Chapter 32 #2
The second the words leave my mouth, I hate them. Not because I don’t mean them. Because they come out rougher than I want, too close to blame when the only person I want bleeding for this is Drew.
Allison’s eyes flash tired and hurt all at once. “I know,” she says softly. “I just wanted to get out of there first.”
That knocks the edge right out from under me. Because of course she did. Of course her first instinct was survival.
Get out. Get safe. Get gone.
And Christ, the fact that she had to think like that at all makes my vision pulse once at the edges.
I step closer, keeping my voice low enough that it’s just for her even though half the lot is listening. “You did good.”
Her face changes. Not dramatically. Just enough that I know she heard what I actually meant.
“You got out. You got safe. You came home."
The front door of the clubhouse is already opening because of course the second Logan yelled for me with Cain and Joker storming after, when Blaze followed Allison into the lot, somebody inside clocked that the shape of this wasn’t normal.
Emma comes out first.
Raven right behind her.
Then Mom.
Then Aunt Tracie.
And behind them, because privacy is a fantasy in this club, Mac and Kya and Brooke, all three of them already moving as much as their pregnancies allow.
The women take one look at Allison and the whole air changes. Not loud. Not frantic.
Worse.
Focused. That instant, razor-sharp female shift from social to protective that makes men either shut up or get run over in the stampede.
Emma reaches Allison first. “What happened?”
Not panicked. Not dramatic. Steady. That same grounded tone that says I’m here, we’ll handle it, you don’t have to be the strong one for the next few minutes.
Mom’s face changes the second she sees the bruise.
Uncle Torch appears behind Aunt Tracie at exactly the same time and clocks it too. And just like that, I’m not the only man in the lot one breath away from homicide. “What the fuck is that?” he says.
Aunt Tracie grabs his forearm before he can step forward like there’s someone to physically attack in front of him. “Not now.”
“It is exactly now.”
Before Allison has to repeat herself again, I say, “He put his hands on her. Then threatened her.”
The women go deadly quiet.
Emma’s whole expression shifts.
Aunt Tracie’s face goes white, then hard.
Mom’s mouth flattens.
Kya says, “Oh, I’ll kill him,” with terrifying sincerity.
Mac goes still in a way that makes her look colder than any yelling ever could.
Brooke’s hand flies to her chest, horrified.
Raven’s eyes narrow as she looks at Allison’s wrist.
Emma steps in first, voice calm and sure. “Allie, come inside with us.”
Allison hesitates. Not because she doesn’t want to go with them. Because she’s looking at me.
I don’t touch her. Don’t crowd her. Don’t ask for anything she doesn’t have to give right now.
Checking me. Making sure I’m not about to go do something that ends with somebody needing a shovel and Logan needing to call church for an emergency meeting.
That guts me almost as much as the bruise did. Because she should not be the one worrying about me right now.
I force my jaw to unclench enough to say, “Go.”
She nods. And when the women close around her and take her back inside, I stand there in the lot with that text burned into my head and the handprint on her wrist burned in even deeper.
Because one second she was in a coffee shop with a man who grabbed her hard enough to leave bruises because he didn’t like hearing no.
And the next she’s swallowed back into this warm, loud, protective female space where everybody loves her and nobody expects her to minimize what just happened just to make them comfortable.
Home. Safe.
The difference between those two worlds hits me like a train.
“She tell you everything?” I ask Blaze without looking away from the front door.
“She didn’t need to. I was already there, grabbing breakfast.”
I turn to face him fully now, and whatever’s on my face makes Cain step between us just slightly.
Not because he thinks I’m going after Blaze.
Because he knows when a man is too close to the edge of his own skin and might accidentally turn a question into a threat if someone doesn’t stand near enough to ground him.
Blaze doesn’t flinch.
“He call her names?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“What names?”
Blaze’s mouth goes flat. “Enough.”
No, that answer can go straight to hell.
“What names?”
Blaze holds my stare for one second, weighing whether I actually need to hear it or if I’m just asking because I want more fuel. Then he says, “Trash. Criminal. That kind of shit.”
Every word lands like a nail.
Not because I’m surprised. Because I’m not. Because Allison told me what she’d started hearing under his version of nice. Because I knew what kind of man Drew was the second he walked into Ambrosia and looked around like he was too clean to be breathing our air.
But hearing it confirmed after he put his hands on her?
