Chapter Two
SAGE
I don’t see Ghost come in.
One second the doorway is full of brothers talking over each other, everyone trying to fix a problem they can’t threaten into behaving.
The next, he’s just there. Phone already in his hand. His gaze sweeps over Victoria, Sin, the puddle spreading across the tiles, Nitro on the phone, and finally lands on me.
I don’t know how he does it, but somehow, I get the feeling he already knows exactly what’s going on.
My attention sticks on him a second longer than it should.
Which is really fucking irritating.
The man has the personality of a locked filing cabinet, and somehow, my eyes keep finding him anyway.
Fantastic.
Apparently, my timing for developing an inconvenient crush is just as questionable as everything else in my life.
I should be focused on Victoria.
I am focused on Victoria.
But some inconvenient part of me notices him anyway, because apparently my survival instincts have picked this exact moment to betray me.
My breath catches before I can stop it. Those stupid luminous green eyes. The sleeves of black and gray ink disappearing beneath his T-shirt. The forearms I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time imagining pinning me to…
Jesus, Sage. Get a grip. Now is not the time.
I drag in a breath and try to look anywhere else.
It doesn’t help.
He pushes a hand through his brown hair, leaving the longer strands falling across his forehead.
God, I love it when he does that.
Why do I love it when he does that?
Add in the scruff along his jaw, and that damn toothpick he’s forever chewing on, and my brain is suddenly taking a hard left into territory it has absolutely no business visiting while Victoria is literally in labor.
Stop it.
Seriously!
Stop ogling Ghost while your friend is busy bringing an entire human into the world.
Ghost’s thumb moves across his phone, quick and precise, before he looks up.
His eyes find mine for the briefest second.
No smile.
No acknowledgment.
Nothing anyone else in the room would notice.
Just that steady, unreadable look of his before his attention shifts straight back to Victoria.
Only then does he speak. “Ambulance ETA?”
Nitro turns, phone still pressed to his ear. “They said sixteen.”
“They’re using the standard route.” Ghost doesn’t look at him.
“There’s a collision off the Strip feeding traffic back toward Las Vegas Boulevard, two lanes blocked, and the fastest reroute still gets caught at the Tropicana lights unless they cut west and come around behind the warehouse district. I’ll redirect them now.”
Koa stares at him. “You hacked the ambulance?”
“No…” he pauses, “… traffic control.”
“Jesus, Ghost.” Koa chuckles.
“It was faster.”
Sin’s eyes lift.
One look and that is all it takes.
Ghost’s expression doesn’t change, but his voice drops into something even flatter. “She’s progressing too fast. If the contractions are coming this close together and her water has already broken, you can try the car, but she may deliver before you make the interstate.”
The kitchen goes deathly quiet.
Even Victoria stops swearing.
Sin’s jaw tightens so hard I hear the faint click of his teeth. “No.”
It isn’t a response.
It is a refusal.
As if a suggestion has been made and he has decided to vote it down.
Ghost holds his gaze. “Not saying it to scare you.”
“No,” Sin says again, softer now, but worse.
Victoria lifts one shaky hand and presses it against his chest. “Diesel…” Her voice is shaky, but stern.
That gets him.
Not the broken water.
Not the ambulance.
Not Ghost’s clinical little slice of reality.
Her saying his real name in that thin, pained voice cuts straight through whatever denial he is trying to build around himself. He looks down at her.
She tries to smile and fails. “I think our son has your patience.”
Sin lets out a breath that seems to drain the last of his strength. “God help us all.”
“I was wondering when you’d show up,” she whispers.
It is such a small thing.
Such a Victoria thing.
Dragging him back with a joke because she knows the man beneath the cut, beneath the presidency, beneath all that controlled violence, is standing in front of her, terrified.
And he comes back for her.
Sin presses his forehead to hers for one brief second, eyes closed, both hands steady on her face.
When he lifts his head, the fear is still there, carved into him too deeply to disappear, but the president has returned enough to move the room.
