Chapter Four
SAGE
My eyes wander around the room.
Bear hangs back, giving the new family space. Ro’s pretending she isn’t crying. Nitro looks like he might actually burst from smiling, and Marley fusses with Victoria’s blanket like she can’t help herself.
Nobody is in a hurry to get back to whatever they were doing before. They’re all just standing around this tiny new life as though there is nowhere else on earth they’d rather be.
It hits me so quietly I almost don’t notice.
This isn’t everybody else’s clubhouse anymore.
Somewhere along the way, it became home.
A strange warmth settles inside me. The kind you don’t notice growing until one day you look around and realize it has roots.
Movement catches the corner of my eye, and my gaze lands on Ghost.
He’s still by the doorway, hands shoved into his jeans pockets, watching the room with that same expression he always wears. Not detached. Just making sure everyone made it through.
His eyes find mine. He doesn’t smile or say anything. There’s only the slightest dip of his chin, so small I almost miss it.
You okay? Maybe that’s what he means.
Maybe I’m reading into it.
Either way, I catch myself giving the smallest nod before I even think about it.
His gaze stays on me for a beat, then shifts back to Sin, Victoria, and the newest member of the Las Vegas Defiance MC.
Mine follows, and somehow, it feels as though it’s exactly where it belongs.
***
This hospital room was not designed for bikers and their Old Ladies. The staff keeps looking at us like they can’t decide whether to call security or ask for a club membership form.
Nitro has been pacing for forty minutes. Every second or third pass, Marley reaches out and grabs his arm to slow him down, which works for about thirty seconds before he’s up again.
Baby Marcus is healthy.
Victoria is exhausted but smiling every time she looks at him, and Sin hasn’t left her side for a single second. I don’t think he could if someone paid him.
I’m sitting in one of the uncomfortable plastic hospital chairs between Marley and Ro when Victoria looks over, smiles that tired new-mom smile, and carefully places Marcus into my arms.
Every muscle in my body locks.
He weighs almost nothing.
Warm, sleepy, and ridiculously small.
I cradle him a little awkwardly, terrified I’m somehow going to break something that feels so impossibly perfect. “Hey there, little man,” I whisper.
Marcus.
The name settles over the room differently than any other.
I have never met the first Marcus.
But I know him anyway.
I’ve heard the stories. Seen the photographs tucked into frames around the clubhouse. Watched the way conversations soften whenever Victoria talks about her brother, and the way the older members of the club still carry him with them without ever having to say his name out loud.
He wasn’t just Victoria’s brother.
He’d worn a prospect cut.
He’d bled beside these men.
He’d laughed in that clubhouse.
He’d planned on earning his patch before the world stole that chance from him.
His death brought Victoria to Las Vegas Defiance.
The rest, somehow led here.
To Sin.
To family.
To a tiny little boy sleeping against my chest, carrying his uncle’s name into a future the first Marcus never got to see.
There’s something beautifully unfair about that.
And somehow, beautiful anyway.
I look over at Victoria, who is watching her son with tears quietly slipping down her cheeks, one hand wrapped around Sin’s. He catches my eye for a second before looking back at Marcus, and there’s gratitude there, but something else too.
Peace.
Not complete.
I don’t think losing Marcus will ever stop hurting these people.
But this? This feels like the wound finally learning how to grow around hope instead of only grief.
The thought catches me completely off guard.
Before I can stop it, baby Marcus stretches one tiny hand out from the blanket, and his fingers brush mine.
Then, with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever, they curl around my index finger.
Such a tiny grip, barely any strength behind it, and somehow it still feels like the surest thing I’ve held in years.
I don’t think he knows who I am.
I don’t think he knows anything except warmth, voices, and the steady beat of hearts around him. But in that moment, wrapped in the blue hospital blanket Vicks was desperate to have him in, with his impossibly small hand holding onto my finger like letting go isn’t an option.
Something inside me gives way.
Just enough to make my chest ache in the quietest, most unexpected way.
