Chapter 7
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— Bea —
I was between sessions, reviewing notes for my next client, when my phone buzzed with a number I didn’t recognize. Normally I’d let it go to voicemail—I never answered unknown calls during work hours—but something made me pick up.
“Bea?” Indira’s voice, tight and controlled in a way that made my stomach drop. “There’s been an incident. On the run.”
The pen slipped from my fingers. “What kind of incident? Is Holden—”
“He’s alive. But there were casualties. They’re on their way back now.” A pause, loaded with everything she wasn’t saying. “I think you should come to the clubhouse.”
“How bad?”
“Bad.”
I was already gathering my things, shoving files into drawers with hands that weren’t quite steady. “I’m on my way.”
“Bea.” Indira’s voice softened. “Prepare yourself. From what Dutch said… Holden’s not in a good place.”
I ended the call and canceled my remaining appointments. Told my receptionist it was a family emergency. Drove to the clubhouse with my heart pounding against my ribs and my professional training desperately trying to kick in.
Working with the MC had taught me how to compartmentalize. How to hold space for grief without drowning in it. How to help people process trauma while keeping my own emotions at bay.
But this was different.
This was Holden.
The clubhouse parking lot was chaos when I arrived. Bikes were scattered haphazardly. Brothers moved without speaking — task-focused, flat affect, nobody making eye contact. Checking equipment, making calls, falling silent when they noticed me.
I spotted Dutch near the garage bay, deep in conversation with a man I didn’t recognize. His cut was spattered with something dark that I didn’t want to identify. When he saw me, his expression shifted into something that might have been relief.
“Bea. Thank God.”
“Where is he?”
“Inside. His room.” Dutch ran a hand over his face, and for the first time since I’d known him, he looked old. “We lost Danny. The prospect. He took a bullet meant for Holden.”
My chest constricted. Danny. The eager kid who’d been trailing after Holden for months, desperate to prove himself. Holden had talked about him constantly—his potential, his dedication, his annoying habit of asking too many questions.
“How’s Holden handling it?”
Dutch’s silence was answer enough.
“Has anyone been with him?”
“Colt tried. Handful. He won’t talk to anyone.” Dutch met my eyes, and I saw something I’d never seen in our stoic president before - genuine fear. “I’ve never seen him like this.”
“Okay, let me try.” I walked into the clubhouse, past the main room where brothers sat in shell-shocked clusters, past the bar where bottles were already being poured, past the hallway that led to the private quarters.
The door to Holden’s room was closed. I could hear voices inside—muffled, indistinct, but definitely more than one person.
I knocked softly. “Holden? It’s Bea.”
Silence. Then shuffling sounds, a low murmur, and the door cracked open to reveal Handful’s face. His usual grin was nowhere in sight.
“Thank fuck.” He stepped aside to let me in, keeping his voice low. “He won’t talk, won’t get out of his wet clothes. Won’t let us near the bottle. Just sitting there. Maybe you can—”
I put a hand on his arm. “Give us some time.”
Handful nodded and slipped out, closing the door behind him.
Holden was sitting on the edge of his bed, a bottle of whiskey clutched in one hand. His clothes were wet from the rain, stained with dirt and something darker. His eyes were fixed on the wall across from him, seeing nothing.
Or maybe seeing everything, over and over again.
“Holden.” I crossed the room slowly. “I’m here.”
No response. He lifted the bottle and took a long pull, his throat working as he swallowed.
I lowered myself onto the bed beside him, close enough to touch but not touching. Not yet. “Indira called me. Dutch told me what happened just now.”
“Then you know.” His voice was raw, scraped bare. “You know I killed him.”
“A bullet killed him. Unless you fired the gun, it wasn’t you.”
“I might as well have pulled the trigger myself.” He finally looked at me, and what I saw in his eyes made my breath catch.
Not just grief. Not just guilt. Something deeper, darker—like the part of him that planned and calculated and kept everyone safe had just shut down.
“My route. My plan. I didn’t see them, Bea.
I didn’t see the shooters until it was too late. ”
“You couldn’t have known—”
“It’s my job to know.” The words exploded out of him, rage and anguish tangled together. “That’s what I do. That’s who I am. I see problems before they exist. I plan for every scenario. And when it mattered—when a kid’s life was on the line—I failed.”
I reached for the bottle, gently. He let me take it, his grip going slack as if the fight had suddenly drained out of him.
“Tell me what happened.”
He talked for a long time. I didn’t interrupt.
