Chapter 6 - Havoc
I make it to the parking lot before I stop walking.
My hands are shaking.
I stand next to my bike in the dark, in the shadow of this shithole motel, and my hands are actually shaking, hands that have held weapons, hands that have carried the dead, hands that have never once trembled under enemy fire, and they're shaking because I kissed a woman.
Because I kissed Ruby.
No. That's not why. The kiss is the least of it.
The kiss I can explain away. She was close, and she was beautiful, and I haven't been with a woman in months, and the proximity did something to my judgment. That's the story I'll tell myself. That's the version I can live with.
What I can't explain is everything that came before it.
I sat in that floral chair in that tiny motel room and I talked.
Not the clipped, functional sentences I use with the brothers.
Not the tactical brevity I learned in the military.
I talked the way I've never talked to anyone: about the foster homes, about aging out at eighteen with nothing but a duffel bag and a chip on my shoulder the size of a mountain.
About my unit. About the ambush. About sitting on a Fremont Street curb at two in the morning with a loaded weapon and absolutely no reason to put it away.
Things only Pope knows because he was there. Things I never told anyone.
And the worst part, the part that's really fucking with me, is that I feel better.
I feel lighter, like I've been carrying something in my chest for years and I just set it down for the first time.
Like saying it out loud to someone who listened, who actually listened, who cried for me without making me feel pitied, shifted something that's been stuck so long I'd forgotten it could move.
I don't know what to do with that.
I've spent eight years convinced that my story was too heavy to hand to another person. That the darkness would contaminate anyone I let close enough to see it. And Ruby just sat there in the half-dark with her son sleeping beside her and she took every word I handed her and held it with care.
And then I kissed her and ran like a coward.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes. Fucking hell.
I should go back up there. Knock on the door, explain myself, stop letting fear make my decisions. I turned my whole life around once, chose the club over the gutter, and that took guts. This shouldn't be harder than that.
Except it is, because Pope was offering me survival, and Ruby is offering me something I don't have a name for yet, and survival I understand. This other thing terrifies me in ways that artillery fire never did.
I get on the bike before I can talk myself back up those stairs.
The engine comes to life under me, and I pull out of the parking lot without looking back, because if I look back I'll see the light in her window and I'll go back up there and I won't stop at a kiss this time.
And she deserves better than someone making that decision out of confusion and desire at midnight in a motel parking lot.
She deserves someone who shows up decided.
I ride until the city blurs around me—the Strip, the downtown lights, the dark stretches of highway where Vegas pretends to end before sprawling outward again. The desert air hits me cold at this speed, and I ride into it until my head clears and my hands stop shaking.
By the time I get back to the casino it's almost one in the morning.
I don't sleep.
I lie on my bed staring at the ceiling with my bandaged hands folded on my chest like a man laid out in a funeral parlor, and I think about dark brown eyes and a constellation of beauty marks and the way she said Jake like my name was something worth repeating.
I think about her mouth.
God, I think about her mouth.
Soft and warm and surprised. She made this sound when I kissed her, barely audible, but I felt it. A small, helpless sound that went straight to my cock and hasn't left since. I'm hard now, lying in the dark, which is pathetic, except I can't bring myself to care.
I don't sleep.
I lie there for six hours, thinking about her, and when thin gray light starts bleeding under the curtains, I give up on sleep entirely and get in the shower. Cold water, because I'm apparently punishing myself, and I stand under it until my muscles stop aching and my head is somewhat clear.
Somewhat.
My cock is still firmly in the Ruby camp regardless of what my head decides.
I dress, make coffee I barely taste, and sit at my kitchen table as the casino below me slowly comes to life. I can hear it through the floor. The distant machinery starting up, the cleaning crew finishing their overnight work, the early shift staff arriving.
Ruby's shift starts at two.
I check the clock. It's seven-fourteen in the morning. I'm counting hours. Like a teenager. Like someone who's never wanted anything before and doesn't know what to do with the wanting.
I pick up my phone twice to call Pope. Put it down both times. This isn't a conversation that happens over the phone. Pope deserves more than that, and so does what I'm asking him.
Because I have to ask him. Have to be straight with him before I do anything else, before I take another step toward her.
That's the thing I've been circling around all night. The decision that was probably made the moment I kissed her, or maybe the moment she handed me those napkins with shaking hands, looking at me like she expected the worst and was bracing for it.
I want to pursue this. Whatever this is. However insane that sounds given that I met her yesterday and I've spent eight years convinced I wasn't built for anything beyond brief encounters and necessary distance.
But Pope told me explicitly, last night, standing in this very building, to keep my distance from her. His office, his words, his direct order. *Keep your distance from Ruby unless she's in actual danger.* He was clear. I said I understood.
And then I gave her a ride, fought another man in her defense, went up to her room, and kissed her.
I've directly defied my president, the man who saved my life, and I need to own that before anything else.
I drain my coffee, grab my cut, and head downstairs.
Pope's an early riser, always has been. He's usually in his office by seven-thirty, working through club business before the casino gets busy.
Sure enough, when I knock on his office door at seven-forty, his voice comes through immediately.
"It's open."
He looks up when I walk in, takes one look at my face, and his expression changes into something assessing.
He doesn't reach for the coffee pot. Doesn't offer me a seat.
Just leans back in his chair with his arms crossed and the look of a man who already suspects this conversation isn't going to be simple.
"Sit down," he says.
I sit.
He’s older but he wears it the way some men do, like time made him denser rather than weaker.
Hair pulled back, reading glasses pushed up on his forehead, his Steel Sinners cut worn over a plain white t-shirt.
He looks like someone's father until you look at his eyes, which have seen the kind of things that leave marks no amount of time fully erases.
