Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Fiona
The Sons of Hell clubhouse had never felt this loud.
Voices overlapped around me, boots crossed the wooden floor, and every time the front door opened, conversation shifted as if someone might finally be bringing news. Normally, the familiar chaos comforted me.
Tonight, every sound scraped against nerves stretched too tight.
I paced between the couch and the far end of the room with my phone locked in my hand. Banks had asked me twice if I wanted something to drink. Nash had tried talking about school. Georgie had stopped pretending he wasn’t watching me fifteen minutes ago.
None of them could give me the only thing I wanted.
Jasper had texted before the fighting started.
Then nothing.
I didn’t know exactly what was happening in Nebraska. The little information the Sons of Hell had received made the situation sound worse every time someone tried to reassure me.
A battle.
That was the word they were using.
Not a fight.
Not trouble.
A battle.
“Fiona, sit down,” Banks said from behind me.
I looked over my shoulder at where he stood beside the bar with concern written across his face.
“I’m fine.”
His expression suggested neither of us believed that. “Sitting might help.”
“I don’t want to sit.” If I sat, I’d have nothing to do but stare at the phone. Pacing at least gave my body somewhere to put the panic.
Nash leaned against the end of the couch. “Romeo knows what he’s doing.”
I pressed my lips together. I knew he was trying to help; instead, my mind supplied every reason it didn’t. Knowing how to fight didn’t make someone bulletproof. Experience didn’t stop blood loss. Being dangerous enough to scare other people didn’t mean you came home from every fight.
I hated my own brain.
“Fiona.”
Georgie’s voice caught me before the next thought could finish. I looked at him; his arms were folded across his chest, but the usual irritation that appeared whenever Romeo’s name entered a conversation wasn’t there tonight.
“You okay?”
“I said I’m fine.”
He didn’t challenge me, and that somehow made it worse.
Every sound in the clubhouse disappeared beneath the vibration of my phone when it buzzed in my hand. I nearly dropped it trying to unlock the screen.
Jasper: I’m alive.
My knees weakened so quickly I caught the back of a chair. My breath hitched as I stared at the two words until my eyes blurred.
I’m alive.
Relief came first, hard enough to hurt, followed almost immediately by anger so sharp I wanted to throw something.
Me: That’s all you have to say?
His answer came immediately.
Jasper: Right now.
I hated those words. They left too much space for everything he wasn’t telling me.
Me: I’ve been going crazy waiting to hear from you.
Jasper: I’m sorry, Cher.
My eyes burned.
Me: Are you hurt?
Jasper: Nothing serious.
I actually laughed, though there wasn’t anything funny in it.
Me: That phrase means nothing when you say it.
Jasper: I’m standing.
I stared at the screen. Standing? As if that was supposed to ease my fear.
Me: That’s your standard?
Jasper: Tonight.
The anger drained out of me almost as fast as it had built. Whatever had happened, he believed being on his feet was enough to count as a good outcome.
I wasn’t sure I agreed.
Me: I thought you were dead.
I didn’t regret sending it. He needed to know how I felt. How scared I was. How much I cared about him being okay.
Jasper: I’m sorry.
Me: I don’t need an apology.
An apology wouldn’t give me back the hours I’d spent picturing a phone call from someone else. It wouldn’t erase every time the clubhouse door opened and I expected Georgie’s face to tell me something I wouldn’t survive hearing.
Jasper: What do you need?
I closed my eyes. Of course he would ask me that.
What I needed was harder to put into words.
Me: You. Here.
Jasper: I wish I was.
Me: Then come when you can.
Jasper: You want me in Rosewood?
My breath caught in my chest. That question shouldn’t have felt different from any other time I’d told him I wanted to see him. But it did. Maybe because tonight, I wasn’t asking for a visit.
I just wanted him where I could reach him. Where I could touch him and know he was okay.
Me: I always want you in Rosewood.
I stared at the message after sending it.
Always was dangerous.
Jasper apparently agreed.
Jasper: You can’t say always unless you mean it.
My fingers hovered for only a second.
Me: I mean it.
The phone remained silent long enough that I wondered what he was thinking.
Jasper: Call me, Cher.
I swallowed.
Me: I’m angry with you.
Jasper: You can be angry while I’m on the phone.
A sob escaped before I could stop it. Several heads turned in my direction, but I ignored them.
Me: I thought I lost you.
Jasper: You’ll never lose me.
Me: You can’t promise that.
This time, his answer took longer.
Jasper: I can promise I’ll fight like hell to come back to you.
Tears spilled down my face.
Me: You shouldn’t say things like that.
Jasper: Why?
Because I was already halfway believing anything he told me. Because tonight had shown me exactly what trusting him could cost if one day he didn’t come back.
Me: Because I believe you.
The screen changed before I could think of anything else. A video call with a picture of Jasper on the screen. I stared for half a heartbeat before accepting.
His face appeared, and my stomach dropped. Blood covered the front of his shirt and streaked his neck. More marked one cheek and the line of his jaw. The poor connection distorted the image every few seconds, but not enough to hide the red.
A sob tore free.
“Cher...”
“Oh my God.” I clamped one hand over my mouth. “Oh my God, Jasper.”
“I’m okay,” he said quickly. His voice sounded rough, exhausted, but steady. “Fiona, I’m okay.”
I couldn’t answer. The blood had swallowed everything else.
“Fiona.” His voice sharpened just enough to cut through the panic. “Look at me.”
I forced my eyes away from his shirt. His face was bruised. A cut marked his cheek, and exhaustion had settled into the lines around his eyes, but he was there.
Looking at me.
Talking to me.
“I need to go outside,” I whispered.
“What?”
