were sitting on the clubhouse roof at two in the morning because she couldn’t sleep and I was supposed to be watching her, anyway.
“Why do you do this?”she asked out of nowhere.
“Do what?”
“Follow me around. Deal with my shit. You could tell my dad it’s not worth it. That I’m too much trouble.”
She had her knees pulled to her chest, arms wrapped around them, hair loose around her face. She looked young, vulnerable—nothing like the fierce, sharp-tongued girl who made my life hell every time she came home.
“You’re not too much trouble,”I said.
“Liar.”But she smiled a little.“I’m definitely too much trouble.”
“Maybe. But you’re worth it.”
Her smile faded.“How?”
I should’ve said something safe. Something about duty or Stone’s orders or how watching her was my way into the MC. Instead, I told the truth.
“Because if something happened to you, I couldn’t live with myself.”
She rolled her eyes and called me a goon with a savior complex, and I laughed—because she wasn’t wrong.
Point is, long before I ever stuck a tracker in her, I was already gone. There are lines you don’t cross unless you’re in so deep you can’t even see air anymore.
For thirteen years I watched her walk away—every damn time—and told myself I’d be fine. That it was better for her. That she was meant for stages and lights and cities, not that faded town and the MC that raised us.
But every time she came back, even if it was just for a week or a night, I fell straight into orbit around her. Like some dumb dog that never learned the fence line.
Truth is, I don’t want to learn it. Don’t want to stop orbiting.
