Pope looks at me for a long moment, the kind of look that reaches back through eight years of history between us, the curb on Fremont Street, the gun he took from my waistband, every mission I've run for the club, every time I've bled for it without complaint.
Then he picks up his reading glasses from the desk and settles them back onto his face.
"She's our employee," he says finally, his voice measured. "Which means she's under club protection. Whatever happens between you stays clean. No pressure, no making her feelobligated because you wear a cut. She's not a sweet-butt, she's not entertainment, and the moment she's uncomfortable you back the hell off. We clear?"
Something in my chest loosens.
"Clear," I say.
"And Havoc?" He looks at me over the top of his glasses, and his voice carries the full weight of what he is to me. Not just president, but the closest thing to a best friend I've ever had, the man who chose me when no one else did. "You hurt her or that kid, we're going to have a problem. A serious one."
"Understood," I say.
He nods once, returning to his paperwork. Conversation over. Decision made. I stand, pushing the chair back, and I'm almost at the door when his voice stops me.
"Havoc."
I look back.
Pope is still looking at his paperwork, reading glasses back on his nose, pen moving across whatever document he was working on before I walked in and complicated his morning. He looks like a man who's already moved on to the next item on his agenda.
But then he says, without looking up: "Whatever you broke last night, fix it."
Not because he knows. Because he knows me. Eight years of watching me sabotage anything that got too close, anything that required more than I thought I could give. He doesn't need the details. He just knows that a man who looks like I look right now. Hollow-eyed, unslept, sitting across from his president confessing to defying a direct order over a woman he met yesterday has almost certainly already done something he regrets.
"Yeah," I say. "I know."
I walk out.
Down the hallway, down the stairs, back through the waking casino floor. The cleaning crew is finishing up. The early shift bartender is restocking bottles behind the bar. Everything exactly as it always is, ordinary and familiar.
Except nothing feels the same as it did yesterday.
I check the clock behind the bar.
Six hours until her shift starts.
Six hours isn't long enough to become the man she deserves. But it's long enough to start trying to be him.
I head back upstairs to shower, change, and figure out what the hell you say to a woman after you kiss her and run.
Chapter 7 - Ruby
I slept maybe three hours.
The rest of the night I spent staring at the water stain on the motel ceiling that looks vaguely like a rabbit, going over and over and over everything until my thoughts wore grooves in my brain like a scratched record that won't move past the same damaged section.
I told him everything.
Everything. My mother, my grandmother, Marcus's father, the midnight escape with nothing but my son and a duffel bag. Things I've never told anyone. Things I barely let myself think about because they live in that part of me that's still bruised, still tender, still figuring out how to scar over properly.
And he listened. He sat in that ridiculous floral chair and he listened like what I was saying mattered, like my story was worth the space it took up in the room.
And then he told me his.
I turn onto my side, facing Marcus, who's sprawled diagonally across the bed the way he always does, taking up three times more space than a five-year-old has any right to. His curls are wild against the pillow. One fist is tucked under his chin.
How does a person grow up the way Jake Mercer grew up? Eleven foster homes, no one staying, no one choosing him, and come out the other side capable of that kind of listening? That kind of gentleness, buried under all that severity?
