When he was done, he slid my phone back toward me.“You’ll get a ping if someone lingers.If her door opens at weird hours.If somebody follows her into the garage.”
I picked up the phone, screen showing a still frame of her hallway—clean, bright, empty.
Relief hit first.Then guilt tried to crawl up behind it.I shoved the guilt down.
“This stays between us,” I told him not that I needed to.
Dippy’s mouth twisted.“Nothing to it, brother.”
I left him there and walked out into the main room where the club noise swallowed all thoughts.Men talking.Laughter.A pool ball cracking.The smell of whiskey and bodies.
Gonzo was at the bar, big shoulders taking up space like always.IvaLeigh standing in front of him between his legs as he sat on the stool.He looked up when he saw me, nodded once, then jerked his chin toward the back.I took the cue and headed back.
We talked business for an hour, territory, a dispute that needed smoothing, a supply line that had gone shaky.As the treasurer, my absence left gaps in information hitting him quickly so we needed a debrief of the club shit.These were the kind of things that kept a club alive and got men buried if they handled it wrong.
But even while I talked, my phone felt like a weight in my pocket.
Not because of the feeds.
Because of her.I hated that a phone was my life line to her, our only connection right now.
Three days went by like that—club chaos layered over the quiet pulse of something new.Nita and I talked at night.
Sometimes it was ten minutes.Sometimes it was an hour.She would sit on her couch, I could hear the city through her window, distant sirens and the low hum of traffic.I would sit on the porch of my small cabin the quiet of the night around me.And every time her voice hit my ear, something in me unclenched.
On the third night, she laughed at something I said, an actual laugh, not the polite kind, and I found myself smiling at the dark like an idiot.
“What?”she asked.
“I feel,” I started, then stopped.
“Feel what?”she pressed.
I exhaled.“Relaxed.”
Silence.Then softer, “You?Relaxed?That’s new.”
“Yeah,” I admitted.“I didn’t realize how tight I’ve been living until,” I paused.“Until you.”
Her breath came through the phone, slow.“That scares me.”
“Me too,” I shared honestly.
She didn’t tease me for it.Didn’t make it into a joke.She just let it be true.And that, that shit did something to me.
Two nights later, Gonzo told me there was a run to Arkansas.Club business.A meet that needed muscle just by showing up, a reminder to some people out there that Saints didn’t move light.We were taking Wrath’s back and since the man ran a tight club, we needed to be there.It was reciprocated.Anytime we needed something Wrath and the Bella Vista chapter would drop everything for us.
This was the kind of thing you didn’t turn down.I called her before we left, leaning against my bike while men loaded up.
“Arkansas?”she repeated.“That’s a ride.”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll be careful.”
“I always am,” I stated, and then added, because I’d learned she needed the truth, not the script, “But I’ll stay in touch.Whenever I can.”
“I don’t need constant check-ins,” she shared.“You’re a grown man.Do what you do, Dante.I’ll be here.I don’t have to talk to you every day, even though I do like it.”
