Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Brandy
I woke to the feeling of being watched.
Not the creepy, invasive kind of watched—the kind that made your skin crawl and your instincts scream danger.
This was different. Familiar. Comforting in a way I couldn’t quite articulate.
The kind of presence that had watched over me when I was sick as a child, burning up with fever and delirious.
When nightmares woke me in the dark, gasping and crying out for someone to save me.
When the world felt too big and overwhelming and I felt too small and insignificant to matter.
I blinked against the darkness, my eyes adjusting slowly to the dim light filtering through the curtains. The streetlamp outside cast long shadows across the ceiling, and dust motes drifted lazily through the pale beam that cut across my room.
And there he was.
My father sat in the old wooden chair beside my bed, the one that used to creak whenever he shifted his weight.
The same chair he’d sat in when I was six and had the chicken pox, when I was ten and broke my arm falling out of the old oak tree in the backyard, when I was sixteen and came home drunk from a party and he’d waited up all night to make sure I was okay.
He wasn’t moving now. Just sitting there, perfectly still, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped loosely between them, watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.
Something between concern and calculation, between love and something darker.
How long had he been there? An hour? Two? Had he been watching me sleep this entire time?
My heart kicked against my ribs, not from fear exactly, but from something close to it.
Something adjacent to fear. Something that felt like the moment before a storm broke—air heavy and electric, coupled with the sense that something was coming but you couldn’t see it yet.
When the birds stopped singing and the wind died down and everything held its breath.
“Dad?” My voice came out rough, sleep-thick and uncertain. Barely more than a whisper.
He didn’t answer right away. Just kept watching me with those dark, unreadable eyes that had always seen too much. Eyes that had watched me grow up, watched me make mistakes, watched me lie to him more times than I could count.
I pushed myself up slowly, the blanket sliding down to pool around my waist. The movement made my head spin slightly, and I had to pause to let the dizziness pass.
My mouth was dry, my tongue thick and cottony.
My head was still foggy from however many hours I’d been out.
Five? Eight? I’d lost track of time completely.
“How long was I asleep?” I asked, rubbing at my eyes with the heels of my hands.
His mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but close. Something that might have been amusement or might have been sadness. “Long enough.”
The answer told me nothing and everything at once.
I looked around my room, taking in the familiar shapes in the darkness.
The dresser with the chipped paint on the corner where I’d accidentally hit it with my softball bat when I was twelve.
The bookshelf still holding my old paperbacks and the ceramic horse figurines I’d collected as a kid, lined up in order of size.
The poster of some long-forgotten boy band I’d been obsessed with at fourteen, the edges curling away from the wall after years of humidity and neglect.
The glow-in-the-dark stars still stuck to the ceiling in constellations I’d made up myself.
“Nothing’s changed,” I murmured, more to myself than to him. It was strange, really, how this room had remained frozen in time while everything else in my life had spun wildly out of control.
“Why would it?” His voice was quiet, measured, but there was something underneath it. Something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. An undercurrent of tension that thrummed through the air between us.
I didn’t have an answer for that. Didn’t know how to explain that I’d expected everything to be different because I was different. Because the girl who’d lived in this room was gone, replaced by someone I barely recognized when I looked in the mirror.
He shifted then, sitting up straighter, leaning forward so his forearms rested on the arm of the chair.
The chair creaked softly under his weight, the sound loud in the quiet room.
The movement was deliberate, purposeful.
The kind of movement that said we’re done with small talk now.
The kind of movement that said this is where things get serious.
“Brandy,” he said, and the way he said my name—low and serious and weighted with something I couldn’t name—made my stomach drop. Like I was ten years old again and had just been caught stealing cookies before dinner. But this was worse. So much worse.
I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly tight. “What?”
“I saw the tattoo on your shoulder.”
The words landed like a punch. Like a physical blow to my solar plexus that knocked all the air from my lungs.
I froze, my breath catching in my chest. My hand instinctively moved to cover my right shoulder, even though the ink was hidden beneath my sleep shirt. Even though he’d already seen it.
The Silver Shadows ink. The club mark I’d gotten two years ago, when I’d still been stupid enough to think it meant something. When I’d still believed I was part of something bigger than myself. When I’d thought belonging to them meant I belonged somewhere, anywhere.
