Chapter 8
Rafferty
I've watched a lot of things in my life. I've never watched anything the way I watch June walk into that courthouse.
She's steady. Scared, I can see it in the set of her shoulders, in the way her hand finds mine one last time before she goes through the doors and doesn't let go until the very last second — but steady, the kind of steady that comes from a person choosing to be brave instead of just not having another option.
Ivy's beside her. The federal contact, a quiet, competent woman named Reyes who I've watched Ivy vet six ways from Sunday, is beside her too.
June's not alone in there. She hasn't been alone in weeks, and today of all days, that matters more than it ever has.
I wait outside with half the club, because Knox decided — correctly — that a dozen bikers loitering in a courthouse hallway would do more harm than good, and instead we hold the perimeter the way we know how: quiet, watchful, present without being a spectacle.
I spend the whole time doing what I do best, cataloging everyone who comes and goes, and none of them are anyone Marsh sent, because Marsh's man already reported back weeks ago that this witness stopped being an easy target the day this whole town decided to stand behind her.
Tank paces the sidewalk outside like a man waiting for test results, which is more or less accurate.
Wren keeps checking her phone for a text from Ivy that isn't going to come until it's over, because Ivy's in there working, not narrating.
Knox stands beside me, quiet, steady, the way he's stood beside every hard thing this club's faced for a decade.
"She'll be fine," Knox says, not quite a question.
"She's tougher than she thinks she is. Has been the whole time.
" I don't say the rest of it — that I've never wanted anything to go right this badly in my whole life, that six years of careful distance from every outcome I couldn't control has left me completely unprepared for how much this one matters.
"You gonna marry that girl?" Knox asks, apropos of nothing, watching the courthouse doors.
"Focus, Knox."
"I'm focused. I'm also right, and you know it."
I don't answer that, mostly because I don't trust myself not to say something that would make the wait even longer feel unbearable, and instead I keep my eyes on the doors, waiting.
It's over faster than four months of dread led either of us to expect.
That's the strange thing about real leverage — once it's gone, the collapse isn't dramatic.
There's no courtroom shootout, no last-minute chase.
June's testimony goes on the record, corroborated by an investigation Reyes's people have been quietly building for weeks, locked into a system Marsh's money can't touch this time.
Marsh, facing testimony he can no longer bury and an investigation with too many independent threads to unravel, gets arrested before the day's out.
His lawyers will fight it for months, maybe years.
It won't matter. The one thing he needed — June's silence — is gone, permanently, and no amount of money buys that back.
I watch June come out of the courtroom flanked by Ivy and Reyes, her chin up, her shoulders steady in a way I haven't seen since the day she pulled into town. Whatever it cost her in there, she paid it and kept walking, and something in my chest swells with a pride I don't have adequate words for.
June walks out of the courthouse into spring sunlight, and for the first time in four months, nobody on earth is hunting her.
I watch it hit her all at once — the relief so total it nearly buckles her knees — and I'm already moving before she sways, catching her before she has to ask, because that's what I'm here for, that's what I've always been here for since a beat-up sedan pulled into town with the wrong plates.
"I've got you," I tell her, and she laughs, shaky and disbelieving, into my shoulder.
"You're good at that."
"Had some practice."
We give it a day. One full day of nothing but relief — Harper feeding her until she can't eat another bite, Briar showing up with an entire garden's worth of flowers this time instead of just a handful, the whole club treating her like the win she is.
Nadia gives her a long, silent hug that says more than any of the questions Nadia's never once asked.
Even Tank, gruff and sentimental in equal measure, tells her, with real feeling under the gruffness, "You did good in there, kid.
Real good," which from Tank is roughly equivalent to a standing ovation.
But by evening, sitting together on my back porch with the ridge going gold, I know there's one more conversation we haven't had, and I owe it to her to have it before either of us gets too comfortable assuming the answer.
"You're free now," I say. "Really free. Not running-with-a-fake-name free.
Actually free." I make myself look at her steady while I say the rest, because she deserves it said clean, without me softening it to get the answer I want.
"You don't owe this town anything. You don't owe me anything.
If you want to go build a life somewhere that isn't tangled up with the worst four months you've ever had, I'll understand.
" My voice doesn't quite hold steady on the next part, and I let it show, because pretending otherwise would be its own kind of lie.
"I'll even help you pack. It'll gut me. But I'll do it. "
She's quiet for a moment, studying me with an expression I can't quite read. "You practiced that speech, didn't you."
"Twice, in the mirror, like an idiot."
"Did it feel as terrible to say as it looked to hear?"
"Worse."
June looks at me for a long moment, and something in her face is somewhere between amused and moved, like she can't quite believe I'd offer that and can't quite believe I mean it either.
"You spent four months making Clover Ridge the first place I felt safe in longer than I can remember," she says.
"Why on earth would I leave the one place that finally feels like home?
" She takes my hand, steady this time, no hesitation in it at all.
"I'm not running anymore, Rafferty. I'm staying. With you."
I don't have words ready for that either, same as I didn't the night she said yes to being mine. Some things don't need a clever answer. I just pull her in and kiss her, slow at first and then not slow at all, four months of her fear and six years of my carefulness both finally, completely spent.
