Chapter 2 #3
I bring her hand to my lips and press a kiss to her bruised knuckles. My breath hitches, and I don’t bother trying to hide it. There’s no one here to see.
Fuck. This happened on my watch.
“I’m here,” I say quietly. “Can you hear me?”
She doesn’t move.
The room is quiet. It’s a shared room, with two beds but the other is vacant.
I sit here for a while, watching the steady rise and fall of her chest as I consider what’s occurred.
The hot rage that’s been burning inside me flares.
If this was Summit—if someone deliberately put her in this bed—there won’t be enough left of when I’m done with them to bury.
I make the calls from her bedside, one hand still wrapped around hers.
First, the prospect situation. I can’t leave the kid hanging in a cell all night, but I’m not leaving Josie either. I scroll through my contacts until I find the number I need.
Brick’s a member of the Ridgeline Chapter, about forty minutes east. He’s Ginger’s baby brother—fifteen years younger and twice as stubborn.
When the club expanded and needed someone to lead the new chapter, he was the obvious choice.
Young, hungry, and sharp as a tack. The fact that he’s practically family through Hawk and Ginger doesn’t hurt either.
Stone
Got a prospect in lockup at Ole Killa. Aggravated assault, self-defense situation. Need someone to get him a decent lawyer and sit with him until morning. Can you handle it? I got another situation otherwise I’d be there.
His reply comes fast, even at this hour.
Brick
Consider it done. Everything okay on your end?
I glance through the open door at Josie, still and pale in her hospital bed.
Stone
No. But it will be.
Brick
You need backup, you call. Anytime.
Stone
Appreciated, brother. I might take you up on that.
One problem handled. Now for the harder call.
For this one, I step into the hallway, keeping Josie’s door propped open so I can see her, and dial Tank.
He answers on the second ring. “Prez. Wondered where you disappeared to.”
“Get somewhere private. I need to brief you.”
A pause. Muffled voices, footsteps, a door closing. Then Tank again, more serious. “Hold on, Stone. Bones and Lee are here. I’m putting you on speaker.”
I don’t waste time.
“I left to pick up Josie. But she wasn’t home when I got there.” I keep my voice level, the voice of a president delivering a report. Not a man falling apart. “So I rode the route she takes from work. There was an accident about two miles out. T-bone collision at the intersection by Miller Road.”
Silence.
“She’s alive,” I continue. “Ambulance got there right as I did. But she’s in bad shape. I followed them to the hospital. They’ve got her now. I’m waiting to hear more.”
“Jesus,” Lee breathes.
“You sure you don’t need us there?” Tank asks.
“No. I’m fine on my own.” I make my voice firm. An order, not a request. “I need you three to keep this quiet. Let everyone have tonight. Keep the party going, business as usual.”
“Stone—” Bones starts.
“That’s an order.” I cut him off. “We don’t know if this was an accident or a hit yet.
Could be nothing. Could be Summit sending a message.
Either way, I don’t want the whole club in panic mode until we know more.
Keep this between us, let everyone celebrate Duck and the zoning win, and we deal with what this means in the morning. ”
The silence stretches. I know what they’re thinking—that they should be here, that brothers don’t let brothers face this alone.
But I need them there. If Summit is watching, if this was intentional, we can’t show them we’ve been tipped off.
“Understood,” Tank says finally. “You call if anything changes.”
“I will. One more thing—the crash was a hit and run. Black SUV, driver fled. I want eyes on this first thing. Traffic cams, police reports, witnesses. Everything.”
“I’ll handle it personally,” Bones says. “First thing tomorrow.”
“Good.” I pause, exhaustion pressing down on me like a physical weight. “Now get back out there before people notice.”
“Stone.” Lee’s voice is careful. “She’s tough. She’ll be okay.”
My son, trying to comfort me. He’s a good kid, he’s become a better man.
“Yeah,” I manage. “She will.”
I hang up before they can say anything else.
The fluorescent lights buzz overhead. Somewhere down the corridor, a machine beeps. A nurse walks past, her shoes squeaking on the linoleum.
I should feel better. The club’s handling things. Brick’s got the prospect. Bones will dig into the crash. Everything’s under control.
But nothing’s under control. Not really. Not when the woman in that room almost died tonight, and I can’t do a goddamn thing except sit here and wait.
I push back through the door and reclaim my seat beside her bed.
The night crawls by.
Nurses and doctors come and go, checking vitals, adjusting IVs, giving me looks that range from sympathetic to wary. I ignore them all as I sit here, holding her hand, watching her breathe.
The room is quiet except for the steady beep of the heart monitor. That sound—that rhythmic proof that she’s still alive—becomes my anchor. Every beep is a promise. Every beep says she’s still here.
Somewhere around 4 AM, my thoughts drift to places I usually keep locked down.
Rebecca.
My ex-wife is one of the reasons I’ve been hesitant to start anything serious up with Josie.
She’d resented coming second to the club, of raising Lee and Emma mostly alone, of watching me choose my brothers over my family again and again.
She tried. God knows she tried. And I just kept proving that the club would always come first.
They were my family long before she came along. She just hadn’t understood they were hers too.
When she finally left, I couldn’t even blame her.
“You don’t know how to love anything more than that club, Boone. Maybe you never did.”
Those words have rattled around my skull for years. I’ve worn them like armor, used them as proof that I’m not built for relationships. Not built for softness, for vulnerability, for letting someone in close.
I look at Josie and the bruises blooming across her face, the stitches along her hairline, the steady rise and fall of her chest.
Rebecca was wrong.
The realization hits me like a freight train, knocking the air from my lungs.
Rebecca was wrong.
I can love something more than the club.
I can love someone more than the club. I’ve been doing it for months.
I’ve been acting like a fucking pussy, finding excuses to be near her, lying awake at night thinking about the way she laughs, the way she argues, the way she looked at me on that porch before I fucked everything up.
Fisting my cock to the memory of her lips wrapped around a fucking beer bottle.
Fuck, I’m an idiot.
I didn’t have the balls to call it what it was.
Love.
The word feels foreign. Dangerous. Like picking up a loaded gun after years of telling yourself you’d never touch one again.
But sitting here, watching Josie fight to stay alive, I finally understand what I’ve been too scared to admit.
I love her.
This feeling in my gut isn’t the safe, distant wanting or carefully controlled attraction I’ve been pretending I could walk away from. I love her—messy and terrifying and completely fucking inconvenient.
I love her, and I almost lost her without ever telling her.
Never again.
The thought burns through me like wildfire, incinerating every excuse, every fear, every carefully constructed reason why we can’t.
I’m done being a coward. Done hiding behind the club, behind my failed marriage, behind the weight of every mistake I’ve ever made. Done telling myself I don’t deserve this, don’t deserve her, because some part of me is too broken to hold onto something good.
Josie Bright is mine.
When she wakes up, I’m going to make damn sure she knows it.