Epilogue 1
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— Handful —
Afew weeks after the SAA party
I’ve knocked out a county sheriff’s deputy. I’ve been bailed out of two separate jails in two separate states in the same month. Two years ago I ran escort on a job where three men pointed guns at my chest and I thought about what I was going to have for lunch. None of it touched me.
I have never, in my life, been as wound up as I was at seven on a Sunday evening, pacing a hole in the common room floor because my soon-to-be-old lady was eleven minutes late. Eleven minutes! I was going to have to put a tracker on her.
“You’re going to wear a groove,” Colt said. He had his boots up on the next chair, laughing at me. “She’s coming. She lives here, brother. Where’s she going to go?”
“She’s eleven minutes late.”
“Chill. You’ve checked your phone four times.”
I checked it a fifth time. Nothing. Just the two messages I’d sent her an hour ago still sitting there, delivered, unanswered.
The first one was a photo of our bed. Our bed, in our house—Dutch had handed me the keys the morning after the SAA party.
It was straight after I’d confided in him that I was going to pack up Austen’s shit while she was at Velvet and move her into my room.
I’d taken the photo this morning, sheets still wrecked from last night, and sent it to her at work with a short message: CSMDWIEYP.
The second message, sent thirty seconds later, said: Stop at the clubhouse first.
“You texted her a dirty picture and a logistics update,” Glitch said, drifting past with a beer, having read the whole thing over my shoulder. “That’s not how it’s done. You don’t tell a woman come home and ruin me and then but swing by the office on the way. Kills the mood.”
“It’s not a dirty picture. It’s a picture of our bed.”
“Exactly. Context is everything.”
“I sent her a picture of the bed and told her to come here first. She’ll know what it means.”
Glitch considered this, then tipped his beer at me, conceding the point. “Blunt. Picture’s worth a thousand words. Fine. I taught you well.” He wandered off. “She’s still going to give you hell for the second text though,” he muttered over his shoulder.
She was. I knew she was. That wasn’t what had me pacing.
What had me pacing was the velvet box behind the bar, sitting where she wouldn’t clock it when she walked in. Three weeks I’d waited for Leather & Lace to finish it.
“Handful.” Indira appeared at my elbow. “I set the two of you up. Deliberately. And it worked, because I was right, as usual.” She straightened my collar. “Stop pacing. There—listen.”
I heard tires on the gravel and then Austen appeared. She came in the side door in jeans and a soft grey thing, no fuss, her hair down. She clocked me from across the room—pacing, wired, a grown man and an officer of this club coming apart over her—and she did not hurry one step.
“You’re late,” I said, when she got to me.
“Only fifteen minutes.” She kissed me, unbothered.
“You send me a photo of our bed mid-shift, one of your filthy little acronyms under it. Took me three seconds to crack it. Come home—for, you know. That.” She fanned herself.
“Phew. Got me all worked up behind the bar. And then, before I’d cooled an inch—stop at the clubhouse first. The whiplash, Tyler. I nearly didn’t survive it.”
“I had a reason for the order of operations.”
“I’m sure you did. You always have a reason.” She pulled back and really looked at me then, the way she reads a room she’s working, and stopped cold. Her smile dropped. “You’re a wreck. Look at you. What’s gotten into you?”
“You did,” I said. “Come here. I’ve got something for you. Been planning something and it all came together today. If I have to sit on it one more minute I’m going to lose my mind.”
Dutch whistled the room quiet, then nodded at me.
I lifted the velvet box out from behind the bar, opened the lid, and drew the cut out, shaking it open so the back faced her. AUSTEN. PROPERTY OF HANDFUL.
She clocked it. Read it once. Then her eyes came back to mine and stayed there, level, waiting.
“You know everything,” I said, just to her. “The bad version of me and all the rest. You know more than anyone in this room. So.” I held it open. “You still want it?”
“Obviously I want it.” Loud, for the whole room, not a flicker of hesitation—like I’d asked a stupid question. “Now put it on me before you pass out, Sergeant.”
“CALLED IT,” Colt bellowed from somewhere near the bar, and everyone laughed.
The room went crazy. Not a polite clubhouse clap. Boots stamping the floorboards, glasses banging the bar, the whole place chanting her name—Austen, Austen, Austen—loud enough to rattle the windows.
