Chapter 34 #2
He’s not wrong.
“I know,” I say. And because I’m done pretending otherwise, I add, “I was late.”
That changes something. Not enough to make him happy. Nothing could right now. But enough to take the edge off what could’ve become a bigger moment if I’d decided to get defensive instead of honest.
Landon holds my stare for one more second, then nods once. “Yeah,” he says. “You were.”
Then he looks at Allison, and some of that cold hardness in his face eases by a fraction. “I’ve got you too, Al.”
She softens immediately. “I know.”
And that’s that. No chest beating. No dramatic confrontation. Just the truth sitting in the room where everybody can see it.
He’s her brother. I’m her man. And right now, those things aren’t at odds.
They’re aimed in the same direction. That helps more than I expected it to.
Dad clears his throat. “What about the sheriff?”
Logan leans back against the table. “He said if Drew starts pushing official channels, he’ll know before it gets legs. But if this turns personal in a way he can’t ignore, we need documentation.”
Mac snorts softly. “How romantic.”
Kya raises a hand. “I vote we just beat his ass and save everybody paperwork.”
Dom slides a glass of orange juice toward her without looking away from Logan. “Drink your juice.”
Kya narrows her eyes at him. “You’re not the boss of me.”
“You were nauseous twice this morning.”
“That’s unrelated.”
“It’s not.”
Brooke starts laughing into her tea again.
Emma presses her lips together like she’s trying not to smile.
Raven shakes her head, amused despite the tension.
And again, the room breathes. It’s almost ridiculous, honestly. How normal life just keeps elbowing its way into the middle of serious shit like it has every right to be there.
Maybe it does. Maybe that’s the whole point of family. Not that danger disappears. Just that it doesn’t get to own the room completely.
Still, the normal doesn’t last long.
Because once church-adjacent strategy starts happening in a kitchen full of pregnant women and old ladies and overprotective men, the whole thing devolves into exactly the kind of absurd domestic chaos that makes this place feel like home even when it’s one bad decision away from violence.
Logan gets sent to the pharmacy for antacids and the specific crackers Mac wants because apparently the wrong salt ratio is now a hate crime.
Dom gets handed a list from Kya that includes pickles, grape soda, gummy worms, and something called “those little cinnamon sugar donut holes but not the stale kind,” which feels like a setup.
Carter gets yelled at by Brooke because he started to reorganize the nursery closet and she “finally got it right.”
Shadow is trying to leave for a supply pickup when Shaina catches him by the cut and tells him if he comes back without the ice cream she texted him about, she’s “breaking up with him for at least six hours.”
He just looks at her for a long beat and says, “That’s not how breakups work.”
She smiles sweetly. “You wanna risk it?”
Hammer laughs.
Cobra mutters, “Jesus Christ.”
Joker, carrying Lexi on one hip while Raven tries to braid the kid’s hair, just shakes his head like he’s accepted this as his life now.
And in the middle of all of it, I stay right where I am. With Allison. No more hiding. No more pretending she’s just another woman in the room I happen to care too much about.
If I move, she moves with me. If she moves, I know where she’s going. If I have to leave the room, somebody I trust takes my place before I’m even fully gone.
Not because she can’t take care of herself. Because that’s not the point anymore. The point is Drew has already shown us what he is willing to do when he thinks he’s losing control.
And I’m done leaving openings.
By that afternoon, it’s not even subtle.
I walk her to her office at Ambrosia. Sit in on a vendor meeting she absolutely does not need me for and pretends not to roll her eyes about.
Stand outside the bathroom in a diner while she’s inside because the second she gives me a look, I remind her calmly that this is what she gets for dating a paranoid biker in the middle of a threat escalation.
She mutters, “You’re insufferable.”
I answer, “And yet.”
She laughs despite herself. That’s the thing. Even in the middle of all this, there are still these small, stupid moments of normal.
Her stealing fries off my plate at lunch and acting like I won’t notice.
My hand at the back of her neck when she’s tired and trying to work through a headache.
Her leaning against me in the hallway outside church while everybody else filters in and out like we haven’t spent half our lives pretending this exact kind of closeness didn’t mean what it obviously meant.
