But nothing’s under control. Not really. Not when the woman in that room almost died tonight, and I can’t do a goddamn thing except sit here and wait.
I push back through the door and reclaim my seat beside her bed.
The night crawls by.
Nurses and doctors come and go, checking vitals, adjusting IVs, giving me looks that range from sympathetic to wary. I ignore them all as I sit here, holding her hand, watching her breathe.
The room is quiet except for the steady beep of the heart monitor. That sound—that rhythmic proof that she’s still alive—becomes my anchor. Every beep is a promise. Every beep saysshe’s still here.
Somewhere around 4 AM, my thoughts drift to places I usually keep locked down.
Rebecca.
My ex-wife is one of the reasons I’ve been hesitant to start anything serious up with Josie. She’d resented coming second to the club, of raising Lee and Emma mostly alone, of watching me choose my brothers over my family again and again. She tried. God knows she tried. And I just kept proving that the club would always come first.
They were my family long before she came along. She just hadn’t understood they were hers too.
When she finally left, I couldn’t even blame her.
“You don’t know how to love anything more than that club, Boone. Maybe you never did.”
Those words have rattled around my skull for years. I’ve worn them like armor, used them as proof that I’m not built for relationships. Not built for softness, for vulnerability, for letting someone in close.
I look at Josie and the bruises blooming across her face, the stitches along her hairline, the steady rise and fall of her chest.
Rebecca was wrong.
The realization hits me like a freight train, knocking the air from my lungs.
Rebecca waswrong.
I can love something more than the club. I can lovesomeonemore than the club. I’ve been doing it for months. I’ve been acting like a fucking pussy, finding excuses to be near her, lying awake at night thinking about the way she laughs, the way she argues, the way she looked at me on that porch before I fucked everything up.
Fisting my cock to the memory of her lips wrapped around a fucking beer bottle.
Fuck, I’m an idiot.
I didn’t have the balls to call it what it was.
Love.
The word feels foreign. Dangerous. Like picking up a loaded gun after years of telling yourself you’d never touch one again.
But sitting here, watching Josie fight to stay alive, I finally understand what I’ve been too scared to admit.
I love her.
This feeling in my gut isn’t the safe, distant wanting or carefully controlled attraction I’ve been pretending I could walk away from. I love her—messy and terrifying and completely fucking inconvenient.
I love her, and I almost lost her without ever telling her.
Never again.
The thought burns through me like wildfire, incinerating every excuse, every fear, every carefully constructed reason whywe can’t.
I’m done being a coward. Done hiding behind the club, behind my failed marriage, behind the weight of every mistake I’ve ever made. Done telling myself I don’t deserve this, don’t deserveher, because some part of me is too broken to hold onto something good.
Josie Bright ismine.
