Chapter Two
CRACK!
The axe bites deep, the impact rattling up my arms. It lodges a few inches into the wood and sticks. When I lift the handle, the log comes with it.
“Drive it down again,” Damian says, motioning the movement of a hammer.
I sigh, roll my eyes, and then lift up the axe with the log jammed on the blade, and bring it down on the tree stump again with all the strength I can muster. The resistance gives way with a satisfying thunk, and the axe dives through the wood. I straighten, free the blade, and flash him a grin.
“Nice.”
I step back, rolling my shoulders. “Guess I’m a natural.”
“Guess I’m a great teacher.”
It’s Damian as I remember him from the garage. The man I used to work with every day. We stepped back into our roles easily, like muscle memory.
His hazel eyes squint at me with humor, that mischievous glint in them that always hints at something below the surface, the way everything is innuendo with Damian.
He’s every bit as beautiful as I remember, and it’s gratifying to realize that my memory didn’t exaggerate him in the least. Sweat darkens his t-shirt, making it cling to carved muscles.
His black hair is mussed, falling over one eye, a metaphor for Damian himself—flirtatious but unreadable, half-hidden even when he’s looking right at you.
Behind him, the sky has a strange, pre-storm shine, tinged with orange where it should be blue. A gust of wind lifts, carrying the scents of resin and rain.
Ryder’s still asleep inside, sprawled in the cabin’s only bed, out so cold he didn’t even stir when I got up.
I found Damian outside unloading the truck with bags from a Walmart two towns over.
Four bags of groceries, a door sensor and motion detectors, soap, shampoo, and a stack of cotton clothes and towels.
I helped him put it away, thinking it looks like they plan to stay for a while, but I didn’t ask.
Then I followed him out to chop wood, eager to keep my hands busy and my mind quiet.
There’s this constant crawling feeling under my skin that I can’t shake.
A need for physicality and release. I think about the beach, about Ryder’s body moving over mine, and it already feels like a dream, too far out of reach to ease the clawing restlessness inside of me now.
We fall into a rhythm—heave, split, stack, switch. The sound of the axe echoes down to the lake and back again with every strike like a boomerang. It’s easy work for Damian but he lets me take my turn, as if he knows that I need to feel the muscles in my arm burn and break out into a sweat.
After we’ve gone back and forth a few times, and a good pile has started to build up, he plants the axe in the stump to take a break and stretches his wrists, then his neck, and looks at me—serious this time.
“You probably feel like shit after the Narcan.”
It’s the first real thing either of us have said. We’ve spent the morning riffing on the fashion merits of being dressed in identical cotton basics from Walmart and pretending that chopping wood is a contest.
“Like a bad hangover,” I agree. “Headachey and tired. But also kind of jittery all over.”
“Yup.” He nods, rubbing his palms together. “It takes a while to work out of your system.”
“How come you know so much about it?” I ask, perching on a half-cut piece of wood. “You said it happened to you before?”
“Yeah. Once. Maybe twice. Long time ago. Army days.” He reaches for the axe again and heaves it out of the stump. “Got into some bad habits overseas. Uppers to stay sharp, downers to sleep. There are always some guys who know how to get stuff, doesn’t matter where you’re deployed.”
He lifts another log onto the stump and lines up his swing.
“My commanding officer pulled me off rotation when he figured it out. Could’ve tossed me out, but he sent me to rehab instead. I saw it as an opportunity and committed to getting clean. A lot of guys don’t. Army took me back and ended up recommending me to Ryder’s ops team. I was lucky.”
He cracks the log in two and looks over at me, fresh sweat darkening his collar. “Best thing that ever happened to me, getting clean. It teaches you to want to stay alive.”
It occurs to me that I don’t know Damian as well as I thought I did. I know his body, his moods, the serious core of him hiding underneath all his joking and banter. But there’s so little I know about his actual history. His life.
Just like there are things he doesn’t know about me.
He holds out the axe for me and I take it.
