I settle onto the barstool beside Marley, and she nudges a plate toward me without a word, the way she’s started doing things around the clubhouse lately, with an ease that says she belongs here even though it still sometimes surprises her when it feels that way. Snickerdoodle cookies.Mine. Still soft in the center. I pick one up more for the motion than the hunger, the sugar and cinnamon clinging faintly to my fingers.
“Long morning?” Marley asks, soft enough that it’s just for me.
I think about the kitchen table. The newspaper, the two mugs, Will’s nod in the driveway, and the thing that settled in him afterward, and the way my father looked through the kitchen window with that unknown expression.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Good long or bad long?”
Across the room, Sage is now explaining to Ghost, at length and with considerable hand gestures, why her current desktop background is relevant to her laptop’s technical issues. Ghost listens with a focused patience, like he’s learned it’s easier to let her finish than to try and cut in.
I glance at them.
I watch Marley watching them.
“I honestly don’t know yet,” I admit.
Marley nods slowly, accepting the answer without hesitation. There’s understanding in her expression too, the kind that says she’s spent time in that same uncertain space herself and knows it takes a while to figure out where your feet belong. She doesn’t push, because Marley never pushes. She simply takes abite of one of the snickerdoodles, with a warm smile that says,‘Welcome to being in love with a Defiance biker.’
I just haven’t figured out whether this is a good thing…
Or a mistake waiting to drown me.
Chapter Eleven
MILLIE
Victoria is in the middle of explaining why she is never, under any circumstances, eating another hard-boiled egg for the rest of her life, and Marley is laughing hard enough that she’s nearly in danger of sliding off the sofa.
“I’m serious,” Victoria insists, one hand braced dramatically against her stomach. “If this baby comes out smelling like sulfur, I’m suing someone.”
Ro snorts from behind the bar. “You’re suing biology?”
“I’m suing expectations.”
“Good luck with that,” Marley says.
I laugh with them, the sound coming easier tonight than it has in days, my body finally remembering what it feels like not to be braced against something invisible.
That’s when the room shifts.
Like a pressure drop before a storm.
Sin walks into the clubroom from the hallway, and the whole atmosphere shifts around him instantly. Conversations don’t stop completely, but they drop lower without anybody thinking about it.
He doesn’t need to demand attention because the room automatically gives it to him.
His gaze finds mine almost immediately.
There’s no smile.
There’s also no visible urgency.
Which somehow makes it worse.
“Millie,” he says. It’s not loud, it doesn’t have to be. “Can I borrow you for a minute?”
The girls go quiet in that instinctive way people do when club business brushes up against something personal. Victoria gives me a quick, searching look. Marley’s expression tightens just slightly.
