He wraps his arms around me, holds me in the middle of the clubhouse, in front of his brothers, with his chin on top of my head and his hands spread wide across my back.
Not hiding. Not careful. Not worried about who's watching.
I press my face against his cut and I breathe in leather and cedar and him, and I think about a night in the ER when I watched a quiet man carry his daughter through a hospital and thought,Those girls don't know how lucky they are.
I think maybe I'm starting to understand.
Garrett is standing by the hallway to Church. Arms crossed. Watching us.
His face is unreadable. That Mercer mask, the one that hides everything and says nothing and holds the whole world at arm's length.
Then he nods. One nod. The same nod he gave Coin when Coin saidI know exactly what she is.
After Coin is finished with Church we head over to his house and keep busy with the girls.
Once we get them to bed, the guard shift changes and Maddox is on the porch watching over us.
I sit on the bathroom floor in my underwear and look at the bruise.
It's ugly. Long and dark, stretching from the curve of my shoulder to the center of my collarbone.
Tomorrow it'll be worse. Deeper purple, wider spread, the kind of bruise that takes weeks to fully fade.
I'll have to wear high-necked scrubs to work.
I'll have to lie about it if anyone asks, and people will ask, because nurses notice things.
Coin appears in the doorway.
He sees me looking at it, and something moves across his face that hurts to watch—guilt, fury, tenderness, all braided together into something that doesn't have a name.
He sits down on the bathroom floor next to me.
Doesn't say anything.
Just sits, his back against the tub, his shoulder touching mine.
"I'm okay," I say.
"I know."
"It looks worse than it feels."
"I know that too."
"Coin."
"Yeah."
"What does it mean to you?" I ask. "Being your ol' lady. What does that actually look like?"
He's quiet for a moment and turns the coin between his fingers.
I can hear the soft metal sound of it even though I can't see it.
"It means you're mine," he says. "And I'm yours. In front of the club, in front of anyone who's watching, in front of anyone who might think about coming at me through the people I love." A pause. "It means they don't just answer to me anymore. They answer to everyone. Every brother, every patch, every man who was in that room tonight. You're family now. Not by blood—by my choice, my vow."
I let that settle. The weight of it. The enormity.
