Chapter Seventeen
THE GRAVEL IN the driveway pops under the tires as I turn in, and my stomach sinks the second I see the Civic.
They’re already home.
I kill the engine and square my shoulders before getting out and lifting the grocery bags off the passenger seat.
I went to get groceries. It’s not like I ran off to the clubhouse.
But still, guilt eats at me. Ryder told me to stay put, and it’s bringing back uncomfortable memories of the last time I did something exactly like this—took off when he told me not to, and ended up getting grabbed by two bikers from the O.D. ’s feeder club.
The men are in the kitchen when I walk in. Ryder leans against the counter with his arms folded over his chest as I drop the bags on the counter.
“Ah, awesome,” says Jake. “Groceries.” He gets up from the table and roots through the bag, pulling out an apple. Ryder cuts him a look.
“Where were you?” he asks me, low and tight.
“I went to the grocery store.” I point at the bags with a touch of facetiousness.
“We agreed you stay put,” he continues. “Do you remember that conversation?”
Underneath the bite in his tone I can see exactly where his mind has gone. Me with that biker over top of me. The sound of bone breaking under his hands. That first night he almost lost me.
“Max, you can’t disappear without saying anything,” says Wyatt, gentler.
“The grocery store’s in town.” Jake shrugs. “And we needed groceries.”
Damian joins him at the counter, and the two of them start unpacking the bags.
“That’s not the point,” Ryder presses.
“I didn’t go anywhere near the hangar,” I argue. “I just wanted to do something productive. I’ll lose my mind sitting around here doing nothing if you four do everything.”
Ryder pushes off the counter looking restless and paces a few steps. “We have to know it’s safe before you go anywhere. That’s the entire point of recon. You don’t go out anywhere until we say the area’s clean.”
“Well…it is clean,” I shoot back. “Or at least, it’s not what you think.”
He freezes mid-step, back rigid.
“Why,” he says slowly, “do you say that like you know something we don’t?”
Jake’s head lifts. Damian stops halfway through shelving a jar of pasta sauce.
My heart thuds. I shouldn’t have opened that door. Not like that. But it’s open now.
“I didn’t go looking for anyone,” I say. “But…I ran into someone I know. From the club.”
Ryder goes absolutely still. No one says anything. So I continue.
“Babydoll. She’s one of the old ladies. I’ve known her forever.”
“You left the house when you were specifically told not to and you ran into a fucking club member?”
“It was an accident,” I say quickly. “A coincidence. She wasn’t looking for me, and she’s not a threat. She—”
“Max—”
“I talked to her,” I cut in. “And she told me things. Important things.”
On the other side of the counter, Jake, still going through the last of the grocery bags, pulls out ice cream and cheers, holding it up to Damian.
Ryder’s hand shoots out with lethal precision, like he has eyes in the back of his head, and grabs the neck of the bag, pulling it away from Jake. Jake’s attention snaps to Ryder.
“Will you two fucking shut up?” Ryder hisses. “Just put that in the goddamn freezer.”
Then he looks at me and motions to the table. “Sit.”
So I take a seat at the table next to Wyatt and start talking. Jake and Damian start making pasta while I’m talking but they’re listening.
I tell them about running into Babydoll in the grocery store.
About following her to the Bean & Barrel.
About the men left at the clubhouse—how few they are, how scared, how dissatisfied.
I tell them about the suits showing up two days ago.
The way they breezed through Billy’s office and Silas’s tech room like they knew the floor plan.
The black box that opened the biometric locks.
Ryder’s brow is in a deep furrow as he listens, but he doesn’t interrupt me.
“She said Silas spent a lot of time in the new barracks buildings out back. She didn’t know what he was doing, but she thought he was ‘up to something’ back there.”
Jake waggles his eyebrows from the stove. “Backup systems.”
“Maybe,” says Ryder.
Wyatt leans back, running a hand over his chin. “Clubhouse did not look hostile,” he says. “We did a perimeter sweep but it looked dead. No activity. No cars.”
“Yeah,” cuts in Damian. “I saw one guy out back smoking. Looked like he was in pajamas. It felt like we were checking out a deserted housing project.”
Jake lifts a wooden spoon out of a drawer and points it at us. “And nothing on the signals. Network signature was flat. No spikes, no scramblers, no new devices broadcasting.”