Maybe this is what family does.
It keeps finding ways to make room.
Even after loss.
Especially after loss.
It’s the only way I can describe it. Something warm and enormous floods through me, and my eyes are burning before I can catch up to it, and I look down at this tiny, perfect human, and I have to blink hard twice before I trust my voice.
“Hey, kid.” My voice comes out quieter than I mean it to.
“You are going to have the most chaotic family. I just want you to know that upfront.” I look up.
Nitro has been pacing the hallway since we got here.
Koa and Bear have somehow managed to drink enough coffee to keep the hospital running for a week without sitting still for more than five minutes.
And Ghost is across the room, standing against the far wall, separate and aware of everything happening around him.
He’s looking at me holding Marcus.
For the briefest second, the look on Ghost’s face softens around the edges in a way I’ve never seen before, and it catches me completely off guard.
I almost look away before I remember how to breathe, but Marley leans her head against my shoulder, drawing my attention back to Marcus, and whatever I’d just seen is gone.
“You look right like that,” Marley says softly, more for me than anyone else.
“Don’t start.” I shift Marcus gently in my arms.
She says nothing else, but her grin stays.
***
The hospital doors slide shut behind us, and the desert night wraps around my skin, warm enough that the heat is still rising off the asphalt in slow waves.
Engines rumble to life across the parking lot as the brothers drift toward their bikes and trucks in twos and threes, nobody in much of a hurry to leave after a day like today.
I’m fishing through my jacket pocket for my keys when another set of boots falls into step beside me.
I don’t need to look.
Somehow, I already know.
Ghost matches my pace without changing his stride, like he was already walking at this speed, and I just happened to fall in beside him. “You’ve been different,” he says. “The last couple of weeks.”
“That’s a little vague.”
He raises a brow. “It’s also true.”
I huff out a quiet laugh. “Do you always open conversations like you’re presenting evidence?”
“Usually.”
A reluctant smile tugs at my mouth before I shove it back where it belongs. “I’m fine.”
He glances at me. It’s the same look he gives everyone—quiet and steady—the kind that somehow makes people start talking before they have decided they’re going to.
The problem is it works on me more than I like.
“You don’t look fine.”
I scoff out a laugh, folding my arms across my chest. “Well, that’s rude.”
“It’s an observation.”
“Pretty sure that’s still rude, with better marketing.” I tilt my head at him.
The corner of his mouth moves.
It’s tiny.
Barely there.
But I catch it.
“Okay,” he says.
Not because he believes me, but because he’s decided not to push.
We reach my car and his bike together. He swings onto his, while I finally dig my keys out of my pocket. “Ride safe.”
“You too.”
I chuckle. “I can’t ride my car, Ghost.”
He groans. “Why do you have to be so literal, Sage?”
“Hey, you’re the facts guy. Thought you’d like that?”
He starts the engine and kicks up the stand. “No… not really,” he says, winks, then takes off out of the parking lot.
I watch his taillight disappear around the far end of the parking structure before I realize I’m still standing there with my keys in one hand and my phone in the other.
I shake my head at myself and climb into my car.
The first text message from an ‘unknown number’ arrived two weeks ago. I haven’t deleted it. I’ve told myself it’s because I need it as evidence, which is technically true, but completely beside the point.
Unknown Number: He looks loyal. Loyal men break beautifully.
I read that line, and thought about the attached image of Ghost’s bike sitting in the clubhouse parking lot, and something shifted in me that I didn’t choose.
And I haven’t been able to unshift it since.
I’m being strategic. I’m assessing the situation and doing what I always do—taking something apart and finding the smartest way through it.
I’m terrified.
I’m not ready to say that out loud yet, though.
Not even to myself.
I start my car and drive out into the Vegas night. Behind me, the entire club is lit up with the sound of a family celebrating the best thing that has happened to them in a very long time.
But I carry the weight of that message in my pocket.
All the way back to an empty apartment.