Later, before we go inside, she says, "I want to tell the club. Properly. Not just that I'm staying — that I'm staying because I chose to, not because I ran out of other options."
"They already know."
"I know they know. I still want to say it out loud." She looks toward the clubhouse lights glowing warm in the near dark. "I spent four months being invisible on purpose. I think I'd like to be seen for a while instead."
"Then we'll go tell them. Tonight, if you want."
"Not tonight," she says, a slow smile spreading. "Tonight I have other plans for you."
That night is different from the last one.
The night before her testimony was tender, careful, a woman learning to stop watching the door.
Tonight is something fiercer — free and chosen, both of us certain in a way neither of us had room to be before, the future finally something we get to claim instead of just hope for.
We make it back to my house — her house too, now, I decide somewhere between the porch and the front door, and I intend to say so eventually — with hands already finding each other, urgent in a way that has nothing left to be careful about.
There's no fear left in either of us tonight, nothing to guard against, and the difference shows the second the door shuts behind us.
She backs me against the kitchen counter, hands fisting in my shirt, and kisses me like she's been waiting all day to do exactly that.
I lift her onto the counter's edge, her legs coming around my waist, and the whole kitchen fills with the sound of her laughing against my mouth when a stack of mail slides off the counter and neither of us stops long enough to care.
"You're going to break something," I say against her jaw.
"You can afford new dishes." Her fingers are already working the buttons of my shirt open, impatient in a way she's never been before, and every scrap of that impatience goes straight through me. "Bedroom. Now. Or I'm starting without you."
I get her there faster than either of us expects, her shirt gone somewhere in the hallway, mine left on the living room floor, both of us laughing between kisses at how little either of us cares about the mess we're leaving behind.
By the time we reach the bed, there's nothing careful left between us — just her hands mapping my chest, my shoulders, the scar over my ribs she's never asked about and doesn't ask about now, just traces with her fingertips like she's memorizing it.
I lay her back against the sheets and follow her down, and this time there's no question in either of our eyes, just certainty, just heat.
I kiss my way down the length of her, slow enough to feel her breath catch and speed under my mouth, her hands twisting in the sheets, my name coming out of her low and broken when I find exactly where she needs me.
I take my time there, unhurried despite the urgency running through both of us, until she's trembling and pulling at my shoulders, pulling me back up her body, both of us breathing hard.
"Now," she says, not a request.
"Yes, ma'am."
I settle over her, and this time when I sink into her there's no hesitation in either of us, just her legs locking around my waist and her back arching up to meet me, both of us finding a rhythm fast and sure, nothing tentative left in it.
Her nails drag down my back and I groan against her throat, and she laughs breathless underneath me even as her hips rise to meet mine, like even now, even here, she can't help finding something to be delighted about.
The bed frame knocks softly against the wall with every thrust, spring air pouring cool through the open window over heated skin, her fingers tangling in my hair and pulling me down for a kiss that breaks apart into gasps against my mouth.
I feel her tightening around me, feel the exact moment she stops being able to form words at all, and I chase that unraveling with everything I have left, until she comes apart underneath me with a cry she doesn't try to muffle, her whole body arching up into mine.
I follow right after, her name torn out of me as I bury myself deep one last time, both of us shuddering through it together, tangled and spent and laughing weakly into each other's necks when it's finally, finally over.
I check the locks after, of course — four times, same as always, because some habits are just who I am and she's stopped teasing me for it and started teasing me with it instead, a small private joke that's become entirely ours.
Then there's nothing left between us but spring dark and open windows and a house that finally, fully feels like the beginning of a life instead of just a hiding place for one.
We come together once more before dawn, slower this time, her back pressed to my chest, my mouth at her shoulder, unhurried in every place the first round wasn't, both of us murmuring things into the dark that neither of us bothers to remember clearly by morning, only that we meant every word of it.
Two watchful loners who spent our whole lives standing guard, finally finding the one person each of us could stop watching for.
Afterward, tangled together as the light comes up gray-gold through the window, she props herself up on one elbow and looks at me with something soft and a little mischievous.
"So what's my name?" she asks. "I've been June for four months. I could be her forever if I wanted. Or I could be someone else entirely."
"You can be whoever you want," I tell her. "But for what it's worth — I think Clover Ridge suits you. Lucky little town."
"Four-leaf clover," she says, testing the phrase like she's trying it on.
"Something like that."
"You know," she says, propping herself up further, mock-serious, "for a man who barely talks, you've got a real habit of saying exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment. It's suspicious."
"Six years of watching people. Turns out you learn what they need to hear, eventually, if you pay close enough attention."
"Is that your secret? Attention?"
"That's most of it. The rest is luck." I catch her eye. "Good luck, this time. Finally."
She's quiet for a second, and then she tells me — her real name, quiet, careful, the first time she's said it out loud to another living soul in four months. It sounds different in her voice than the shape I'd guessed at in my head. Softer. More hers.
I say it back to her slowly, like it's something precious, because it is.
"There she is," I say.
June — the real one, finally, fully here — smiles like she's just met herself again after a long time away, and settles back against my chest like she's got nowhere else on earth she'd rather be.
She doesn't. Neither do I.