She turned her back to me and waited. I settled the cut onto her shoulders, my name riding between her shoulder blades, and stepped back.
She ran a hand down the front of the leather. Her chin came up. She wore it proud.
Across the room Indira gave her a single nod. Lilac, beside her, did the same.
Then Austen turned back around to me.
And I froze. “Hang on,” I said. “One more thing.”
I shrugged out of the cut I had on. Glitch—who’d helped me keep the whole thing from the others—came through the crowd with the second velvet box. I flipped the lid and lifted the new one out.
“Had Leather & Lace do me a fresh one,” I said, pulling it on. “Figured if I’m squaring everything else away, might as well do it properly.”
Then I turned around.
I didn’t get to see a single face as they read it, which was the great tragedy of my life. But Austen was right there at my shoulder, close enough that I didn’t need to see her. I heard the sharp little catch of her breath the second she read it.
Three lines, the club’s own lettering, same as hers.
HANDFUL.
SERGEANT-AT-ARMS.
PROPERTY OF AUSTEN.
“He did not,” Colt said, somewhere behind me, joy in it.
“Men do that?” Wren asked Glitch, low, like she wasn’t sure she’d read it right. “I’ve never seen that on a cut before.”
“This one does.” I turned back to Austen. She had a hand pressed flat over her mouth. I’ll take that look to the grave with me.
“You absolute idiot,” she said through her fingers.
“Name, job, you.” I spread my hands. “Three true things about me. You’re wearing mine, I’m wearing yours. I don’t do halfway. Never had the knack.”
Dutch put a hand on my shoulder and turned me a half-step so he could read it again himself, slow, even though he’d cleared it weeks back when I brought my idea to him.
“He came to me with this before he did it, in case any of you think I got ambushed,” he told the room.
“I said yes. And I told him what I’ll tell him again now in front of all of you so it’s public record.
” Back to me. “It’s on there. In front of everyone.
So it’s done. You don’t take it off when she’s mad at you, you don’t take it off when Colt’s still ribbing you in twenty years.
” Colt held his fist up in the air. “You wore Property of Austen into my clubhouse on purpose, brother. That’s the rest of your life. Eyes open?”
“Eyes open. Did the math first.” I found her over his shoulder. “Came out the same every time.”
“Then it’s done.” He found a beer in his hand from nowhere and lifted it. “To the both of them. Handful and Austen.”
“TO HANDFUL AND AUSTEN.” The room detonated—everyone hollering at once. I didn’t catch any of it. I’d already pulled Austen in against me, both arms around her, her new cut pressed to mine, and I held on while my whole family lost their minds around us.
She got her mouth up to my ear so I’d hear her over the noise. “So,” she said, low, just for me. “About your text.”
“Which part. The picture or the logistics.”
“The picture.” She turned me around by the cut and looked up, and there was the dare in it.
“You sent me a photo of our bed, Tyler. You made a promise. Then you sent me here.” She tipped her head at the noise.
“Ceremony’s done. I’m wearing your name.
You’ve shown the whole club you’re wearing mine.
” Her hand fisted in the leather. “I’d say you’ve dealt with logistics. Take me home and make good.”
“That’s not how it’s done,” I said, grave as I could manage. “You—”
“Now, Handful.”
I caught Dutch’s eye on the way out. He lifted his beer an inch. And then we left the whole loud wreck of my family roaring behind us and walked down the lane to our house.
Jacks was waiting on the porch when we got there, sprawled out like usual.
Took me months to get anywhere near that dog—fed him behind Venom Virtues through the worst of the cold, never pushed, never reached.
Then one night he started following me down the road, trotting along behind the bike, so I stopped, called Fewin, and had him bring the truck around.
Jacks hopped up onto the seat like he’d been waiting on the invitation his whole life.
I left the bike parked at the club overnight and rode home with him instead.
He’s got the run of the house now, and a yard big enough to stretch his legs in when he can be bothered. He loves Austen at least as much as he loves me. He thumped his tail once and didn’t bother getting up.
“Your dog’s judging us,” Austen said.
“Our dog.” I got the door open. “And he’s seen worse.”
She had me out of the new cut before we got the door shut. She made me hang it up first, though.
“That’s club property,” she said, hooking it next to hers on the back of the door. “Show some respect.” And then she stopped showing any at all as she dropped to her knees to SMD before I AHP.