I go home.
The house Bethany picked is too clean, too sharp-edged. It’s built like something out of a real estate catalog, all stone and iron fixtures and windows that look out over land she didn’t grow up on. It never felt like mine. It felt like a transaction that somebody put furniture in to make it seem normal.
The bedroom door is half closed when I walk in. I don’t knock. I don’t need to.
Bethany’s laugh floats out first, low and pleased. A man’s voice answers her. Not one I recognize, which tells me she’s being sloppy.
I push the door open and lean against the frame.
She’s on the bed in black silk, hair loose over her shoulders. The man, some local contractor type from the look of him, freezes mid-motion like he just realized he walked into Sunday school with muddy boots and a guilty conscience.
Bethany doesn’t flinch. She rolls onto her back and looks at me like she’s been expecting it.
“You’re home early,” she says, not bothering to cover herself.
I take in the scene without feeling much of anything. Not jealousy. Not rage. Just a dull irritation that she didn’t even have the decency to lock the door, like the whole point is for me to find out.
“Finish up,” I tell the man calmly. “Then get out.”
He scrambles, pulling on jeans with shaking hands, eyes darting between us like he’s waiting for someone to start shooting. I don’t move. I don’t threaten him. That makes it worse.
For both or them.
Bethany sits up slow once he’s gone, crossing her legs like we’re about to have tea instead of this conversation.
“You don’t care,” she says, studying me like she’s looking for a bruise.
“No,” I answer honest.
A flicker passes over her face, anger or disappointment. With Bethany it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other starts.
“You used to pretend,” she says.
“I used to have patience.”
She laughs under her breath. “You still sleeping with anything that’ll climb on?”
“That your business?”
“It becomes my business when you get sloppy.”
I hold her gaze long enough that she looks away first, and that tells me she’s still trying to win something she can’t name.
“You could leave,” I tell her. “Ain’t nobody chaining you here.”
Her smile sharpens. “You know that ain’t true.”
And she’s right. Her daddy might be dead, but his land corridor still runs through our supply chain. His freight contracts still touch national lines. All her’s now. This marriage sealed a silence that keeps three patched members from doing federal time. If she walks, that leverage walks with her, and the club bleeds for it.
“You wanted the ring,” I remind her.
“You wanted the deal,” she counters.
Neither of us is wrong. That’s the part that makes it rot.
I shower, change, and leave without another word, because if I stay I’ll say something I can’t take back, and Bethany collects words like ammo.
The Lockup is loud when I walk in. Words in Hell travels faster than I do. Men nod. A couple slap my shoulder. Whiskey pushes a glass into my hand without asking what I want, because he already knows I’m not here for taste.
