Chapter 13 Bones
BONES
Taking a steadying breath, I cross to the door, open it, and come face to face with my president. Lee’s standing behind him, hands shoved in his pockets, looking uncomfortable.
“Stone.” I keep my voice neutral.
“Bones.” His eyes are hard, jaw tight. “You gonna invite us in?”
This isn’t a question I get to say no to. So I step aside and they walk in, Stone’s gaze immediately sweeping the apartment—taking in the rumpled sheets visible through the bedroom door, Emma’s clothes on the floor in the living room, the two coffee mugs I’d pulled out.
“She here?” Stone asks, even though he clearly knows the answer.
“She is.”
We just look at each other. Then the toaster pops. I don’t move to get the waffles.
“Want to tell me what you’re thinking here?” Stone asks, voice dangerously calm. “Want to explain to me why my daughter’s car has been parked outside all night?”
“I was thinking about Emma.” I meet his eyes and fold my arms across my chest. “I was thinking about what she needed. Not what you wanted. Not what the club wanted. What she needed.”
Stone’s jaw tightens. “You think you know what’s good for my daughter? Better than I do?”
“I think she’s old enough to make her own choices.”
“Choices?” Stone’s voice rises slightly. “You didn’t give her a choice when you started tracking her. Didn’t give her one when you implanted one directly under her skin.”
“That wasn’t a choice for her to make.”
“How was it fucking yours?” Stone’s voice gets louder with each word.
I stay calm. “I swore I’d keep her safe. And I sure as hell wasn’t about to stop just because she turned eighteen.”
Stone stares me down, waiting for me to back off, but I don’t blink. I know how to take hits. I’ve had a lifetime of practice.
“That patch you wear is supposed to mean loyalty,” he says finally, voice quiet. “Me. The club. Then everybody else.”
“Yeah, it did mean that,” I say. “Still does. But some things go deeper than the patch. And you know that, Stone. You wouldn’t have given me the job if you didn’t know it.
” I don’t raise my voice to match his. I don’t need to.
“You picked me to watch her because you knew I’d die before I let anything happen to her.
You needed that, so you used it. You think I don’t know? ”
Lee cuts a glance my way. His jaw ticks. I get the sense that if Stone wasn’t standing here, he’d be saying the same words I just did.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have,” Stone says. He studies me, long enough that I feel the weight of what he’s about to say. “Maybe I screwed up both my daughter and you.”
“You didn’t screw anyone up. You did what you had to do.” I pause and look directly at him. “Just like I did. She’s alive because I did what I had to do. And I will never apologize for that.”
He just looks at me, like he’s weighing all the ways this conversation could end.
His fists are still tight at his sides, but I’m not backing off.
Stone can’t hit me like he wants to. Not in front of Lee, not with Emma in the next room.
This man always knows the score. It’s just that this time he hates it.
“You gonna kick me out?” There’s no fear in my question. There’s everything to lose, but no fear.
“I should. I told you that if you went near my daughter again, you’d lose your patch. That wasn’t a suggestion, Bones. That was a promise.”
“I’m aware.”
“Dad, come on—” Lee tries, looking between us with alarm in his eyes.
“This is between me and Bones, Harley.”
Lee’s mouth thins at the use of his full name but he shuts up. Even though I can see the disagreement written all over his face.
Stone turns back to me, and I feel the weight of all my years with this club pressing down on me.
I was sixteen when I started hanging around.
That’s fourteen years of nothing but the MC.
Of brotherhood, of purpose, of belonging.
And all of it about to disappear because I couldn’t stay away from the club princess.
The one person who’s ever mattered more to me than the patch.
The one person I’d give everything for.
“You want me to go get it for you?” I keep my voice steady even though my hands aren’t.
“I’ll give you my cut. You can have Tank or Hawk rip the patch off if you want.
Make it official. I’ll even go and visit Duck to get my club tatts blacked out.
Whatever you need to feel better about yourself, Stone. ”
His eyes flash, like he’s shocked I’m not begging.
“It didn’t have to be like this,” he says. “If you’d told me what you were doing—asked. Then maybe I would have agreed with you. I know she’s wild at heart. I might have even said yes.”
“Are you fucking serious?” We all turn at the sound breaking into the moment.
