Chapter Ten #2
No, I haven’t. Since our first mission five years ago, Damian’s insisted we mark the anniversary. What started as a joke between the younger guys turned into sacred canon. Even I’ve come to think of Hellbent Night as a tradition.
But Hellbent Eve is pushing it.
The flames climb higher. We don’t have any booze, but Jake pours out the last of the orange juice into mugs and hands them around.
“This is the end of a chapter,” Damian announces. “We should have a ritual. Burn shit that doesn’t serve us anymore.”
“You’re just a fucking pyromaniac,” Jake says, but Max brightens at the idea.
“I have something!” She jumps up and skips into the cabin. A minute later, she comes back with a handful of black fabric bunched up in her fist. She shakes it out over the fire.
It’s the damn shirt she was wearing when we pulled her out—the O.D.’s screaming skull and that idiotic slogan: DISORDERED: RIDE HARD, PLAY HARD.
“This is the last physical thing that ties me to them,” she says, and tosses it onto the fire.
Jake and Damian whoop.
For a second it muffles the flames. Then it catches—the fabric curling, the skull wrinkling, the slogan charring into nothing.
The smile on Max’s face tells me this is closure for her. For me, it cracks open something old and ugly.
These damn motorcycle clubs.
I stayed out of that shit on purpose, and somehow they keep burning through my life.
I flash to Samantha at sixteen, making Kraft Dinner at midnight in Mom’s tiny kitchen while I was home on leave.
Hoodie sleeves shoved up, chipped black nail polish, gushing about her new boyfriend—a hard-looking kid with dyed-black hair, scowling at the world from behind some shitty leather jacket.
His cheap bike made his ambitions obvious.
“He’s a prospect,” Samantha had said, already reading the warning in my face. “Relax, big brother. They’re just a bunch of guys who like riding. And they look out for their own.”
She meant they’d look out for her, as if proximity counted.
But it didn’t.
I shake the image out of my head before it roots. Max is not Samantha. And these men—my men—they’d tear the world apart before they’d let anything happen to her.
Hell, so would I.
Which is its own problem.
We’ve fallen into silence around the fire, everyone staring at the flames, lost in their own thoughts, when Damian shifts forward, pokes the fire with a stick, and then looks around at all of us like he’s about to announce something.
My mug is empty. The heat is searing all of our shins while the cold creeps in at our backs.
Max is seated on a log between Wyatt and Damian, knees pulled up to her chest, and I wish she was sitting beside me.
The firelight flickers over her face, polishing the smooth curves of her flushed cheeks, and she looks warm and soft and, as usual, totally fucking touchable.
“All right. I’m just gonna say it,” says Damian.
Jake groans softly. “Here we fucking go.”
Wyatt smiles, but Damian’s expression is serious.
“We’ve been pretending this situation isn’t insane, and we’ve never talked about it, not once.
” Damian waves the stick vaguely around the circle, and I immediately know what he’s talking about.
I think we all do. The smile drops from Wyatt’s face.
Jake dips his head. Max watches Damian cautiously, like she’s not sure if he’s actually going to say it.
Wyatt clears his throat. “We have a lot to discuss, son. All we’ve been doing since we got here is catching up. There are things we have to work through but we’ll get to them in time.”
He’s protecting Max, I think. Trying to keep this conversation from affecting her—because she’s the one it affects most of all.
But Damian shakes his head. He keeps his eyes on me. “We’ve been tiptoeing around it, never talking about it, and it’s not healthy. I think we should just come out with it, lay it all on the table.”
Max sighs, but no one says anything.
Then: “He’s right,” Jake pipes up. “We should talk about it. Isn’t that part of what we swore after that first mission night? To go all in with each other? We’ve never had something eating away at the group dynamics that we couldn’t talk about before.”
The fire pops, sending a trail of sparks skyward. Still, nobody says anything. I look over at Max, trying to gauge her reaction. I don’t want her to be uncomfortable.
“Well,” I say finally. “If you’ve got something to say, Voss, then say it.”
Damian’s eyes meet mine, and he nods, like all he was waiting for was the invitation. He turns to Max.
