She knows what it feels like to be hurt by men who want to send a message.
She knows this from the inside.
The fact that she's sitting next to me, steady and solid and sober and alive, says more than any words could.
I can hear voices from behind the Church door.
Not words—just the low, rolling thunder of men's voices, rising and falling.
Garrett's voice, louder than the rest.
Then Maddox.
Then a silence that can only be Ruger, because when Ruger speaks, everyone else stops.
Then Coin's voice. Low. Steady. Carrying through the heavy wooden door with a clarity that means he wants to be heard.
I can't make out the words, but I can feel them. The weight of them. The finality.
The door opens. Brothers file out.
Some of them look at me as they pass—Bracken nods, Decorum touches my shoulder, Maddox stops and crouches in front of me and says, "Nobody touches you again. Nobody." And the way he says it, this mountain of a man, crouching down to my level the way I crouched down to Sadie Jo's in the ER, makes my eyes burn for the first time all night.
Then Coin comes out.
He walks straight to me.
Doesn't stop, doesn't hesitate, doesn't look at anyone else in the room.
He stands in front of me and he holds out his hand, and when I take it, he pulls me to my feet.
"Leah Mercer is my ol' lady," he says. Not to me. To the room. To every brother, every prospect, every person within earshot. His voice carries the way it carried through the Church door—low, steady, absolute. "Anyone who touches her answers to me and this club."
The room goes still.
Every man in it looks at me, and what I see in their faces isn't surprise. It's confirmation. Like they've been waiting for this. Like they knew before he did.
Vanna squeezes my hand from the couch. She's smiling. Crying, but smiling.
Coin looks at me then. Really looks, those blue-gray eyes, searching my face for—what?
Doubt? Hesitation? Fear?
He won't find any.
"You didn't have to do that," I say.
"Yeah," he says. "I did."
And the way he says it—quiet, certain, like it was never even a question—undoes me more than the parking garage, more than Angelica, more than any of it.
Because this man, this quiet, careful, deliberate man who uses words like they cost money, just spent every one he had to tell the world I'm his.
I step into him and put my hands on his chest.
I feel his heart beating under my palms, steady and strong, the same rhythm I fell asleep to last night and the night before.
"Okay," I say. "Then I'm yours."
