Chapter 14
I know something’s wrong before I even know what it is.
That’s the kind of day it’s already been.
The clubhouse is too loud, too full, too domestic in a way that should be normal by now but somehow keeps getting under my skin anyway.
There are boxes stacked by the stairs. A half-built bassinet is taking up half the common room.
Someone left a tiny pair of baby socks on the kitchen counter next to a loaded gun magazine and a bag of chips, which feels like a pretty accurate picture of life around here lately.
And in the middle of all that chaos, I’m trying to focus on club business while my head keeps snagging on shit that has nothing to do with what’s in front of me.
Logan is at the dining table with a ledger open in front of him, pretending he’s listening while he keeps glancing toward the couch every thirty seconds to check on Mac.
She’s on the far end of the sectional with one leg tucked under her and a blanket over her lap, looking calm in the way women like her look calm right before they ruin a man’s whole week.
Dom is halfway out the front door because Kya decided she needs onion rings from a place twenty minutes away and apparently no other fried food in the county will keep her from emotional collapse.
Carter is on the floor by the fireplace trying to put together some baby swing Brooke ordered online, and from where I’m standing, he’s attached at least one piece backward while Brooke supervises from an armchair and fights with the hem of her oversized T-shirt because she’s too hot and too uncomfortable and too patient to outright murder him.
I’d laugh if I weren’t already in a mood.
“Tell me again,” Logan says, tapping a finger against the paper in front of him, “why the hell our order is still short from Montgomery.”
“Because the supplier’s dragging his feet,” I answer automatically, eyes on the numbers even though half my attention is on the room and none of it is where it should be.
“Then make him stop dragging.”
“Good plan. I’ll threaten him with your sparkling personality.”
“Use Landon instead,” Dom mutters as he grabs his keys off the hook by the door. “He scares people in a less charming way.”
From the couch, Kya raises her voice without opening her eyes. “And don’t let them forget the ranch this time.”
Dom looks personally offended. “I forgot it one time.”
“You forgot it the most important time.”
“It was for mozzarella sticks.”
“It was for me.”
“Same thing.”
Kya points toward the door without looking. “Leave before I decide breathing in my house is a privilege.”
Dom mutters something under his breath and slips out before she can sharpen her aim.
Carter swears softly from the floor.
Brooke narrows her eyes. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“That sounded like a ‘nothing’ that involved messing something up.”
He lifts a twisted strap with a helpless expression. “The instructions are stupid.”
“The instructions are not stupid.”
“The instructions are in eight languages and still somehow useless.”
Mac looks up from her phone and says, in the kind of cool, deadly tone that means she’s been listening to all of it whether anyone invited her to or not, “That sounds like a user issue.”
Brooke bursts out laughing. Carter just drops his head back against the couch like he’s accepted this is how he dies.
Normally, this would be funny.
Normally, I’d be leaning into it, talking shit, helping where needed, keeping one eye on club business and the other on the kind of family chaos that’s become background noise around here lately.
Instead, everything feels like static.
Like my skin doesn’t fit right. Like I’ve been waiting for something without realizing it, and whatever it is is about to make the whole damn day worse.
I’m right.
The front door opens again ten minutes later, and Landon walks in carrying a grease-stained bag from the garage and wearing the kind of expression that says he’s got gossip and intends to be annoying with it.
He tosses the bag on the counter, nods once at Logan, then takes in the room in one slow sweep.
“Still alive in here?” he asks.
“Barely,” Carter says from the floor.
“Helpful.”
“I’m being held hostage by screws and hormones.”
Brooke points at him. “Do not blame this on me.”
“I’m blaming it on Amazon and whoever designed this swing with hate in their heart.”
Landon laughs, then grabs a beer out of the fridge.
He grew up in this place same as me. Same floors under our boots.
Same old men teaching us how to fight and ride and shut our mouths when church was in session.
He’s not blood, but that’s never mattered much around here.
If somebody put a gun to my head and told me to name the men I trust most, Landon would be on that list before I finished breathing.
He walks out after a few minutes, most likely due to the increase of hormones.
Blaze comes in twisting the cap off his beer and leans one hip against the counter. “By the way,” he says to no one and everyone, “y’all hear about amateur night at Ambrosia tomorrow?”
