Brittany
Shock doesn’t come loud. It comes in pieces that don’t fit together right away, like your brain keeps dropping one shard at a time and expecting you to build a whole mirror out of it. The peephole in the wall. The damp smell behind the mounted head. The used tissues on the floor like somebody got off watching me sleep. The motor cutting across black water. Oaks’ arms around me, the bulk of him, the way his voice sounded when he told me I was safe like he believed it enough for both of us.
When I step into Lottie and Holler’s cabin, the first thing I trip over ain’t a cooler or a duffel. It’s Mayor McCoy. Golden fur, muddy paws, stretched in the doorway. The official mayor of Hell, Kentucky, and I ain’t kidding, folks treat him like he’s got a title and a voting record. He lifts his head, blinks slow, gives me one long, judgmental stare, then sneezes like he’s pardoning me anyway.
Holler scratches behind his ears as he steps around him.
“Move it, Your Honor,” he mutters, and the dog scoots about two inches, still blocking the floor like stubborn government.
My hands hang useless at my sides, trying to make my body quit shaking long enough for my mind to catch up.
This ain’t what I pictured when I pictured bikers camping. I thought tents and coolers and lawn chairs, the kindof rough living that looks romantic in a country song until the mosquitoes get you. I thought they slept under canvas with engines ticking in the dark, somebody always half-awake, somebody always on lookout even when they pretend it’s just beer and laughter.
But through the window I can see cabins lined down the shoreline with porches and string lights, smoke curling from grills, the glow of lanterns inside, like a small hidden town built for men who don’t trust the world. Farther down there are tents too, lit from inside like paper lanterns, shadows moving against nylon. But closer to the water, closer to the officers, it’s solid and permanent. Of course it is. Kings of Anarchy don’t play at anything. They build it like they plan to keep it.
Lottie moves like she’s running on adrenaline and motherhood and pure stubbornness. Mason is tucked against her hip, curls mashed down from sleep, his small fist still holding a toy truck like he carried it through the night because it’s the one thing in his world that stays the same.
Holler locks the cabin door and checks the latch twice like he’s done this before, like this lake has taught him lessons he doesn’t like saying out loud. Oaks doesn’t say much at all. He’s right behind me, close enough I can feel the heat of him without him touching me, and I hate that my body registers that as comfort. I hate that some part of me relaxes because he’s here, because if something comes through that door it has to go through him first.
Lottie tips her chin toward the bedroom like this is normal, like I didn’t just wake up in a strange wood-paneled room on stilts and then discover a man hiding inside the walls.
“Y’all take the room,” she says, like she’s assigning seats at dinner. “Me and Holler can make do.”
Oaks pushes the door open and I stop dead because there’s one bed. One. I stare at it like it might split in half out of mercy.
“I’ll take the floor,” he says automatically, like he’s allergic to the idea of being near me.
“There ain’t room,” I answer before I can stop myself, because the bedroom is small and the bed takes up most of it and I can’t handle the idea of him lying on the floor like a guard dog, not after what I saw in that floatel wall. We both look back toward the living room, toward two rocking chairs and a kitchen table and nothing that counts as a couch. He scrubs a hand down his jaw and mutters something under his breath that sounds like he’s mad at the whole world.
“I’ll pitch a tent,” he says.
“No,” I say too fast, too sharp.
The word surprises both of us. He looks at me like he didn’t expect me to care what happens to him, and that makes my throat tighten because I don’t want to care. I don’t want to care about anything right now except breathing and not being watched.
“You need sleep,” I add, softer, because my voice feels raw. “You’ve been up all night.”
“I’ve slept less,” he says, stubborn the way men get when they think being tired makes them weak.
“That ain’t the point,” I tell him, and I hate the way my eyes sting when I say it. “You’re the one who’s boat got shot. You’re the one who saw the boat leave. You’re the one who…” I stop before I say held me, because it feels like admitting something I’m not ready for.
He stands there for a second like he’s weighing his options and hating all of them. I try to come up with another solution, anything that keeps this from turning into something that feels too intimate.
“I can sleep with Lottie,” I offer. “You can sleep with Holler.” The second it leaves my mouth I realize how ridiculous it sounds, and his mouth tilts like he’s amused despite everything.
“You gonna tell ’em that?” he murmurs. “Hey, Holler, mind if I crawl in with you tonight?”
I glare at him, and my pulse finally slows a little because for the first time since the floatel, something in me ain’t pure panic. “I trust you,” I say, and it’s simple and honest and maybe reckless, but it’s true. I trust him not to hurt me. I trust him to wake up if the world gets dangerous. I trust him in the way you trust a storm to be exactly what it is, no pretending.
Something shifts in his face like he didn’t want that. Like the trust itself is a weight.
“You can take half the bed,” I add, because my pride has already died enough times this month that I might as well keep going. “If you need to.”
He holds my eyes for a beat that feels longer than it is, then nods once like he’s accepting a deal he already hates. “I’m gonna go talk to Legend,” he says. “Club business.”
“About what?” I ask, but he’s already turning away, grabbing his cut, pulling his boots on, stepping out into the night like he needs air between us. The cabin feels smaller without him in it, and that ain’t logical, but nothing about tonight is.
I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the quilt, replaying everything in pieces. The hole in the wall. The boat running. The way his arms felt when he pulled me against him and I didn’t want him to let go. My phone sits on the nightstand like a lie. I check it anyway, thumb hovering over Elijah’s name even though I already know there won’t be anything there. No messages. No missed calls. Nothing.