The weight feels good in my hands, the way it pulls the muscles, wakes them up.
I take a moment to brace myself, and then heave it down with all the strength I can muster, like I’m driving it into the padlock around the kennel Silas locked me in.
Like I’m caving in the little cabinet where Maze kept all his drugs.
The axe goes right through the log in one go, jamming into the stump, and the two halves bounce apart cleanly.
“Fucking hell, Finch,” Damian says in surprise, and then lifts his hand for a high-five. “Knew you had it in you.”
The rain starts as a thin, needling drizzle. We carry the split logs onto the covered porch and stack them in uneven towers, and then the sky opens up in a sudden downpour. Water sheets off the eaves. We stand shoulder to shoulder, watching the storm tear across the lake, shaking the pines.
I stood under an awning in pouring rain just like this the day Billy secured the club’s future. I was sixteen and had just met the senator for the first time. We stood outside of some fancy condo building after the meeting, me and Billy, waiting for Cipher to bring the car around.
“You fucking nailed it,” Billy said, smacking my palm in a high-five that stung, and I didn’t understand what I had done to contribute to anything.
I didn’t understand then that I’d been an offering.
Only that the old man watched me kindly—warm, paternal smiles and gentle endearments that somehow made my stomach twist.
“Did you see how he looked at you?” he asked, eyes lit with the promise of power. “You know what this deal means? We’re legit now. A clubhouse, land, a real future. And you—” he tapped my cheek—“you’re the old lady of a real motorcycle club. O.D. for life.”
A flash of lightning rips across the lake, and I flinch. Damian chuckles softly and presses a hand to my back.
“I gotcha,” he murmurs.
I lift my eyes to him and catch the way the gray light lines the angles of his face, the spark and the gravity in his eyes. God, this man has been so many things to me: a friend, a lover, chaos and comfort, heat and hurt, someone I wanted and someone I lost and someone I never stopped wanting back.
I draw a slow breath, my pulse loud in my ears. One by one I have to tell them all. That’s my penance.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” I say, my voice coming out rough.
He tilts his head, smile faltering. “Okay.”
Deep breath. “They came for me because I belonged to them.”
Damian’s brows pull together. “Who?”
“The Order of Disorder.” Swallow. Blink. “It’s where I came from. Billy Manning was my boyfriend. We grew up together in foster care.”
He goes very still. Only his eyes move, tracking as he thinks. The faint curve at his mouth disappears.
“When you found me,” I continue, “I didn’t tell you where I came from because I didn’t know who you were, or what you would think of me. I wanted a clean start. And then…it got harder over time.”
I sigh, remembering. Wyatt and me watching the news, O.D. guys beating someone half to death on camera. His voice—“I hate motorcycle clubs”—pure loathing. “Ryder does too.” After that, it just felt too late. I didn’t know how to say it anymore.
He hasn’t perceptively changed, yet every inch of Damian seems coiled tight right now. Wired. His jaw is clenched, brow furrowed.
“Damian,” I say softly, reaching for his arm. “I’m sorry.”
But he sucks in a breath and flinches in a way that makes me drop my hand.
“Max…” he says, voice tight and severe. “You walked into our lives carrying a lit fuse and you…didn’t bother saying anything?”
My lungs feel tight. I’m such an asshole. But I can’t back away from this.
“I know,” I whisper, and then I drag in a breath. “I wasn’t trying to play you. I wasn’t trying to risk you. I just…I didn’t think I got to ask for protection, for starters.”
His eyes never leave my face. His shoulders are tense, but he’s not reactive in the same way that Ryder is. He’s listening, at least.
“I never thought it could hurt you,” I say. “I just thought…I could leave it behind.”
He blows out a breath and finally looks away, turning to look out over the lake again, jaw still working. “So you were just never going to mention your past to us ever?”
It’s a softening. The question isn’t an accusation, it’s disbelief.
I sigh, and look out at the lake, too. “Yeah…Damian, my whole life has been like that.”