“Main room,” he orders. “Now. Clear it. Towels, blankets, first-aid kit. Marley, Ro, Sage, you’re with her.
Ghost, get me someone medical on the phone who knows more than the emergency operator reading off a script.
Nitro, stay with ambulance dispatch. Koa, keep the door clear.
Bear, keep everyone else the hell back unless they are useful. ”
The clubhouse snaps to his voice.
That is the thing about Sin. Even scared out of his mind, he is still the man everyone obeys.
And just like that, the Las Vegas Defiance clubhouse becomes a storm with a purpose.
Getting Victoria from the kitchen to the main room feels like crossing a football field instead of twenty feet.
Sin barely lets go of her, one arm around her waist while he keeps hold of her hand.
Marley and I stay so close we’re practically tripping over each other, ready to grab her the second she needs us.
Every few steps, another contraction hits, bringing us all to a stop until she can breathe through it.
The main room looks like a crime scene committed by love.
The coffee table is gone, dragged so far out of the way it has taken two rugs with it.
Chairs are shoved back. Beer bottles litter every flat surface.
Cards are scattered face up across the poker table, and someone has knocked over a bowl of pretzels that nobody is currently emotionally equipped to care about.
Ro is on her knees throwing pillows into place, while Liam appears from the hallway with an armful of towels so enormous I can only see the top of his head.
“I brought all of them,” the prospect announces.
Koa looks at the pile. “Why are there beach towels?”
“They’re towels!”
“They have flamingos on them.” Koa chuckles in his deep belly laugh.
“Do babies care about flamingos?” Liam asks as if he is honestly curious.
Koa opens his mouth, considers the question, then points toward the floor. “Put them down.”
Mace comes in behind him with bottled water, Hash with the first-aid kit, and Anchor carrying what looks like every clean blanket in the building.
Nobody knows who told them to get those things.
Maybe nobody did. Maybe this is just what family does when panic hits hard enough.
They scatter, grab whatever might help, and bring it back like offerings to a tiny furious god who has not arrived yet.
We lower Victoria down onto the blankets.
It isn’t graceful.
There is no way to make bringing a whole new life into the world on the clubhouse floor graceful.
She’s sweating, her breath catching at the end of every inhale, and all the jokes in the world can’t hide the fact that the pain is carving through her one contraction at a time.
Her fingers dig into mine on one side, Sin’s on the other, and I decide immediately that if she breaks every bone in my hand, I’ll simply learn to write with the other one and never mention it.
The thought barely registers. None of the little things do anymore.
Not the ache in my knees from kneeling on the hardwood. Not the damp patch soaking through the legs of my jeans. Not the way my heart feels as if it’s trying to climb into my throat every time Victoria’s face tightens and another contraction steals her breath.
Somewhere along the line, this stopped being somebody else’s emergency.
It became ours.
Marley kneels by Victoria’s knees, calm in a way that has to be at least partly fake. Somehow, she’s making the rest of us believe it too. Ro stays by Victoria’s shoulder with a damp cloth, quietly talking her through each contraction.
My eyes drift around the room.
Nobody is panicking.
Nobody is walking away.
They are just… here.
Every single one of them.
A year ago, I wouldn’t have known any of them.
A year ago, if somebody had told me I’d be kneeling on the clubhouse floor with my hand locked in the president’s Old Lady’s while she brought their son into the world, I would have laughed them straight out of the room.
Now, I can’t imagine being anywhere else.
Something settles low in my chest, quiet but undeniable.
Not because this moment is easy.
But because it isn’t.
It’s loud, messy, and terrifying, held together with sheer determination and whatever faith this club has in each other.
But somewhere between Victoria squeezing the life out of my hand, and Deek trying to hand Marley a packet of barbecue chips because ‘she might get hungry,’ I realize something that probably should have hit me weeks ago.
These people aren’t just letting me stand in the room anymore.
I’m one of the people they called into it. The thought lands hard enough that I have to swallow around the lump suddenly sitting in my throat before anybody notices.