That does something ugly and final inside me.
“He reached for her again,” Blaze adds quietly. “After she pulled free.”
My whole body goes cold. Not hot this time.
Cold.
The kind of cold that strips all the noise out and leaves only one clean thought behind.
He touched her once. Then he tried again.
I look at Blaze. “You hit him?”
His mouth twitches once. No humor. “Yeah.”
For the first time since Allison got out of her car, something like relief moves through me. Not enough. Never enough. But some.
“Good.”
Cain exhales beside me.
Joker says nothing.
Uncle Torch mutters, “Not good enough.”
No. It isn’t.
Because this isn’t just some bad date anymore. This is a man who put his hands on a woman tied to this club and followed it up with a threat.
Because men like Drew don’t lose control in public and then just go home and accept the consequences quietly. They turn meaner when they’re embarrassed. Meaner when they think they’ve been made to look small.
And a man like that with a badge? That’s not something I’m going to sit on out of politeness.
Before I can say any of it, the front door opens again and Emma steps back out.
She moves straight to me. Not because the others aren’t there. Because she knows exactly which kind of calm she needs from me right now and exactly how unlikely I am to find it alone.
“She’s okay,” Emma says.
The words help. Barely.
I search her face anyway. “You sure?”
Emma nods. “Minor burn. Bruising on the wrist. She’s shaken up, but she’s okay.”
I drag a hand over my mouth and turn away for one second because if I keep looking at Emma’s steady, understanding face while she tells me the woman I love is hurt but okay, I’m either going to lose what’s left of my control or start shaking.
Maybe both.
Emma waits. Lets me have the second. Then says quietly, “She also got a text.”
There it is.
I go still. “She showed me.”
Emma’s expression doesn’t change, but there’s enough in her eyes to tell me she hates saying it out loud. “He told her she’d regret embarrassing him like that. She’s scared more than anything.”
Every sound in the lot dies.
Not literally. The birds are still going. Somebody down the block is still mowing. A truck still rolls past on the road in front of the clubhouse.
But in me?
Dead quiet.
I don’t say anything.
Because I can’t yet. Because every bit of energy in me is going into not getting on my bike right now and heading back into town with murder in both hands.
Emma reaches out and touches my forearm once. A small thing. A grounding thing. “She’s safe,” she says. “Right now, that’s what matters.”
No. No, it isn’t. Not enough. But she’s right too.
Because if I leave right now, if I go tear into Drew while Allison’s still inside with shaking hands and a bruise on her wrist and the whole women’s side of the clubhouse circling her to make sure she feels held instead of handled, then I’m still putting my feelings in front of what she actually needs.
And what she needs is safety. Not vengeance. Not yet.
Safety.
That’s the only reason Drew is still alive when Logan comes out onto the porch a minute later with Landon, Shadow, and Dom behind him.
One look at the lot tells Logan everything he needs to know about the shape of this.
One look at my face tells him the rest. “What happened?”
Blaze answers because I can’t yet. Because if I do, I’m going to skip straight from summary to body disposal.
He gives it clean. Simple. Facts only.
Coffee shop. Ugly words. Grabbed wrist. Threat text. Got her out.
By the time he’s done, every man in the lot is different.
Logan’s gone cold in the eyes.
Landon has gone still in that deeply dangerous way that means his anger’s dropped too low to be noisy anymore.
Shadow’s jaw has locked.
Dom looks like he wants to personally invent new crimes.
Joker’s expression hasn’t changed much, which somehow makes him look more dangerous than the rest of us put together.
Good.
Because this isn’t just my problem anymore. It never should have been.
Logan looks at me. Not because I outrank anyone here. Because he knows exactly how close I am to doing something catastrophic if someone doesn’t give me a direction fast. “Inside,” he says.
I don’t move.
“Jimmy.” I drag my eyes to him. “She needs you more in there than she needs you in town.”
That one goes in deep because it’s true.
Because for all the ugly, violent fury trying to tear through my skin right now, none of it matters more than the fact that Allison is inside this house with a handprint on her wrist because I wasted too much time being jealous and stupid while somebody objectively worse was getting close enough to hurt her.
That realization hits like a hammer.
Not just guilt. Something worse. Clarity.
I knew he was wrong for her. Knew it in my gut. Knew it in every instinct I had the second he walked into Ambrosia with that clean-cut superiority and those judging eyes.