Page 192 of Reckless

“So kid, you sure after all the shit you’ve been through prospecting you still want this?” Sin asks, like it’s a formality, even though everyone in this room already knows the answer.

Liam’s voice comes out rough. “Yes, sir.”

“Then get your ass up here properly. Prospects don’t slouch through the best day of their fucking life.”

A ripple of laughter breaks the tension, and Liam straightens like Sin has flicked a switch in his spine.

Nitro steps forward with the patches already laid across his palms, and the room settles into something respectful. I feel Ghost go still beside me, watching the same way he watches everything, quietly.

Liam reaches for the front of his prospect cut, hands shaking as he works the old patch loose. When he holds it out, Nitro takes it without ceremony, the way you’d take something precious without making a show of how precious it really is.

“Two years,” Nitro says, low enough that only the people closest catch it. “That’s a long time to prove yourself to people who already saw it in you the first month.”

Liam’s jaw works, but he doesn’t say anything. I don’t think he trusts his voice right now.

Nitro holds up the top rocker first. It reads…

DEFIANCE MC.

The room watches in absolute silence as the needle bites into leather, Nitro’s hands are slow and sure, and I find myself gripping Ghost’s arm without meaning to. Beside me, Piper signs something to Ro that I don’t catch, both of them wiping at their eyes like they’ve been caught off guard by their own feelings.

When the last stitch pulls tight, Nitro holds up the finished cut, turning it once so the whole room can see it properly.

Full patch.

DEFIANCE MC. LAS VEGAS.

He passes it back into Liam’s hands, and Liam holds it like it weighs more than leather has any right to weigh.

“One more thing,” Sin says.

Liam looks up, and for the first time tonight, he looks nervous instead of overwhelmed.

“Every man in this room earns a name that fits what he actually is, not what he was before he got here.” Sin crosses his arms. “You’ve been shot once and knocked out cold once, both times standing exactly where you were supposed to stand, both times too damn stubborn to stay down long enough to matter. From here on out, you ride as Ricochet.”

The room erupts.

Deek whoops loud enough to startle the dog sleeping under the pool table, and Koa slaps Liam on the back with enough force to stagger him half a step. Somebody starts a chant that dissolves into laughter before it gets past two syllables, and Liam stands in the middle of it with the cut clutched in both hands, grinning so wide it looks like it might actually hurt.

“Because bullets bounce off you?” Deek shouts over the noise.

“Because they shouldn’t…” Sin says, quieter, “… and he keeps getting back up anyway.”

I feel that in my chest more than I expect to. Every time I close my eyes, I still see the motion sensor footage, the empty stairwell, the silence where Liam should have been. I’d spent three weeks quietly furious with myself over it, like his getting hurt was something I should have prevented, some debt I hadn’t figured out how to repay.

Watching him shrug into that cut for the first time, full patch on his back, laughing while Deek tries to noogie him and gets shoved off for his trouble, something in my chest finally loosens.

He’s all right.

He’s more than all right.

Ghost’s arm tightens around me. “You good?”

“Yeah.” I lean into him, watching Liam get swallowed up by a dozen brothers all fighting for the chance to shake his hand first. “He almost died protecting me, and I never even said thank you properly.”

“You don’t have to.” Ghost nods toward the middle of the room, toward Bear pulling Liam into a hug that lifts him half off his feet, toward Koa already pouring the first shot into his hand. “That cut on his back, that road name he just got, that’s thanks enough, Sage.”

I watch a little longer, and I understand what he means.