That gets enough reaction from the room to cut through the noise in my head before I even know why.
Brooke perks up first. “What about it?”
Blaze shrugs. “Shaina said it’s going to be a shitshow.”
A pulse starts in the base of my neck.
Mac doesn’t look up from her phone. “Everything at Ambrosia is a shitshow.”
“True,” Blaze says. “Apparently Allie signed up.”
Everything in me goes still.
Not outwardly. I don’t think so anyway. I don’t throw anything. Don’t swear. Don’t do the smart thing, which would probably be to laugh it off like that’s no big deal and ask what the hell Shaina was thinking encouraging it.
But internally?
Internally, I lose my whole goddamn mind.
“What?” The word comes out sharp enough that Logan’s head lifts.
Blaze looks over at me, brows pulling together slightly. “Allie signed up for amateur night.”
Like he’s just repeating a fact. Like he doesn’t understand he just dropped lit dynamite in my lap. No one else seems to grasp the urgency of the situation either.
Kya sits up a little on the couch, instantly more awake. “She did not.”
“She did,” Blaze says. “At least that’s what Shaina said.”
Brooke’s eyes widen. “Oh my God.”
Mac finally looks up. There’s no real surprise on her face, which makes something ugly twist low in my gut.
Of course she knows. Of course the women know. Of course I’m somehow the only asshole who wasn’t in on this.
Logan lets out a low whistle. “That oughta be interesting.”
Interesting.
There are a lot of words for the immediate, violent surge that goes through me at the thought of Allison on that stage, in that room, with every man in town looking at her.
Interesting is not one of them.
Blaze still talking. “I told Shaina that was a terrible idea. She said to mind my business.”
That almost gets a laugh from Ana, who’s just walked in from upstairs with a basket of laundry and terrible timing. “Well,” she says, setting the basket down. “It will definitely be interesting.”
The room keeps moving around me. Logan says something to Ana.
Brooke asks if Allie’s really going through with it.
Kya looks delighted in the kind of way that should warn everybody.
Carter is still fighting for his life with a screwdriver.
Mac’s expression stays unreadable, but I swear she glances my way for half a second too long.
I don’t hear most of it.
All I can see is Allison in Ambrosia under those lights while a room full of men stares like they’ve got a right to.
Absolutely the fuck not.
Logan clears his throat and taps the ledger again. “Jimmy.”
I drag my gaze to him, Landon is now standing next to him. I didn’t even realize he came back.
“The order,” he says carefully.
Right.
Club business. The thing I’m supposed to be doing. The thing that actually matters.
I look down at the numbers and don’t see a damn word on the page.
Landon notices immediately, because of course he does. He knows me too well not to. “What’s going on with you?” he asks.
The question is casual on the surface. Brotherly. Easy. It still lands like a threat.
I keep my eyes on the ledger. “Nothing.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Language,” Brooke says absently, not looking up from the baby swing.
Landon ignores her. “You’ve been weird all week.”
I let out a short breath through my nose. “I’m sitting at a table doing paperwork while the whole room melts down over baby shit. I’m allowed to be annoyed.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I know it isn’t. I also know exactly why I can’t have this conversation with him.
Because Landon knows me. Because he trusts me. Because the second he puts the wrong pieces together, the whole damn thing shifts from private problem to betrayal.
That word sits in the back of my head harder than I want it to.
Betrayal.
Because that’s what this would feel like to him, isn’t it? Not some random guy looking at Allie wrong. Not some outsider getting too close to his sister.
Me.
One of his own. A man who grew up in the same dirt, same halls, same rules. A man he trusts around her because I was always supposed to be safe.
That thought hits hard enough that I shove away from the table before I can sit with it too long. “I need air.”
Logan watches me stand. “We’re in the middle of—”
“You can finish it without me for five minutes.”
I don’t wait for an answer after that. I head for the hallway because if I stay in this room one second longer, I’m either going to put my fist through the ledger or start asking questions I have no business asking in front of half the clubhouse.
I don’t make it all the way outside.
Allison is in the back hall near the laundry room, talking to one of the girls from Ambrosia I vaguely recognize from weekends. They’re standing close, heads bent together over a clipboard, and the second I see the paper in the girl’s hand, every ugly instinct in me sharpens.
The girl notices me first and goes still.
Allison turns.