He doesn’t say anything. He puts his arm around my shoulders, pulls me into his side, and presses his mouth to the top of my head. I lean into him and close my eyes and sit inside this moment, because it is mine. I chose it.
I chose it.
The party starts at six.
Saber told me it wasn’t a big deal—just the club, food, and drinks at the ranch. I believed him until Trapper showed up at four with a truck full of coolers and a grill the size of a small car.
By six, the yard is full. Bikes line the driveway. Music pours from a speaker Joker rigged to the porch railing. The grill is smoking. Prospects are manning it and serving up the guests.
I step off the porch in my cut. The leather is warm and heavy and mine.
Duke is the first one to clock it. He lifts his bottle. One inch. A toast so small you’d miss it if you weren’t looking.
I was looking.
Razor nods from across the yard. No smile, because Razor doesn’t do smiles, but the nod is enough. Joker raises a hand without pausing his conversation. Crash smiles. Trapper grins so wide I’m afraid he’ll catch the grill on fire, and then he almost does, and Razor has to put the flames out with a beer.
A group of six women finds me by the coolers, all wearing their own cuts. Old Ladies—the wives and girlfriends of patched members—and not one of them looks at me the way Crystal did.
A redhead named Bree hands me a drink and tells me the first rule of being an Old Lady is learning how to sleep through a 3 a.m. phone call. A dark-haired woman named Sage says the second rule is always having bail money in an envelope in the kitchen drawer. They’re laughing. I’m laughing. And I’m sitting in a lawn chair with a drink in my hand, and women around me who aren’t sizing me up or shutting me out, and this is so foreign that my throat aches with it.
I’ve never had girlfriends. Kyle didn’t allow it. Before Kyle, I moved so many times that I couldn’t keep anyone close.
Bree asks me if I have a job, and I tell her I’m enrolling in marketing and design courses at the community college in the fall, and the excitement in my chest is so big it leaks into my voice, and I don’t even try to flatten it.
Bree clinks her bottle against mine. “Good. This town needs someone with taste. Have you seen the sign on Bones and Bucks?” She takes a sip. “Saber’s little sister, Cassidy, is out in California for school. That girl tried to get them to fix that sign before she left. Nobody listened.”
I’ve seen the sign on Bones and Bucks—the bar the club owns. It’s terrible. I’ve already sketched a replacement.
Halfway through the night, I go looking for a quiet spot to breathe. The party is good—great, even—but my social battery died an hour ago. And if one more person asks me how I met Saber, I’m going to tell them the version with the water bottle and the dead body, and that’s not a party story.
I find the side of the barn. Dark, quiet, the music muted by the walls. And I’m not alone.
Duke is sitting on an overturned feed bucket with a beer he hasn’t touched.
He looks up. Not startled.
“Sorry. I didn’t know anyone was back here.”
“You’re fine.” He tips the bottle toward the empty bucket next to him. An invitation, or at least not a rejection.
I sit. We don’t talk for a minute. The music drifts around the corner, and someone—Trapper, probably—howls with laughter.
“You don’t like parties?” I ask.
“I like parties fine.” He picks at the label on the bottle, peeling it in a slow, deliberate strip. “I don’t like crowds.”
I understand the difference.
“He’s a good man,” Duke says. “Better than he thinks he is.” He peels another strip of label off the bottle. “When you find someone worth holding onto, you don’t let go.” His thumb presses the strip of paper flat against his knee.
He’s not talking about Saber and me anymore.
“I know,” I say. Because I do.
He nods. Then he drinks the beer and sets the empty bottle in the dirt beside the bucket.
We sit in the quiet until Saber comes around the corner of the barn, finds me, and extends his hand without a word.