He turns his head to me, eyes narrowed. They look green in this light, like Jake’s.
“New houses, new people, new rules,” I explain. “You can’t hold onto your old identity when you’re a foster kid. Nobody wants the kid who comes with baggage. I guess I thought that was how life works.”
He exhales heavily, but the tight knot of his brow loosens. And then he nods.
“I guess if you grow up never knowing if the next place is safe, lying probably starts to feel like a life skill,” he says softly. “I can relate to that. Learning to read people, to give them the version of you they can handle.”
I blink at him, caught off guard by how close he’s hit to the truth.
He lifts a hand to his forehead and massages his temples. “But this fucking sucks, Max. You lied to us.”
I close my eyes for a long second—and nod.
“You can’t ever do that again. Not to us.”
I nod again.
He holds my gaze for a beat and doesn’t say anything, and then he wraps his arms around me and pulls me in against him.
The familiar smell and feel of him hits me in a wave as I wrap my arms around his back. I bury my face against his chest, fingers twisting in the cotton at his back, and just inhale the heat of him. It’s comfort and something deeper, the ache of missing him.
“You should have told us,” he says again, murmuring into my hair.
“I know,” I answer. “I know.”
We each carry an armful of logs into the house and stack them beside the fireplace.
Ryder’s awake, prepping food in the kitchen.
Peppers and onions stacked on a cutting board, cans of beans and tomatoes out on the counter.
His hair is wet from a shower and he’s dressed in the same generic cotton clothing as Damian and I—white t-shirt and gray jogging pants.
The three of us look like a Hanes ad, except that Damian and I are sweaty and covered in dust.
For one dizzy second, I just stand there in the doorway, looking at him. At the breadth of his shoulders, the muscles roping around his forearms. At the powerful strength and heartbreaking beauty of him.
I don’t know whether to kiss him or wave. Everything’s so uncertain in this world where I love them both.
All of them.
The prospect of Wyatt arriving gives me a little kick beneath my ribs. I won’t feel properly settled until I see his face.
Ryder glances up at us, eyes flicking to mine, softening with warmth. Then he picks up a knife and halves an onion with one sure movement.
“Shower,” he says. “Then come help.”
Damian jerks his chin toward the bathroom. “You go first.”
I wash the sawdust off my skin, still buzzing with that staticky discomfort I can’t seem to outrun, but the heat of the water helps. It soothes the ache in my chest. When I get out, I dress in another one of the Walmart outfits, exactly the same as what I was wearing earlier.
The sun is setting and the cabin is dim.
The lights are off but there are lit tea lights everywhere, five or six on the coffee table, even more on the dining room table, on the windowsills and the mantlepiece.
The kitchen is glowing with the low light of candle flame too.
The whole place looks soft and sacred. I walk into the kitchen and see Damian stirring the pot.
Ryder chopping cilantro. It’s so homey it’s like we’re acting out a fantasy—my life with both of them.
We eat vegetarian chili from paper bowls at the dining room table, faces lit by candlelight.
Ryder’s whole energy feels gentle, soft in a way that tugs at something low in my belly.
Every time our arms brush I feel the warm ache of what we shared on the beach.
The way his knee bumps mine under the table makes my heart skip.
Across from me, Damian’s presence gives me the same ache. I love them both. The truth of it sits warm and heavy in my heart as we eat.
Then, finally, light sweeps across the window, two headlights moving slowly through the trees. The crunch of tires over wet gravel is audible from here, even with the rain. My heart swells with an excitement so large it makes me feel jittery all over again.
Ryder and Damian move with me toward the porch. The rain is lashing sideways, catching the beams from the headlights and scattering them. The cab light flares as the doors open and two silhouettes climb out, one slowly.
They move as a unit toward the porch, Jake supporting Wyatt, who moves stiffly but grins when he sees us.
When he sees me.
“That’s a hell of a drive,” is the first thing he says.
“Let’s get you inside, soldier,” says Ryder.
And for the first time in a long time, the five of us are whole.