Chapter 24 Zoey
ZOEY
By the time I pull up to the clubhouse, I am done.
Not physically—I’ve worked longer days, harder days—but I’m mentally and emotionally spent. The funeral ran smoothly, cleaner than the last one, quieter in its own way. Danny stayed close like he was supposed to, though protective blurred into flirting more times than I could count.
Not that I exactly shut it down. I probably should have, but I didn’t want to think about why I should’ve.
The second I step inside the noise hits me. Music, laughter, and voices overlap, and then the girls descend.
“There she is!”
“Oh, my God, you made it!”
“Took you long enough!”
I’m pulled forward before I can even greet anyone properly. Peach hands me a drink, and Savvy drags me toward the open space where someone has started blasting music loud enough to thump through the floor.
“Funeral go okay?” Lucy asks, her hand resting briefly on my arm.
“It did,” I say, nodding. “No… incidents.”
Her expression tells me she knows exactly what I mean.
“Good,” she says, then smiles. “Then tonight, you don’t think about any of it.”
“I’ll try,” I reply.
“Don’t try.” Mellie loops her arm through mine. “Drink instead.”
I do. A lot, and as the night progresses, I let go. Before long I’m laughing, moving, letting them pull me into their orbit instead of standing on the outside of it.
The club whores are in full form, weaving through the room, tempting, teasing, attaching themselves to unattached brothers like it’s second nature.
I shouldn’t feel comfortable here, but somehow I do.
A few times, I catch Danny’s eye across the room. He grins every time, cocky but not unpleasant. After a while, he comes close, brushing my arm as he passes or murmuring something low enough that only I hear it.
Then my phone buzzes. I frown, stepping away from the group as I pull it out, already knowing who it is before I even look.
For some insane reason, I answer.
“What?”
“Don’t start like that with me,” Mom snaps immediately. “I’ve been calling you.”
“I’ve been working,” I reply tightly. “You know, at my job? The one I moved across the country for?”
“Which was a stupid decision,” she fires back. “You left without thinking—”
“I thought about it for years,” I cut her off. “You just never noticed.”
She scoffs. “You always exaggerate—”
“No,” I say, stepping further away from the noise, my back to the wall now. “You just never listen.”
The argument spirals fast, the same one we’ve had a hundred times. It’s all about her needs, my failures, her expectations, and my supposed selfishness.
“You don’t get to decide what my life looks like anymore,” I finally say.
“I’m your mother—”
“And that doesn’t mean you own me,” I snap.
She doesn’t immediately respond, but when she does, her tone is ice-cold. “You’ll regret this.”
“I promise you, I won’t,” I reply and then hang up.
My hand tightens around the phone, my chest rising and falling too fast, the noise of the clubhouse suddenly too loud again.
“That sounded fun.”
I look up to see Whiz hovering a few feet away, arms crossed, expression shut down so tight it’s almost unreadable.
“It wasn’t,” I say.
He nods once like that’s all the explanation he needs, but he doesn’t relax, doesn’t soften.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” I add.
“Church ended,” he replies simply.
“Okay…” I say slowly. “Everything good?”
“Fine.”
One word. All I get is one stupid word.
“Whiz,” I try again. “Are you—”
“I’m good,” he bites out, effectively ending the conversation before it can really begin.
The hurt at being shut down is sharper than I expect, landing in a place that still feels too new to be this sensitive. I nod once anyway because what else am I supposed to do?
“Alright.”
He doesn’t respond. Instead, he turns and disappears back into the crowd.
The music seems louder now, the energy of girls’ night harder to step back into.
“Hey.”
I shake my head free of my melancholy thoughts and look up at Danny, who’s stepping into my space.
“You good?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say automatically.
He tilts his head slightly. “Didn’t look like it.”
I shrug, trying to brush it off. “Just… family stuff.”
“Fun,” he says dryly, and it earns him a huff of laughter. “C’mere,” he adds, pulling me into a loose hug.
It’s… nice. Uncomplicated. There’s no expectation attached to it, just a friendly gesture, and stupidly, I let myself relax into it. Barely any time passes before I step away though because he’s not the man I want to be hugging.
Rather than let me go, Danny raises his hand to my cheek, brushing it lightly with his fingers. He leans down, and before I can even stop him, a furious voice does it for me.
“Get the fuck off her.”
Danny has no time to react before Whiz is there, crossing the distance in seconds and driving his fist straight into Danny’s jaw. The impact is loud, brutal, sending him stumbling back as the entire room looks on.
“What the—”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Whiz roars, stepping forward like he might hit him again.
“Dude, what the hell—” Danny starts, but he’s cut off.
“She’s mine,” Whiz snaps, loud enough that every single person in the room hears it. “You don’t touch her. You don’t look at her like that. You stay the fuck away.”
I see red.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I shout, stepping between them before things gets worse. “You don’t get to do that.”
Whiz’s gaze snaps to mine. “The fuck I don’t,” he seethes.
“No,” I say, my voice rising now, anger cutting through everything else. “You don’t get to claim me like that when you barely even talk to me, when you shut me down every time I try to get close.”
“That’s not—”
“That’s exactly what it is,” I snap. “You don’t get to have it both ways, Whiz.
You don’t get to push me away and then lose your shit when someone else doesn’t.
” The room is completely silent now, the music having been shut off at some point.
“You don’t own me,” I add, quieter but no less sharp.
“And you haven’t earned the right to act like you do. ”
I turn away and march straight out the door.