I glanced around the room.
Everyone was watching now. Georgie had taken a step closer, his expression darkening as he caught sight of Jasper on my screen.
“I can’t do this here.”
Jasper didn’t ask why. “Then go. I’ll wait.”
I headed toward the door before anyone could stop me. The warm August air hit my face the second I stepped outside. I walked around the side of the building until I was out of the view from the windows, then leaned against the wall and pulled in a shaky breath.
The rough surface pressed into my shoulders.
Solid.
Real.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m alone.”
Romeo shifted his phone, and I finally let myself look properly. Most of the blood really was on his shirt. The cut along his cheekbone looked shallow, and although there was another near his temple, nothing I could see explained the amount of red covering him.
“It’s not all mine,” he said quietly.
My stomach turned. “How much is yours?”
“Enough.” His mouth tightened. “Not enough to matter.”
“Romeo—”
“I’m standing, Cher. I’m talking to you.”
“You’re covered in blood.”
“I’ve been covered in worse.”
Something in the casual answer snapped the last of my control. “Don’t do that.”
His expression changed immediately. “Do what?”
“Act like this is nothing just because you’ve seen worse.” My voice trembled despite how hard I tried to steady it. “I thought you were dead.”
He went still.
“I sat in there all night with everyone telling me you knew what you were doing, like that meant you couldn’t die.” I wiped angrily at the tears on my face. “I couldn’t breathe every time the door opened because I thought someone was going to come tell me—”
The rest lodged in my throat.
“Fiona.”
“I can’t lose you.” There, I’d said it.
Romeo’s face softened. “You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.” He let out a slow breath. “I know I’ll fight like hell to make sure you don’t.”
My eyes closed. That was somehow worse. Not the impossible promise that nothing would ever happen to him. A real one. Something he could actually try to keep.
When I opened my eyes again, he was still watching me.
“You can’t say things like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it makes this real.”
His brow furrowed slightly.
“If I let myself believe you’re always going to fight your way back to me, then I have to admit there’s something for you to come back to.”
The words came out before I could censor them. Romeo didn’t smile. For once, there was no trace of triumph or flirtation in his face.
“There is.”
My chest hurt. “You don’t know what I was going to say.”
“I know enough.”
I shook my head and looked down. The words were there. Three of them. I’d come dangerously close before, hidden behind you make it very hard not to love you because that was easier than simply saying what I thought might be true.
Tonight, terror had stripped away most of the places I usually hid.
I could tell him.
Right now.
But he was standing somewhere in Nebraska covered in blood, and I was crying behind a clubhouse in Virginia after spending hours thinking he might be dead. I didn’t trust any emotion born inside this much fear.
Not yet.
“Fiona,” he said gently.
“I’m here.” I drew a slow breath. “I’m just trying to process everything.”
“What part?”
I almost laughed. That I might love you. That I don’t know whether I realized it tonight or whether I’ve known for months and simply refused to name it.
Instead, I looked at the cut on his cheek.
“That you’re really okay.”
“I am.”
“You don’t look okay.”
“That’s because you’re judging me by the shirt.” The corners of his mouth tipped up.
“It’s covered in blood.”
“Most of it belongs to someone I like considerably less than you.”
A laugh escaped through my tears. There he was. I wiped my face again. “When can you come to Rosewood?”
“Soon. I need to make sure everything here is handled first.”
“How soon?”
“Soon as I can.”
Normally, that answer would’ve annoyed me. Tonight, I understood there were things he couldn’t put into a text or say over a video call.
“Okay.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Okay?”
“Yes.” I leaned my head back against the wall. “But you have to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“Don’t ever make me wait like that again.”
The tired smile he gave me held no humor. “I promise.”
I knew it wasn’t completely realistic. If something like this happened again, Jasper might not be able to stop in the middle of it because I was scared and waiting fifteen hundred miles away.
Still, the promise mattered.
Maybe what I was really asking was for him not to forget me in the middle of the chaos.
We stayed on the phone long after my breathing settled. I asked about his injuries, and he gave me just enough information to stop me imagining him bleeding to death while deflecting anything he didn’t want to discuss with humor.
By the time we finally said goodnight, the fear had loosened enough that I could stand without leaning against the wall.
The call ended and for a few seconds, I remained outside with the dark phone in my hand, staring toward the sky.
Something had changed tonight. I knew it without needing to name it. The possibility of losing Jasper had reached into a place I’d been carefully avoiding and dragged something into the light. Maybe I’d known it was there already. Maybe that was why I’d almost told him days ago.
I wasn’t ready to call it love.
Not while the fear was still this close.
I wanted to see him first. Touch him. Look into his eyes without a screen between us and know whatever I said came from more than the relief of finding him alive.
But whatever this was, it had stopped being a crush a long time ago.
I pushed away from the wall and headed toward the front of the clubhouse.
Georgie waited near the door with his arms crossed.
He didn’t immediately ask questions or start lecturing me about bikers who were too old for me and the danger that came with them. He simply looked at my face.
“He okay?”
I nodded. “He’s okay.”
Georgie studied me for a moment before releasing a slow breath. “You’re in deep with him.”
There wasn’t any accusation in his voice this time. Maybe that was why I didn’t try to deny it.
“I am.”
He nodded once and stepped aside so I could walk back into the clubhouse.
The room hadn’t changed. The same people were there, the same conversations moving around me, but something inside me felt different.
For months, I’d been afraid of what would happen if I admitted how much Jasper mattered.
Tonight had shown me the other possibility.
I could lose him without ever saying any of it.
That frightened me more.
Jasper had promised to fight like hell to always come back to me, and I believed him.
For tonight, that would have to be enough.