Chapter 27 Makenna
TWENTY-SEVEN
MAKENNA
I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, half-dressed, when the door opens.
I glance over my shoulder, and my heart stutters.
Zane slips into the room, and I know something is wrong.
I’ve spent my whole life decoding the things he never says out loud and right now, his movements are screaming something is wrong.
I sit straighter, bracing my spine like I need to prepare for whatever hit he’s about to land.
“What is it?” My words scrape out of my throat, a raw rasp.
He walks around the foot of the bed, his steps slow and deliberate, like he’s carrying something heavy, fragile. I curl my fingers into the sweater draped over my lap, my skin stretching over my knuckles.
The mattress dips, but not as much as my stomach. That familiar anxiety, the one I’ve carried since I was seven years old, flares to life like it was waiting. I rub my palm over my belly, like that’ll calm the hurricane coiling in my gut.
He flexes his hands, his fingers twitching like he’s trying to wring the words out of him. The look on his face is the same one he gets when he’s standing in front of something ugly and trying to shield me from it.
“Zane…” My voice breaks on his name. “What’s wrong?” He doesn’t answer. The silence is too much, too heavy. “Talk to me. Please.”
His eyes flick past me, settling on the wall, the floor, anywhere but me. His fingers flex in his lap again. I wait, and the words hover on his lips. I already know they’re going to hurt.
He looks at me briefly, guilt flashing in his eyes. Then he says, “Chloe’s dead.”
There’re no soft edges, no warnings. Just cold facts. The truth dropped like a grenade. He doesn’t mean to hurt me, but it still hits me like a sucker punch.
The air leaves my lungs in a rush. My fingers clenching the fabric like it can hold me here. I feel like I’m floating outside my body as his words settle somewhere deep and raw inside me.
I barely knew Chloe, but I’ve known hundreds of girls like her. Young. Vulnerable. Dragged into a world she wasn’t meant to be in.
Chewed up and spat out when she wasn’t of use anymore.
She could have had more. A second chance.
And now she’s just… gone.
I’m glad I’m sitting. If I wasn’t, I think I’d crumble.
His hand hovers in the space between us, hesitant in a way he’s never been with me. He thinks I’m angry, that I’ll blame him. That he failed me again.
But he can’t protect me from everything. I don’t need him to be my shield, just the safe arms to fall into when things hurt me.
I slide my fingers into his, curling around him like he’s my anchor.
Chloe’s dead…
I stare at a patch on the carpet, tracing a worn stain with my eyes while the words claw into my chest.
“If I’d reached her sooner—”
Zane squeezes my hand. “No, Kenna. There’s nothing you could have done differently.”
I let those words sit, but they feel like an anvil on my chest. “She’s… She was so young.”
His mouth presses against my temple, his lips soft against my skin even if I can feel the tension in his jaw. “This isn’t on you.”
My throat feels clogged with the words I want to say, but can’t. Grief sits jagged in my chest. “Knowing that doesn’t make me feel any less shit.”
He wraps his arms around me, warm and safe. Home. I slide a hand around his waist, holding onto him like I’ll drown without him.
I let myself feel it all. Grief, pain, uncertainty, and then I lock it back down. Zane needs me strong, not falling apart. And I need him focused on staying alive, not on coddling me.
Reluctantly, I pull away from him, sitting straight. I wipe under my eyes, capturing the tears I allowed to fall. “Thank you for telling me.”
“It won’t always be like this,” he says.
I finally look at him. There is a quiet resolve in his eyes, a determination to make things better for us. For me.
I palm the side of his face, letting my mouth tug into a ghost of a smile. “I know.” I stand, tugging my sweater over my head. “I’m going to see if the girls are around.”
“You don’t have to do that if you don’t feel like it.”
“I need to. I don’t want to sit here overthinking everything.”
He takes that in like I just told him I was about to disarm a live bomb. “Firefly…”
I bend down, kissing his cheek. “I’m okay, Zane. I promise.”
It’s not entirely true. That knot in my chest is still there, but I can’t stay in this room. I need to do something, to see faces, people. To escape the guilt in my head.
He follows me out of the room, into the main bar area. I ignore the hulking figures in leather and denim. I’m getting used to club members in my space, but it’s not them I care about.
It’s the three women huddled around the table at the back of the room. The barbed wire wrapped around my lungs loosens when I see them, but before I can take a step, Zane tightens his grip on my hand.
I look back at him. “If you need me at any point today, message. I’ll come.”
Warmth fills my chest, that familiar feeling of being taken care of. “I’ll be okay.”
I kiss him, soft but quick. His hand lingers on my neck, like he doesn’t want to let go of me. I hate the war raging in his head, hate that he feels so responsible for everything.
He steps back and lets me go. I hate that every time we part it feels like a goodbye, even if neither of us says the words.
My legs feel shaky as I cross the room. As I approach the table, the girls look up. There is none of the usual easy smiles. Even Dayna is subdued.
I sit next to Ivy. Toby is on the other side of me, focused on his phone and whatever he’s playing through the headphones he’s wearing.
Seren reaches for me, trying to launch herself off her mother’s lap. I let her grab my finger.
“You heard?” Maylie asks.
Her son is sleeping in a Moses basket standing at the edge of the table. He’s got his whole life ahead of him. Years to figure out who he is, what he wants.
Years that Chloe will never have.
“Yeah, I heard.”
Ivy squeezes my knee, like she can stick a plaster over the wound in my chest with touch alone. I give her smile I don’t feel.
No one speaks for a moment, just lost in their own thoughts, maybe grief. Then Dayna says, “The baby has a name now.”
I glance at Maylie. She said she didn’t want to name him until this was over because it gave Mace a reason to come home.
She shrugs. “After what happened… I just… I don’t want Mace to go out there again and not know what his son is called.”
“Understandable,” I say. “So, what did you choose?”
“Theo.”
Everything inside me softens. “It’s beautiful,” I say, and I mean it.
I stare at the baby, my chest full and heavy. Each of the girls has carved something good despite this war—family. Love. Home.
I want that with Zane. All of it.
The sleepless nights with our baby. The home he comes back to every night. Lazy weekends tangled in bed together.
I want what he promised.
Family.
And when I look around at these women, tired, scarred, but still standing, I start to believe we can have that.
Just not while Crank’s still breathing.