“He asked me if he proved himself.” Holden’s voice cracked on the words. “With his last breath, he asked if he was a full brother now. I told him yes, and then he died, Bea. He died in my arms with a smile on his face because I told him what he wanted to hear.”
“You told him the truth.”
“The truth is that I got him killed.” He turned to face me fully, and the tears finally came—silent, devastating tracks down his blood-spattered face. “The truth is that he’d be alive right now if he’d never met me. If I’d never recruited him. If I’d said no when he asked to come on this run.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to cite statistics about survivor’s guilt, to use my training to help him see that this wasn’t his fault. But right now, he didn’t need a therapist. He needed the woman who loved him to sit with him in his pain.
So that’s what I did.
I pulled him into my arms and held him while he broke. His whole body shook with sobs. “I’ve got you,” I murmured against his hair. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”
We sat like that for a long time. The light in the window changed. Hours, maybe. Brothers came and went outside the door—I could hear their footsteps, their murmured conversations—but no one knocked.
Eventually, Holden’s sobs quieted. His breathing slowed. The tension in his muscles began to ease, replaced by the heavy weight of exhaustion.
I pulled back enough to look at him. The wet fabric was still plastered to his skin, the stains dark and dried at the edges where the rain had done what it could and no more.
“You need to get out of these clothes,” I said.
He looked down at himself like he’d forgotten. Maybe he had. “Yeah.”
I got him up. He didn’t fight it. Into the bathroom, shower running, and I waited in the doorway long enough to make sure he was standing under the water before I stepped back into the room.
I found a trash bag in the bottom of his closet and went back for his clothes. Picked them up piece by piece. The shirt, heavy and cold. The jeans. The jacket last, and I didn’t look too closely at what had dried into the seams. His boots I set aside—they could be cleaned. The rest couldn’t.
I tied the bag off and put it outside the door.
When Holden came out he was clean and hollow-eyed, a towel around his waist and nothing else. I handed him sweats from his dresser without speaking. He dressed slowly.
Once we were on the bed, and I had my arms around him again, neither of us said anything for a long time.
“You should sleep,” I said softly. “Just for a little while.”
“Can’t.” But even as he said it, his eyes were drooping. “Every time I close my eyes, I see him.”
“Then I’ll stay. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Danny’s mom. Lindsay.” He swallowed. “Someone should—she needs to know. Someone should be with her.”
“You need someone too,” I said.
“I’ll be asleep.” His hand found mine, fingers too heavy to grip properly. “I just need you to stay until I’m out. She needs you more than I do right now. She’s alone, Bea. I got all of this—” a vague gesture, meaning the club, the brothers beyond the door “—and she’s got nobody.”
I looked at him. The plea in it wasn’t for himself. Even now, broken open and half gone with grief and whiskey, he was thinking about a woman who didn’t know yet that she wasn’t getting her son back.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “I’ll stay until you’re asleep. Then I’ll go.”
He exhaled, some last held thing releasing. “Thank you.”
He was already drifting, grief and alcohol pulling him under. I held him and didn’t move. “I love you,” I whispered, even though I wasn’t sure he could hear me anymore.
His breathing slowed. Deepened. The tension in his face softened by degrees until he finally looked like himself again. I pressed a kiss to his forehead. Then I eased out from under him, careful and slow, and pulled the blanket up over his shoulders.
I wrote a note on the back of a receipt. Keeping my promise. Call me when you wake up. I love you. Left it on the nightstand where he’d see it.
Then I slipped out and pulled the door closed softly behind me. The bag was where I’d left it. Handful was at the end of the hall, back against the wall, forearms on his knees. Watching.
I picked up the bag and held it out. He stood and took it without a word. He knew what it was. He knew what to do with it.
I walked past him toward the main room.
I’d expected it to be quieter by now—men dispersed, the worst of it absorbed into the private grieving that people like this did behind closed doors.
Instead they were all still there. Brothers in cuts, old ladies with their arms around each other, men who looked like they’d been staring at the floor for hours.
Someone had turned the lights low. Nobody was talking much.
Every face I passed had the same look. Red-rimmed eyes. The particular stillness of people who didn’t know what to do with their hands.
I was almost to the door when a voice stopped me.
“Bea.”
Glitch. He was leaning against the wall near the exit, arms crossed, watching me with the quiet attention he brought to everything. He looked wrecked.
“He’s asleep,” I said, because it seemed like the thing he needed to know.
He nodded. “Where are you going?”
“Danny’s mother. Holden asked me to check on her.”
“Dutch and Indira are already there.” He pushed off the wall. “I’ll take you.”
I turned and followed Glitch out into the night.