Chapter Thirty
Molly
Friday nights at The Noble Fir are a living, wild animal — loud, hungry, and mean if you don’t feed it fast enough.
I keep it fed.
I keep this beast in line.
“Two IPAs,” I snap, sliding pints down the bar.
“And if you say anything more to me other than your next order, I’m charging you extra for the emotional labor.
” Then I pause and wink at the guy who looks like he’s about to open his mouth about how he’s got some bullshit right to free speech or how his presence as a paying customer entitles him to my goddamn ears.
“I’m a bartender, not a therapist. That’s the arrangement.
But less talk, better pours, sweetheart. ”
A couple of guys laugh. One groans. The noise swells, glasses clink, boots scrape wood. Riley zips past with a tray and a grin.
“Roof guy’s still out there,” she says, like she’s reporting the weather. “Working hard. Still shirtless. Sweaty, too.”
“I don’t care,” I lie, not looking up. OK, just a little — my eyes may flicker to the window for half a blink, because I absolutely care, which is the problem. No, not just that I care, but that people know I care.
“Uh-huh,” she says. Then her voice drops a part of an octave and she winks at me. “You’re looking at him like the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire…”
“Did you really just sing The Bloodhound Gang at me right now?”
“You know you want to do ‘The Bad Touch’ with the hot roofer,” she says, then whirls away before I can slap her.
I stare at the back of her head as she dances away, then get back to work and try to get that fucking song out of my head.
It doesn’t work. Because as hard as I work, I keep thinking sweat, baby, sweat, baby, your sex is a Texas drought and you do the kind of things that only Prince would sing about.
I’m trapped in that fucking song when a hand slaps down hard in front of me.
“Hey, bartender.”
My eyes drift a few degrees to take him in. Local. Not patched. Carhartt, whiskey breath, entitlement oozing from his pores along with an odor that not even a teenage-sized dose of Axe body spray could cover up.
I keep my face placid; he’s nothing new, nothing I haven’t seen before.
Nothing, really. And with all the patched Devils in this bar, I know this place is my turf, and if anything should even threaten sideways, either one of the boys from the club or the shotgun I keep under the counter will be more than enough to keep me safe. “What?”
He leans in too close. “Been watching you. I like the way you work.” He puts a handful of twenties on the counter. “You got something sweeter you can give me?”
“I’ve got water,” I say. “It’s free, so you can take back this baby dick-sized wad of cash you’re trying to use to flirt, and it’ll help with… whatever this is.”
His eyes drop to my chest like he’s trying to buy me with his stare. “Don’t get smart.”
I set the rag down, slow. “I don’t get smart. I am smart. What do you want?”
“You, sweetheart.” His eyes run up my body in ways that only Evan’s are allowed to do.
“A female like you should be flattered. Yeah, you’re beautiful, but you’ve got some roughness around the edges and time’s catching up to you: the wrinkles, the sagging skin, the stretch marks.
Maybe you should realize you’re just a bartender whose best years are behind her and you should take what you can get. ”
With a charming argument like that, it’s a wonder my panties don’t drop so hard and fast that the impact leaves a crater big enough to kill the fucking dinosaurs.
For a second, I just cock my head and look at him while the air in the bar tilts; conversations don’t stop, but they shift — attention rolling like a wave toward the seashore.
“I’m the bartender,” I agree, calm as a trigger. “Which means I decide who gets served and who gets tossed. Pay your tab and move along, Prince Charming.”
He doesn’t.
His fingers close around my wrist.
Heat flashes through me — pure, instant anger.
My first instinct is to rip free and make a scene with the butt of my shotgun against the recessed chin he keeps hidden with his patchy goatee.
My second instinct, the one I’ve earned in this place, is to keep the situation controlled; a brawl in a biker bar is never just a brawl — it ends with broken bones, police attention, and usually a hearse in the parking lot.
I stare at his hand on me. Then I lift my eyes.
“Let go,” I say, voice low.
He squeezes. “Or what? You’ll realize just how bad you want it?”
I don’t pull. I don’t flinch. I just hold his gaze and let him see the part of me that doesn’t scare even when bullets are flying.
“Or you’ll be seeing the inside of a body bag.”
He snorts. “You think you scare me?”
Movement catches at the edge of my vision — from the back hall, the side entrance closest to the garage.