Emma’s standing in the bedroom doorway wearing one of my T-shirts—a faded Stoneheart MC one that hangs to mid-thigh on her. Her hair is a mess, her lips are swollen, and there’s a fresh bite mark visible on her neck.
She looks furious.
Stone releases a breath. “Emma—”
“Don’t.” She crosses her arms, and even though she’s tiny compared to all of us, there’s something formidable about her right now. “Don’t you dare punish Bones for this. I’m the one who came here. I’m the one who showed up at his door. I’m the one who refused to leave.”
“That doesn’t change things—”
“Why? What did he do that was so horrible, Dad?” Her voice rises.
“Keep me safe. Find me when no one else could? Or is your problem with the fact that he opened his door when I tricked him into it? That he didn’t kick me out after I literally somersaulted through his doorway?
Or is your issue that he had the audacity to want me as much as I want him? ”
Lee’s eyebrows shoot up. “You somersaulted through the door?”
“Not the point, Lee.” Emma doesn’t take her eyes off Stone.
“The point is that the only person who has the right to be mad about the tracker in my back is me. And I’m not mad.
I was shocked in the beginning. But do you know what, Dad?
It saved me. And then it gave me comfort knowing I’d always be safe.
That Bones would always find me. But you even took that away.
When you stripped his rank, when he stopped showing up to check on me, you took away the only thing that made me feel safe.
So of course I came back. Of course I came running straight to him.
So if you want to blame someone for this?
Blame me—or maybe blame yourself. But I made my own choices.
And I’m not ashamed of any of them.” She levels a look at me, too.
“And to make it abundantly clear to all of you, I’m not going back to New York. Not right now. Probably not ever.”
Stone says nothing, but I know he’s wrestling with the long habit of being in command against the harder habit of being a father. He looks from her to me to Lee and finally, quietly, he says, “What do you want me to do?”
“Accept it,” Emma says. “Or at least tolerate it. Because I swear to you, Dad. If you strip the man I love of his patch, of the only family he’s ever had, then you’ll have lost me for good.”
“Emma!”
“I’m serious, Dad.” Tears threaten to spill from her eyes and her voice grows hoarse. “If you take his patch, if you kick him out, you lose me. Permanently. I won’t come back for holidays. I won’t call. I won’t visit. You’ll never see me again.”
Lee shifts uncomfortably. I can’t breathe. Stone looks like he’s been punched.
“You’d really choose him over your family?” Stone practically whispers.
“You’d really choose the club over me? Oh, wait.
You already did that when I was thirteen and got the chance to dance at the academy.
You stayed here while Mom and I moved to New York.
You only saw me during the holidays, and even then you were too busy with your precious club to spend any meaningful time with me.
And what about every year after that? Again and again, you picked club business over Mom and me.
But do you know who didn’t? Do you know who always showed up when I needed him?
Do you know who was always there to hold my hand when I cried or to celebrate with me when I won?
” She swipes angrily at the tear that streaks down her cheek as the silence lingers.
“Bones,” she says, as she turns to look right at me. “He always showed up. He always cared. Even when I didn’t deserve it.” She shrugs, wiping the corner of her eye with the heel of her palm. “So, yeah. I’d pick him, Dad. I’d pick him every time.”
I still can’t breathe. Can’t even move now. I’m frozen by her words, and I know she means every one.
Stone turns to me, and I swear I see the exact moment something breaks behind his eyes. The realization that he’s already lost her once, that if he pushes this, he’ll lose her forever.
“You love her?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“You’ll protect her? Keep her safe?”
“With my life. Always have, always will.”
Stone closes his eyes, takes a long breath. When he opens them again, something has shifted. He’s not looking at me as a brother who disobeyed. He’s looking at me as the man his daughter loves—even if he doesn’t like it.
“Lee,” Stone says without turning around. “Get out.”
Lee blinks. “What?”
“Get out. Wait on the street. This is between me, Emma, and Bones.”
Lee looks between all of us, clearly wanting to argue, but something in Stone’s voice stops him. He nods once and heads for the door. It closes behind him with a soft click.
Stone walks to my kitchen window, stares out at the street below. The silence stretches so long I start to think he’s not going to say anything at all.