Sin doesn’t move. Every time Victoria reaches for him, he’s already there. Holding her hand, brushing her hair back, resting his forehead against hers while he says something only she gets to hear. Whatever it is, she hangs onto every word.
“You’re with me, sweetheart. Look at me… That’s it… I know… I know it hurts… You can hate me later.”
That last one makes Victoria laugh, or try to. It comes out broken around a groan. “I already hate you.”
He chuckles. “I can take it.”
“I mean it, Sin!”
“I know you do, baby.”
Victoria lets out a long, angry groan, pushing through another contraction. “You did this!”
His mouth twitches, but his eyes shine with something dangerous and wet that he blinks away before anyone else can notice. “I had help.”
“If you make a joke right now, Diesel, I will divorce you during labor just to make a point.”
“Technically, we’re not married for you to divorce me.”
“AHH, FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE!” Another contraction hits as she yells back at him, and this one tears the room wide open.
Victoria arches off the blankets, a raw cry ripping out of her as her body locks around the pain, and every man in the room reacts as though someone has pointed a gun at her.
Koa takes one step forward before Bear’s arm comes out and stops him across the chest. Nitro turns away with one hand over his mouth, phone still pressed to his ear, eyes squeezed shut like he can’t stand hearing it and can’t bear not to.
Anchor goes pale. Liam drops the last towel and swears under his breath.
Ghost stays near the hallway, phone to his ear.
He barely moves.
A year ago, I might have mistaken that for indifference.
Now I know it’s the opposite.
Ghost only gets that still when his brain is working overtime, quietly trying to fix a problem before anyone else even realizes there’s one to solve.
His eyes flick to mine once.
Only once.
It lasts less than a second.
Then he looks away and speaks quietly into the phone. “We need delivery guidance. Full term, water broken, contractions under two minutes apart, mother conscious, no visible complications yet.”
Yet. The word lands like a stone.
I hate it.
I hate that he said it.
I hate that he is right too.
Ghost puts the phone to Marley’s ear, and she listens.
Marley glances up at him, and whatever the person on the phone says must be useful because she nods once, then shifts closer to Victoria.
“Okay, Vic,” Marley says, calm but firmer now.
“Listen to me. When the next one comes, I need you not to fight your body.”
Victoria’s head turns slowly. Her hair is damp against her cheek. “I am absolutely fighting my body. My body has betrayed me.”
“I know, honey, but it’s not betraying you. It’s doing exactly what it’s meant to do.”
“Then it’s meant to be an asshole.”
Ro lets out a shaky laugh. “That’s fair.”
The contraction eases, leaving Victoria limp against Sin’s arm, her chest rising and falling too fast. Sin brushes damp hair back from her forehead with a tenderness so at odds with the ink, the cut, and the lethal promise of him that something behind my ribs twists hard.
I have seen this club in blood.
I have seen them at war.
I have seen them plan violence with the kind of calm that makes you understand exactly why men fear the Defiance name.
But this? This is different.
This room is filled with men who know how to survive gunfire, betrayal, police raids, desert heat, and enemies with enough money to rot the world from the inside out. But not one of them knows what to do with the sound of a woman they love bringing life into the middle of their chaos.
So they stand there.
Useless.
Loyal.
Terrified.
Ready to burn the city down if it would help, and completely undone by the fact that it won’t.
Victoria bears down again, and everything else fades into the background.
The room fills with short, sharp breaths, quiet encouragement, and the scrape of boots across the timber floor. Ghost is still talking into his phone. Nitro repeats updates as they come through. Sin never stops talking to Victoria, his voice low enough that only she can hear it.
Someone opens the clubhouse doors, and heat rushes inside, doing absolutely nothing to help. Then Deek wanders back in carrying a pot of boiled water as though he has personally saved the day.
I don’t have the energy to ask why.
Judging by Bear’s expression, neither does anyone else. Bear takes the pot from him. “What the fuck is that?”