Evan steps inside.
He’s sweaty from work, dark T-shirt clinging, forearms scratched, hair a little wild, eyes even wilder.
He should look like any other guy who’s been wrestling a roof all day.
Instead, he looks… focused. Like something in him calibrates when he clocks a threat.
Like this isn’t the first time he’s entered a biker bar with murder on his mind.
His eyes clock the man holding my wrist. Then they meet mine.
He goes still.
Not angry. Not loud. Just dead-calm in a way that makes my skin prickle.
It’s a practiced, elegant calm of a man who’s seen all of this before.
The local doesn’t notice him at first. He’s too busy enjoying himself. Too busy thinking he’s got me pinned. Too busy thinking that the way to claim my heart is to keep hold of me until I relent to his incredibly masculine power, or whatever it is he had drilled into him by someone on a podcast.
I see Tank in my periphery — silent, looming, attention sharpened, just as lethal as the look on Evan’s face.
Mayhem’s grin goes feral. Bishop’s face turns flat and cold.
And I’m sure, even though he’s in a back room with a ledger open in front of him and a pen in his hand as he plots the fate and future of the club and the town, Rabid’s frown has turned just a few degrees further down.
The room is ready.
“What are you looking at, darlin’?” The man says, and his grip tightens on my wrist just enough to make me flinch.
Evan crosses the bar area without hurrying, with a relaxed posture that still makes people shift aside. Not because he’s a Devil — they don’t know him like that, he’s just the hot guy who was on the roof a minute or two ago — but because something about him says don’t test me.
He stops beside the local, close enough to be heard without raising his voice.
“Let her go,” Evan says quietly.
The local turns, squints at him like Evan is an inconvenience. Of course he’d do that; with all the liquor in his system and the few inches of height he has on Evan — not to mention the extra thirty-pounds he’s carrying in his gut — of course he’d be confident. “Who the hell are you?”
Evan’s expression doesn’t change. “Someone telling you to let go.”
The local laughs, trying to swing the room back to his favor. “This your girl?”
Evan’s gaze flicks to me — quick, asking; I meet his eyes, and I give one small nod — permission. This has gone on long enough. I have drinks to pour, and I’m tired of having this douchenozzle’s tiny, clammy hand on my wrist.
Evan looks back at the local. His voice drops even lower, to this black, burning octave. “She doesn’t belong to anyone. I’m telling you, if you know what’s good for yourself, you’ll let go of her, leave your cash on the counter, and walk the fuck away.”
The local bristles. “You threatening me?”
Evan shakes his head once. “No. I’m being fucking kind and giving you an option: you can let go and walk out under your own power, or you can keep holding her and find out what happens when you put your hands on the wrong woman in the wrong bar.”
The local’s grip loosens a fraction. He looks around, finally noticing the attention — how the nearest Devils are suddenly very still, very interested.
He tries to save face. “This is bullshit.”
Evan doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. “Let. Her. Go.”
The local’s fingers open.
I pull my wrist back, not fast, not shaky. Like I’m taking back something that was never his. I flex my hand once, rolling my shoulder, forcing my face into bored.
I want this to be over. I just want to go back to pouring drinks, slinging one-liners, telling Riley to never mention The Bloodhound Gang again, and pretending my skin isn’t crawling from the memory of that guy’s hand around my wrist. But the room is holding its breath, hungry for something primal, and I can feel the weight of every gaze waiting to see what happens to this asshole who thought he could desecrate the clubhouse with his tiny, grubby mitts.
Evan leans in, low and close, the way you do when you’re about to tell someone a secret they’re not allowed to repeat.
I catch the words—something sharp, direct, nothing drawn out or dramatic, just a five-syllable threat that changes the guy’s face from red to ash.
Whatever Evan says, it cuts straight through the six layers of swagger and lands right at the soft, quivering core of the man’s ego.
The local blanches, all the air going out of him in a silent little gasp.
He stares at Evan, then at me—no, not at me, through me, to the place where he realizes he’s not the apex predator he thought he was.
His lips split around some halfhearted comeback, but all that comes out is a cough and a spit on the floor, and then he’s backing away from the bar, his hands up.
The word “Bitch” floats behind him, ugly and limp, like a wet match that won’t light.