Ryder leans back in his chair, arms folded, his fury cooling.
“If they’ll respect me as Ryan,” Wyatt says, “and Max as…Max, then us going in is our best bet.”
“And it sounds like this woman could soften the ground,” Jake adds. “If she spreads the word you’re alive and not a threat.”
“I don’t like the idea of Max going in,” Ryder says stubbornly. His eyes flick to mine. “I don’t ever want you near a motorcycle club again.”
Damian sits down and drops his forearms onto the table. “Max had status in this club. If the guys who are still there respect her, then she’s the safest one of us to send in.”
Ryder’s eyes narrow. “If being the operative word.”
“Ryder,” I say softly. “I know these people. Babydoll’s not the type to set me up. And Cipher…he’s not like Billy. Right, Wyatt?”
Wyatt nods. “Cipher’s solid. Those older guys like Pluto, Brandon, Knox…they didn’t agree with the way things were going at the club. It’s some of the newer idiots like Dutch and Ray I’d be worried about.”
“But Babydoll specifically said they weren’t there.
She said it’s just the longer-term guys, the ones who actually live there and don’t know where else to go.
The ones that live offsite have been staying away since the cops were there.
” I reach for Ryder’s arm, my hand resting on the impossibly thick knot of his bicep muscle.
“I’ll be okay,” I tell him. “And I won’t be alone. Wyatt will be beside me.”
“I hate this idea,” he grumbles. “I fucking hate it.”
But he doesn’t say no.
Jake catches my eye over Ryder’s shoulder and gives me a shrug, like I guess you did it.
After dinner, the five of us migrate to the living room, settling into a constellation around the TV.
We watch a grim detective show, the kind of show Wyatt likes, but I’m only half paying attention.
Soon I notice that Ryder is leaning his head back in his chair and closing his eyes.
Around ten, he pushes himself to his feet and presses a hand briefly to my shoulder as he walks by.
“I’m beat,” he says. “Good night, all.”
I watch him walk down the stairs to the basement couch. Part of me wants to go with him, but another part of me wants to stay right where I am, anchored in the warmth between Jake and Damian, with Wyatt nearby in the easy chair, long legs stretched out.
I thought Hellbent Night cracked us open and changed everything, but now I’m not sure what it means, or how much anything’s really shifted. It seems like we’ve gone back to the kind of unspoken restraint that defined our time in the cabin. Nothing said out loud, no rules laid out.
I don’t know if what I really want is just too much.
Loving more than one person goes against everything I’ve been taught about love.
But how could I choose Wyatt over Ryder, or Damian over Jake?
What I really want is for all of us to always be together, and it fucking sucks that that’s…
just not how things work. That Hellbent Night might have been a once in a lifetime experience.
A crack in reality that sealed shut again when morning came.
Nonetheless, I can’t take my focus off Jake.
It’s been so long since we were together.
I’ve begun to miss him in a deep, aching way.
He’s just so…easy. Since our conversation on the beach at the cabin, when he told me how pissed he was I didn’t tell them about the O.D.
, that anger seems to have dissolved. Jake doesn’t hold onto things.
He’s honest, straightforward, and he talks about his feelings.
It’s one of the things I love about him. You always know where you stand.
Sitting beside him tonight, I’m way too aware of his clean, warm, and utterly familiar scent. I can picture exactly what it would feel like to rest my head on his shoulder, where the hard lines of his bones and muscles are, and the angle where his shoulder would fit just right against my cheek.
And then, before I can overthink it, I just do it.
I shift onto my side and lean against him, dropping my cheek onto his shoulder like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
He doesn’t flinch or move or react with any surprise.
He simply lifts his arm and drapes it over my shoulder, pulling me in a little tighter and holding me against him. I let out a long, slow sigh.
I’m not watching the TV anymore. I burrow myself into Jake, inhaling the smell right near his neck, where it’s strongest. My nose brushes his skin, and I feel the fine scratch of stubble at his jaw.
He shifts his arm a little, his hand resting on my shoulder, and after a little while, it begins to move.
His thumb traces a slow line along my collarbone.
Fingers slide under the neck of my shirt, the brush of his touch electric against my skin.
His hand slides under the fabric, softly stroking over my skin, lower and lower, until it’s brushing against the lace edge of my bra cup.
My nipples harden in anticipation as he moves down my body.
Will he or won’t he?