He knows those marks when he sees them. That's why he stopped for me on that curb eight years ago.
"You look like shit," he says.
"Didn't sleep."
He waits. Pope's always been good at waiting. It's one of the things that makes him an effective president. He doesn't fill silences, he lets other people fill them, and people reveal more than they intend to.
I've always respected that about him. Right now it's annoying as hell.
"I went to the Desert Rose last night," I say. "After my shift."
Nothing in his expression changes. "Ruby? I told you to keep your distance."
"You did."
"And?"
"And I didn't." I hold his gaze. "She was waiting at a bus stop alone at almost eleven at night. East Fremont. I gave her a ride."
Pope exhales slowly through his nose. Not quite a sigh. More like a man measuring his response before it leaves his mouth. "And?"
"Drunk at the motel got his hands on her when she was trying to get to her room. I handled it."
"Handled it how?"
"Same way I handled the guy on the casino floor."
This time Pope does close his eyes, briefly, like he's asking for patience from somewhere. "So that's two men in one night."
"Both had their hands on her."
"Havoc." He opens his eyes, and there it is, that steady, immovable authority that has nothing to do with volume and everything to do with weight. "I gave you a direct order. You agreed to it. You looked me in the eye and said *clear.*"
"I know."
"Then explain to me why I shouldn't be a lot more concerned about this than I already am."
I lean forward, elbows on my knees, and I don't look away from him because this man deserves my honesty even when it's uncomfortable. Especially when it's uncomfortable.
"Because I went up to her room after," I say. "She cleaned up my knuckles. We talked." A pause. "I kissed her."
The silence that follows is different from the ones before it. Heavier. Pope looks at me for a long moment with an expression I can't quite understand, something between disbelief and recognition, like he's seeing something he didn't expect.
"You kissed her," he repeats flatly.
"Yeah."
"An employee. A woman you met yesterday. After I specifically told you—"
"I know what you told me." My voice comes out rough. "I'm not here to make excuses, Pope. I'm here because you deserve to know the truth, and because I'm not going to go behind your back." I push out a long breath. "And because I'm asking you to take back the order."
Dead silence.
"I'm asking you to let me pursue this," I continue, before he can respond.
"Not a one-night stand. Not some brief encounter where I disappear before morning.
Something real." The words feel foreign in my mouth, clumsy, like a language I learned from books but never actually spoke.
"I know how that sounds. I know we met yesterday and I know the rules about employees and I know my track record is—" I stop.
"I don't have a track record. That's the problem.
I've never wanted this before, not with anyone, and I don't know what to do with it except tell you about it and ask you straight. "
Pope hasn't moved. He's watching me with those eyes that have seen everything.
"Does this have something to do with the kid, the motel?"
"Yes." I don't elaborate on what she told me herself. That's hers. "She's in a rough situation. She's trying to get stable. She doesn't need anyone making things harder for her."
"Which is exactly why I told you to keep your distance," Pope says, his voice quieter now but no less firm.
"She's vulnerable, Havoc. She's new. She doesn't know how the club works, doesn't know the weight that comes with getting close to one of the brothers.
And you—" He stops. Stares right into my eyes.
"You've never done this. You don't have any idea what you're walking into. "
"No," I agree. "I don't."
"That doesn't scare you?"
"It terrifies me." I meet his eyes. "But I've lost too many things, Pope.
People, time, chances I didn't take because I thought I wasn't worth the risk, because I thought the darkness I carry was too heavy for anyone else to be near.
" I hold his gaze, steady. "I can't sit on this one.
I won't. I've lost too much already to let fear take one more thing. "
The room is quiet except for the building hum of the casino below us waking up for another day.
Pope looks at me for a long moment, the kind of look that reaches back through eight years of history between us, the curb on Fremont Street, the gun he took from my waistband, every mission I've run for the club, every time I've bled for it without complaint.
Then he picks up his reading glasses from the desk and settles them back onto his face.
"She's our employee," he says finally, his voice measured.
"Which means she's under club protection.
Whatever happens between you stays clean.
No pressure, no making her feel obligated because you wear a cut.
She's not a sweet-butt, she's not entertainment, and the moment she's uncomfortable you back the hell off. We clear?"
Something in my chest loosens.
"Clear," I say.
"And Havoc?" He looks at me over the top of his glasses, and his voice carries the full weight of what he is to me.
Not just president, but the closest thing to a best friend I've ever had, the man who chose me when no one else did.
"You hurt her or that kid, we're going to have a problem. A serious one."
"Understood," I say.
He nods once, returning to his paperwork. Conversation over. Decision made. I stand, pushing the chair back, and I'm almost at the door when his voice stops me.
"Havoc."
I look back.
Pope is still looking at his paperwork, reading glasses back on his nose, pen moving across whatever document he was working on before I walked in and complicated his morning. He looks like a man who's already moved on to the next item on his agenda.
But then he says, without looking up: "Whatever you broke last night, fix it."
Not because he knows. Because he knows me.
Eight years of watching me sabotage anything that got too close, anything that required more than I thought I could give.
He doesn't need the details. He just knows that a man who looks like I look right now.
Hollow-eyed, unslept, sitting across from his president confessing to defying a direct order over a woman he met yesterday has almost certainly already done something he regrets.
"Yeah," I say. "I know."
I walk out.
Down the hallway, down the stairs, back through the waking casino floor. The cleaning crew is finishing up. The early shift bartender is restocking bottles behind the bar. Everything exactly as it always is, ordinary and familiar.
Except nothing feels the same as it did yesterday.
I check the clock behind the bar.
Six hours until her shift starts.
Six hours isn't long enough to become the man she deserves. But it's long enough to start trying to be him.
I head back upstairs to shower, change, and figure out what the hell you say to a woman after you kiss her and run.