Page 190 of Reckless

Deek is in the middle of telling Koa a story, hands flying around as if they’re trying to keep up with his mouth. Koa is nursing a beer, letting Deek burn himself out the way everyone eventually learns to do.

Across the room, Piper sits at one of the tables with a handful of brothers crowded around her. She’s teaching them signs, patient as ever while grown men with fists built for fighting fumble their fingers into shapes that look nothing like what she’s showing them.

Deek disappears from Koa’s side halfway through whatever point he was trying to make, drawn over like someone dangled food in front of him.

“Show that one again,” he says, grinning as Piper signs something.

She rolls her eyes, laughs without making a sound, and patiently signs it again.

He mangles it, and she reaches across the table without thinking, catches his hand, and shifts two of his fingers into place. He holds the sign up between them.

Piper tips her head, pretending to consider it before catching his hand and shifting his fingers again. She pats the back of his knuckles once in approval.

Deek flashes a grin big enough to earn himself another eye roll.

“Pastry?” he asks hopefully. She nods. “Knew I’d get there. I’m gonna nail this hand-signing shit in no time.”

Piper smiles and starts signing back to him. ‘Teaching you is going to take me a lifetime and a hell of a lot of patience.’

I let out a small laugh as Deek tries to follow along with what she is signing, but he gets lost after the first sign of movement. He furrows his brows. “Sorry, you lost me.”

Piper smiles, her hand resting on his shoulder. “We’ll start with the basics,” Piper says out loud for him in her muted tone.

Deek smiles wide, pulling out a chair and gesturing for her. She grins, then sits, and he slides into a seat beside her. “You know, I think I’m gonna get the hang of this shit real fast,” Deek states.

‘You’re cocky… I kinda like that. But I’m gonna give you a run for your money,’ she signs far too fast for him, and his face scrunches like he’s anxious.

“Jesus, girl, slow that shit down for me. Beginner, remember?”

I smirk, shaking my head and turning, walking away, leaving them to it. Victoria is settled in the good chair by the window, the one she’s claimed since she became pregnant with an ownership nobody has ever bothered to dispute. Marcus is asleep against her chest, one small fist curled near her collarbone.

Sin stands behind her with his hand resting on her shoulder, and every so often he glances down at his son with an expression I’ve never seen on any other man, something cracked wide open and entirely unguarded.

Millie moves behind the bar, pouring drinks, wiping down the counter, and she has finally stopped looking as though she’s bracing for someone to tell her she doesn’t belong in this room.

She belongs.

Everyone here does.

I stand in the doorway and look at all of it, and something in my throat tightens.

Ghost appears beside me without a sound, the way he always does, like he’s simply always been standing there, and I only just noticed. He presses a glass into my hand, the right drink, no discussion required, because he pays attention to things like that. He’s spent months learning exactly how I take my whiskey and never once needed to ask again. We stand together in the doorway, watching the room.

“We did it,” I say, and my voice comes out quieter than I mean it to.

“The club did it.”

“You did most of it.”

He turns his head and looks at me properly, the way he does when he wants me to hear something and not just listen to it. “You built the case for three years while someone threatened your sister, broke into your apartment, and sent you photographs of people you love. I just mapped how it went from there.”

“Ghost.”

“We did it,” he agrees, and something in his voice softens around the edges.

I lean into him, and he wraps his arm around my shoulders, still learning how to do this in public, still choosing to learn anyway, every single time, and I let myself feel the whole weight of this room settle over me—the music, the laughter, and Millie’s bread cooling somewhere behind the bar. Piper’s hands moving through the air, teaching brothers who once thought their hands were only good for fighting how to speak in silence.

We stand in the doorway of the Las Vegas Defiance MC clubhouse on a Sunday evening that smells like beer, warm bread, and the kind of home built by people who choose each other, who keep choosing each other, over and over, long after the choosing stopped being easy.