Page 114 of Deacon

Unknown: Thought your biker daddy was gonna make everything better?

A newer message sat beneath them, timestamped while she had been laughing with Cage.

Unknown: Cute laugh. Wouldn’t be laughing if you knew what was coming.

Cold spread through her before she could move. The earlier messages could have come from someone who had seen her in public, maybe at the clubhouse. This one felt closer. Whoever sent it knew she had been laughing while she sat inside her own bedroom.

Her gaze snapped to the window. The blinds were half closed, and darkness had turned the glass into a reflection of the room. She could see herself staring back, pale and rigid, with nothing beyond the glass clear enough to prove she was alone.

A knock at the door made her jump. “Jade,” her mother called. “Dinner. Now.”

Her voice sounded normal. Safe. Close. Jade forced air into her lungs and made her own voice match. “Coming.”

She looked back at the phone. Tell Mom. The answer was obvious. Show her the messages and let an adult deal with it.

Then came everything after. Her mother would worry. Deacon would definitely find out. Grandpa probably would too, and suddenly Jade would be in the middle of another family disaster, watched too closely while everybody argued about how to protect her. And what if it was just some sick idiot trying to scare her? What if she blew everything apart over nothing?

She deleted nothing and answered nothing. It was a terrible compromise, which probably made it exactly the kind of sixteen-year-old decision adults were always warning about. Before leaving the room, she closed the blinds completely and shoved the phone into her back pocket.

Her mother glanced up when she joined her at the table. “There you are.”

Jade pulled out a chair and tried to make herself look as normal as her voice sounded. “Yep.”

Lila studied her face for half a second. “Everything okay?”

The phone felt heavier against Jade’s hip, but she kept her expression steady. “Yeah.”

It was getting easier to lie, and that felt like its own warning. Her mom passed her a plate anyway, and Jade did her best to be a girl eating dinner in a normal apartment with normal problems. She laughed once at something Lila said, ate enough not to draw attention, answered questions, and made it through the meal without checking the phone.

Later, after the dishes were done and homework was supposedly finished, Jade lay in bed with the screen lighting the dark. The messages were still there. So was Cage’s name in her call history and the wallpaper she had taken at the clubhouse, sunset catching the fence and rows of bikes until they looked almost beautiful.

Her dad. Cage. The clubhouse. Her mom. New pieces of her life were finally settling into place, and somebody out there had decided to reach into them and make her afraid.

Jade turned the phone facedown beside her and listened to the apartment settle around her. She had wanted to believe the messages were only words. Now, lying in the dark with the blinds closed, she could no longer convince herself whoever sent them was far away.

And that scared her more than she wanted to admit.

31

Lila

Something was off with Jade. I couldn’t say exactly what had changed, only that I knew my daughter well enough to feel it when she wasn’t quite herself. She was quieter over breakfast, too quick to say she was fine, too careful with her phone. Whenever I got close to asking, she smoothed it over with something ordinary. I could push and risk her walls going up or trust she would come to me when she was ready.

I hated that part of parenting. Sometimes loving your kid meant sitting beside a fear you couldn’t fix yet. I let it go for now, but I kept watching.

Later, Jade sat cross-legged on the couch with a show murmuring while she stared more than scrolled at her phone. A knock sounded, and something in her face brightened before I reached the door. Whatever Jackson and I still had to untangle, I couldn’t ignore what happened to her when he showed up.

He stood outside in a dark Henley with the sleeves shoved up his forearms, his cut over it, sunglasses hooked at his collar. He leaned one shoulder against the frame like he was making an effort not to crowd me, which would have been more convincing if he didn’t fill the doorway anyway. “Morning, Princess.”

I gave him a look, refusing to reward the pet name even as my body recognized it. “It’s almost noon.”

His mouth tipped with the easy confidence that made resisting him exhausting. “Still mornin’ if I haven’t eaten lunch.”

I stepped aside before I could reward him with an argument. Jade was already off the couch by then, all that quiet distraction gone from her face. “Hey.”

Jackson’s whole expression changed when he looked at her. The shift was subtle, but I knew him too well to miss it: his mouth softened, his eyes warmed, and something in him settled. “Hey, baby girl.”

The name landed on Jade too. She straightened a little, caught between not knowing what to do with that tenderness and wanting every bit of it. Jackson lifted the bakery box in his hand. “Brought peace offerings.”