Chapter 18 #2
“Shut up,” Logan says without looking up from the list.
Shadow, arms crossed near the doorway, watches the whole thing like he’s trying to figure out whether biker club life has always been this ridiculous or if he just happened to patch over during a particularly unhinged chapter.
Hammer looks mostly amused. Cobra looks actively annoyed. Landon looks like he’s deciding whether or not to fake his own death.
I should be laughing.
Instead, all I can really think about is the fact that Allie still hasn’t looked at me.
Not once. Not even by accident. And that’s somehow worse than if she’d glared.
Emma glances up from the sink and catches me staring. Not at her. At Allison. Of course she notices. Emma notices everything. She doesn’t say anything, just gives me one quiet, unreadable look before going back to helping Amy with the fruit.
That should not feel as much like being caught by your mom as it does.
“All right,” Mac says, finally lifting the pen. “Who’s going where?”
“I’ll take Kya’s,” Dom says immediately, because if he doesn’t, he might actually die.
“Smart,” Cain mutters.
“I’ll get Brooke’s,” Carter says with the solemnity of a man accepting his final mission.
“Because if you come back empty-handed, she’s gonna cry and then you’re gonna cry,” Shaina says cheerfully.
“Correct.”
Logan looks at Mac. “I’ll get yours.”
Mac narrows her eyes. “You are not allowed to freestyle.”
“I wasn’t going to freestyle.”
“You brought me the wrong salad dressing last week.”
“That was one time.”
“You’re on thin ice.”
He nods like a chastened child.
Then Mac glances down at the list again and says, “Jimmy, go with Logan.”
Every head in the room turns toward me.
Fantastic.
I straighten from where I’ve been leaning against the wall and say, “Why?”
“Because if I send him alone, he’ll come back with whatever he thinks I meant instead of what I actually said.”
“I’m standing right here,” Logan mutters.
“And yet,” Mac says.
I almost refuse on principle. Then I catch the faintest movement from the corner of my eye.
Allie shifting her weight. Still not looking at me. Still not saying a word. And somehow that’s enough to make me push off the wall and grab my keys without another argument.
“Fine.”
We end up splitting into two trucks like we’re preparing for a hostage exchange.
Logan, me, and Caintake one.
Dom, Carter, Landon, Shadow,, and Hammer take the other after deciding they might as well knock out the rest of the stops in one miserable group effort.
The ride into town is hell. Not because of the company. Because my own head won’t shut up.
Logan drives like a man trying very hard not to think about whether his old lady is going to bite his head off if he comes back with the wrong ice ratio.
Cain scrolls through his phone in the passenger seat and occasionally mutters unhelpful commentary about how every man in this club is basically one snack error away from divorce.
I sit in the back and try not to think.
It doesn’t work. Nothing works. Because every time I get one thought under control, another one takes its place.
Allie in her office. Allie walking away. Allie in the kitchen this morning not looking at me once.
And underneath all of that, the ugliest part of all: She’s only ever been mine.
That thought again.
I hate it. I hate how much I don’t hate it. I hate how my entire chest tightens every time it resurfaces like it’s trying to claim space it doesn’t deserve.
Because what kind of selfish bastard thinks that way after last night?
What kind of man stands in the middle of his own guilt and still feels possessive enough to get mean in his own head over the idea of anyone else ever touching her?
Apparently this kind.
I stare out the window and grind my molars so hard I’m probably going to crack something.
Cain twists around in his seat after a few miles and studies me for a second too long. “You gonna talk, or are we doing this whole thing in moody silence?”
“Yes.”
“Yes to which part?”
“Both.”
He snorts.
Logan glances at me in the rearview. “Seriously, what’s up with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit,” Cain says.
“Helpful,” Logan mutters.
I keep my gaze on the passing storefronts and say, “Can y’all shut the hell up for five minutes?”
That buys me silence. Not because they’re convinced. Because they’re not. But because they know me well enough to hear when I’m too close to snapping for casual brotherly interrogation.
And that’s the thing about men who’ve bled beside you. Sometimes they know when not to pry.
The first stop is a nightmare. The second is worse. By the third, Logan is standing in the middle of a drive-thru arguing about crushed ice like his life depends on it while Cain openly laughs and I sit in the back seat trying not to text Allison something I’ll regret.
Not because I have anything good to say. Because I don’t. Because every version of what I want to say is wrong.
I’m sorry sounds too small. Are you okay sounds weak after the way she left. Can we talk feels like a trap when I’m not even sure I know how to say the things that actually matter.
And the things that actually matter are ugly.
