"Did you ask me first?" I say, and there's a trace of humor in it because I need the humor right now, need something lighterthan bruises and loan sharks and declarations made in front of rooms full of dangerous men.
"No," he says. And the almost-smile is there—small, private, the one that's only for me. "Would you have said no?"
"No."
"Then I don't regret not asking."
I lean my head against his shoulder and he puts his arm around me.
We sit on the bathroom floor together, my bruise and his guilt and the coin turning between his fingers, and the house breathes around us—Wrenleigh's music playing low through her closed door, Sadie Jo's light still on, Maddox's steady presence on the porch.
"I'm scared," I say.
It’s the first time I've said it out loud. First time I've let the word exist outside my own head.
"I know. Me too."
"You don't seem scared."
"That's because I'm terrified. There's a difference." The coin turns. "Scared is something you feel. Terrified is something you are. I've been terrified since the day those men showed up on my porch, and I'll be terrified until this is over. But I don't have the luxury of letting it show, because I've got two girls upstairs and a woman sitting next to me on a bathroom floor who all need me to hold it together."
"You don't always have to hold it together. Not with me."
"I know." He kisses the top of my head. "I'm working on it."
I close my eyes. Let the silence settle. Let his heartbeat under my ear be the only sound in the world for a minute.
Tomorrow, the weight comes back.
The loan sharks, the pipeline, Angelica, all of it.
Tomorrow, the bruise will be darker and the danger will be closer and the clock will keep ticking.
But right now, I'm sitting on a bathroom floor with a man who called me his in front of a room full of people who would die for each other, and he's holding me, and his daughters are sleeping down the hall, and for the first time in my life, being needed and being wanted are the same thing.
I press my face into his shoulder and I breathe, and for once, I let that be enough.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Coin
Friday comes the way a fuse burns—slow, steady, inevitable.
The clubhouse has been running at a different frequency all week.
You can feel it in the way the brothers move, the way conversations drop to whispers when someone passes a doorway, the way men who normally crack jokes and argue about football are checking their weapons and studying Bracken's route maps like they're cramming for a final exam.
We’re ready for war. That's what this is, even if nobody says the word out loud.
I'm at the table in the main room with my laptop, the maps, and three phones—mine, a burner for comms, and the one we're using to coordinate the protection details.
Spreadsheet brain. That's what Ruger calls it.
He means it as a compliment, and I take it as one, because someone in this club needs to be the one who tracks the moving parts while everyone else is kicking in doors.
The protection rotation is running tight.
Bloodhound and Maddox on the house in twelve-hour shifts.