No more of that. No more hiding. If anything, the threat makes something in me settle even harder.
Because there’s no point protecting her halfway. No point loving her quietly if the whole world is already trying to force itself into our business anyway.
So I don’t hold back anymore.
I kiss her in the kitchen while Mom pretends not to see and Tracie definitely sees.
I tuck her into my side on the couch in the common room while Torch glares from across the room and Dad quietly tells him to knock it off.
I sit behind her on the porch steps at sunset with my knees bracketing her hips and my chin on her shoulder while she watches the kids play in the yard and absentmindedly threads her fingers through mine. No more pretending.
She’s mine. And anybody with eyes can deal with it.
That night, after dinner, Logan catches me outside by the bikes while I’m checking the perimeter cams with Joker and Cain.
The sun’s gone down enough to cool the lot, and the clubhouse behind us is still lit up warm and loud through the windows.
I can hear laughter from inside, Brooke arguing with Carter about whether babies need socks in July, and Kya loudly informing Dom that if he ever says the phrase “birth plan” to her again, she’s filing for divorce before they’re even legally married.
Joker snorts under his breath.
Cain shakes his head.
And Logan stops beside me, arms crossed over his chest, looking out over the lot like he can see three moves ahead and doesn’t like any of them. “You good?” he asks.
I know what he means.
No, I’m not good.
I haven’t been good since the bruise on Allison’s wrist bloomed dark enough to show finger marks.
But I’m functioning. I’m useful. I’m not on my way to prison.
So for now, that’s close enough. “Yeah.”
Logan gives me a look that says he knows I’m full of shit and doesn’t have time to unpack it. “He’s gonna keep pushing,” he says.
“I know.”
“Sheriff’ll warn us if he can.”
“Still know.”
Logan exhales slowly through his nose. Then, quieter, “You thinking straight?”
I turn my head and look at him. Because that’s the real question, isn’t it? Not whether I’m angry. Everybody knows I’m angry.
Whether I’m still the kind of angry that can do the job I’m supposed to do. Whether I’m still VP before I’m just a man in love with a woman somebody threatened.
The answer matters. So I give him the real one. “Barely.”
That gets the faintest twitch out of him. “Honest, at least.”
I look back out at the lot. At the dark line of bikes. At the tree line past the road. At the headlights of a truck passing too slowly before it keeps going.
Then I say what’s been sitting in my chest all damn day. “He’s not done.”
Logan’s quiet for a second. Then, “No.”
No. He’s not. And that’s the part I can’t shake. Because this doesn’t feel like a man throwing one last tantrum on his way out.
It feels like pressure building. Like a guy who’s too stupid and too entitled to understand when he’s already crossed a line and now keeps looking for another angle because every other one got shut down.
Texts. Watching. Fishing with the sheriff’s department. Trying to frame the club for anything he can think of just to see if something sticks.
That’s not somebody moving on. That’s somebody escalating. And I know enough about men like him to know escalation only goes one of two ways.
Either it burns out when they realize they’ve got no opening left. Or it blows up.
I look back toward the clubhouse windows.
Toward the glow of the kitchen. The movement of women inside.
The shape of Allison crossing from one room to the next with my mother saying something to her that makes her smile.
And for the first time in a long damn time, the fear under my anger isn’t abstract.
It has a face.
A laugh. A body. A future I can actually picture if the world would stop trying to test whether I deserve to keep it.
That’s what makes this different. That’s what makes this harder. Because I’m not just trying to win a fight anymore.
I’m trying to keep us on the right side of one.
I scrub a hand over my jaw and say quietly, mostly to myself, “This is coming to a head.”
Cain hears it anyway. He always does. “Yeah.”
Joker’s voice comes a second later, calm and unreadable as ever. “Question is how.”
I look at the clubhouse again. At Allison. At home. And for the first time since this whole thing started, I let myself want something dangerously specific.
Not revenge. Not blood. Not even satisfaction.
Just the right ending.
The one where she stays safe. The one where this dies before it takes anything else from her. The one where I don’t have to explain to my mother why there’s a body in the woods and a shovel missing from the shed.
I exhale slowly and say, “I just hope it lands on the right side of it.”
No one laughs.
Because all three of us know exactly how thin that line is.