I wanted you too much. I lost my head. I’ve been losing my head over you for years.
I handled everything after like an asshole because some part of me couldn’t stop spiraling over the fact that no one else has ever had you and I don’t know what that says about me except that it’s probably not flattering.
Yeah.
Not exactly text material.
By the time we get back to the clubhouse, I’m wound even tighter than I was when we left.
Everyone crowds into the kitchen at once with bags and drink carriers and fries and pretzel bites and enough sodium to kill a horse.
The women descend like vultures. There’s a brief, almost violent moment of inventory inspection while each pregnant woman verifies her assigned idiot did not, in fact, screw up her order.
Brooke gasps when she sees the pretzel bites and nearly cries. Kya opens the curly fries and visibly relaxes like world peace has been restored. Mac takes one sip of the lemonade, nods once, and says, “Acceptable.”
Logan looks like he might collapse from relief.
Emma laughs softly from the counter while Jason tries to steal one of Kya’s fries and Amy tells him “that’s not yours” with the world-weary patience of a ten-year-old who has already accepted she lives among lunatics.
The room fills with noise again. Laughter. Complaints. Side conversations. A hundred little threads of family life weaving together the way they always do.
And somehow I’m still outside all of it.
Because Allie’s standing near the back hallway now, talking quietly with Emma while Amy shows her something on a coloring page, and she still hasn’t looked at me.
Emma does. Again. And this time, there’s a little more in it. A little too much understanding.
I don’t like that.
Not because it’s wrong. Because it probably isn’t. Because if Emma’s figured out even half of what’s going on, it means I’m doing a worse job of hiding this than I thought.
Landon appears beside me with a paper bag in one hand and a bottle of water in the other, shoulder bumping mine in that easy, thoughtless way he always has.
Brother shit. Instinctive. Familiar. It lands like a punch.
“You good?” he asks.
The question is casual. Nothing in it but concern and habit. It still makes me feel like the biggest piece of shit in the room.
“Fine.”
He studies me. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks.”
“Didn’t mean it as a compliment.”
I huff a humorless laugh.
Landon takes a sip of his water and glances toward the kitchen where his sister is standing laughing softly at something Amy said.
Then he looks back at me.
And because apparently the universe isn’t done trying to put me through a wall today, he says, “Keep an eye on her tonight if she heads back to Ambrosia later. I’m tied up with the books after church stuff.”
I go completely still.
He doesn’t notice. Or maybe he does and just reads it wrong.
Either way, he keeps talking. “Shaina said she’s got some inventory crap to finish up over there.”
Inventory.
Right.
Because she manages the place. Because Ambrosia is her domain in ways I should’ve been remembering a hell of a lot more clearly yesterday instead of storming into it like a territorial asshole every time another man looked at her too long.
Landon knocks his shoulder into mine again. “You hear me?”
“Yeah.” The word barely makes it out.
“Good.” He twists the water bottle cap back on. “I know she can handle herself. I just don’t trust half the idiots that come through there.”
There it is.
The knife.
Not in what he says. In what he means without knowing it.
I trust you around her.
That’s what’s sitting under every word.
I trust you to look out for her. I trust you to be safe. I trust you not to be one more problem she has to manage.
And I have already failed that in about six different ways.
“Yeah,” I say again, because apparently that’s all I’ve got left.
Landon nods once and heads off toward the office before I can choke on the guilt any harder.
I stand there for another second too long, staring at nothing.
Then I look up.
And for the first time all day, Allison finally meets my eyes. Just for a second. No more than that. But it’s enough. Enough to hit me right in the sternum.
Because there’s hurt there. And distance. And something else I don’t know how to fix because I’m the one who put it there in the first place.
My body reacts before my brain catches up. I start to move toward her. One step. Maybe two. Then I stop.
Because what the hell am I going to say?
What do I even have that isn’t too little or too late or too selfish to count?
She holds my gaze for one beat longer, then looks away and turns back toward Emma and Amy like I’m not standing there at all.
And that’s what really guts me.
Not the anger. Not the tension. Not even the guilt.
The distance.
The sudden, awful possibility that after all these years of her always being there, I might’ve finally pushed her far enough that she decides not to be anymore.
I want to go to her. Christ, I want to.
I want to drag her somewhere quiet and say something real for once. Something useful. Something that doesn’t leave her looking at me like I’m one more man who wanted pieces of her without having the guts to own what that means.
Instead, I stand there in the middle of my family’s chaos with a paper bag in one hand and too much in my chest, and I do what I’ve apparently been doing with Allison Mitchell for years.
I want her.
And I can’t make myself go.