“We never got to talk about what happened that last night we were all together.” He’s talking about the night he realized I’d been with Max. The night he lost it and we came to blows. The night she was taken.
Max nods, and then reaches a hand out for his knee. The touch should bother me, but it doesn’t. I see that she’s reassuring him, that he needs it, and somehow I feel grateful.
“I never meant to hurt you,” she says, heartfelt and sincere. “I wasn’t in my right mind.” She looks up at me. “I don’t think either of us were.”
But I fucking was. Maybe my judgment was shot, but wanting her had already gotten its hooks in me.
Damian blows out a rough breath. “I know…if I’d known what was coming that night, I never would’ve—” He breaks off, shakes his head, hair falling into his eyes, and looks at me. “Sometimes Ryder and I have…shit. Is that fair to say, boss?”
I twist my lips—almost a smile. To be honest, I have to admire him for saying it.
We all get along. Always have. It’s what made Hellbent work. But Damian and I are the most alike. Wyatt and Jake run cooler. Damian and I run hot. And Damian has authority issues. It was right there on his record. We’ve butted heads more than once.
I nod, holding his gaze. “Yes,” I say. “That’s fair to say.”
He turns back to Max. “We never named what we had, you, me and Jake. Never set rules. But I hated that Ryder got to have you because it felt like he was going to take you away from us.”
Max squeezes his knee, compassion all over her face. No one says a thing.
“And then you were taken anyway,” he continues. “We threw ourselves into finding you but we never once talked about our feelings. Still don’t.”
He looks to me and Jake and I want to plant my face in my hands at the realization that he doesn’t know Max has also been with Wyatt.
“And you’re still sleeping with Ryder, as we all know—” he continues, but Wyatt lifts a hand.
“Let’s take a step back here, Damian. This isn’t about calling Max out. What is it that you’re trying to say?”
“That three of us are in love with the same woman,” he says in exasperation, throwing up his hands. “And we’re all living together and no one’s saying a fucking thing about it.”
Wyatt and Max exchange a look, an intimate one, the kind of speaking-without-words look that established couples can share, and it guts me.
“What?” asks Damian, sensing something. His eyes flick between them.
Color rises on Max’s cheeks.
“It’s—” Wyatt starts. “It’s complicated.” His gaze drops to his feet. At least he has the decency to look ashamed.
“Well, shit,” says Damian, looking floored. Jake gives a low whistle.
Max puts her other hand on Wyatt’s knee, either to comfort him or steady herself. Hard to tell. But I register the touch, her hands on two of them, and the reaction that surges through me isn’t jealousy. It’s that same unwelcome heat.
That low, keening fire.
I drop my eyes, exhaling sharply, irritated at myself.
“I care about all of you,” Max says. “I didn’t expect to. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t choose to. I just…do. And it’s confusing, and wrong, and impossible. And still it somehow feels…” She waves her hand, searching. “Right? Like being here with you is where I’m supposed to be. All of you.”
I can’t speak. My mind is breaking up, parsing her words, evaluating how I feel.
Jake fills the silence. “You’re allowed to feel what you feel.”
Damian lets out a strangled laugh. “So what are we supposed to do, though? Share? What’s the word for a five-person couple? A cinqtuple?”
I find my words quickly at that. “No,” I snap, cutting him off.
“Listen,” says Jake. “We don’t have to solve anything tonight. We’re just admitting that we’re all in this. Whether we want to be or not.”
I stare into the glow, the heat on my hands, the cold on my back, these men at my sides.
My men.
But also her men.
“This is fucked up,” I say, my voice coming out low and raw.
“And pretending it’s simple is bullshit.
” Emotion spikes fast and hot. Fuck this.
I stand abruptly. “I’m done with this. You want to sit here and wring your hands, be my guest. But I’m not indulging this.
Lines were crossed, boundaries blurred. How Max wants to proceed is her choice.
But we’re not a fucking five-person relationship.
And this feelings circle jerk doesn’t lead to anything useful. ”
I turn and stalk toward the cabin, pulse pounding.
Inside, the smallness hits me immediately. The lone bed, the small rooms, and the inevitability of them all coming in after me.
No space, when for once we all really need it.