I looked down at my hands, twisting them together in my lap. My knuckles were white from how hard I was gripping my own fingers. “Yes.”
The single word hung in the air like an admission of guilt.
“You want to tell me how you got that tattoo?”
I shook my head slowly, my eyes burning with the threat of tears I refused to let fall. I wouldn’t cry. Not now. Not in front of him. I’d cried enough over the past five years to last a lifetime.
“Brandy.” His voice was firmer now, edged with something that might have been anger or might have been fear. I couldn’t tell. Maybe it was both. “Look at me.”
I didn’t want to. God, I didn’t want to. I wanted to disappear into the mattress, to melt into the floorboards, to be anywhere but here, having this conversation.
But I did.
I lifted my head and met his eyes, and the expression on his face made my chest ache.
A physical pain that radiated outward from somewhere deep inside me.
He wasn’t angry. Not yet. But he was... something.
Something that looked like disappointment and worry and a kind of bone-deep exhaustion that came from carrying too many secrets for too long.
Something that looked like a man who’d just realized his worst fears were true.
“How did you get that tattoo?” he asked again, slower this time. Enunciating each word carefully. Like he was giving me one more chance to answer before he stopped asking nicely. Before he started demanding.
My throat closed up completely. I tried to speak, but nothing came out except a choked sound that might have been a sob. Might have been my heart breaking all over again.
His jaw tightened. I watched the muscle jump beneath the stubble on his cheek.
“I was living in Diamond Creek, Nebraska,” I whispered finally, the words barely audible. I had to force them out past the lump in my throat. “There’s a Silver Shadows’ clubhouse there.”
The silence that followed was deafening. Oppressive. Like the air itself had turned to concrete.
He didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just stared at me like I’d just told him I’d been living on the moon. Like I’d just confessed to murder or treason or some other unforgivable sin.
Then he leaned back in the chair, rubbing both hands down his face in a gesture I recognized from childhood—the one he made when he was trying very hard not to lose his temper. When he was counting to ten in his head and reminding himself that yelling never solved anything.
“You seeing a club brother?” His voice was carefully controlled now. Too controlled. The kind of control that came from barely restrained fury. From keeping yourself in check when every instinct screamed at you to rage and shout and break things.
I looked down at my hands again, my vision blurring with unshed tears. “No. Not in the way you think.”
The words hung in the air between us, heavy with implication. Heavy with shame and regret and all the things I couldn’t take back.
I didn’t say club whore. I didn’t have to.
He understood.
I could see it in the way his shoulders tensed, in the way his entire body went rigid. In the way his hands curled into fists before he forced them to relax, his knuckles cracking softly in the darkness.
“Baby girl,” he said quietly, and the endearment made my chest tighten painfully. Made my heart twist and my throat close up all over again. He hadn’t called me that in years. Not since before I left. “You don’t know what I’m thinking right now.”
I didn’t respond. Couldn’t. If I opened my mouth, I was going to start crying, and if I started crying, I might never stop.
“Who’s the club president?” he asked. His voice had changed again. Gone flat and cold. Dangerous. “Of this Diamond Creek Chapter.”
I stiffened, confusion cutting through the fear. “Why?”
He didn’t answer. Just stood up slowly, his movements deliberate and controlled as he walked to my bedroom door. Each step measured and precise. Like he was moving through water. Like he was fighting against some invisible force trying to hold him back.
My heart started pounding harder. Faster. A drum beat of panic in my ears.
“Dad—”
He turned back to look at me, one hand on the doorknob. The hallway light behind him cast his face in shadow, making him look like a stranger. Making him look dangerous. “Either you tell me, or I’ll find out on my own, baby girl.”
There was no room for negotiation in his tone. No room for debate. This wasn’t a request.
I sat up straighter, my spine going rigid. Defensive. “What are you going to do?”
His expression didn’t change. But something in his eyes did. Something cold and hard and utterly uncompromising. Something that looked like the man he might have been before I was born. Before he became the patient, loving father I’d always known.
“What I should have done years ago.”
Then he opened the door and stepped through it, closing it quietly behind him with a soft click that sounded like a gunshot in the silence. Like a door slamming shut on one chapter of my life and opening onto another.
I sat there in the darkness, staring at the closed door, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I thought it might break through. My hands were shaking. My whole body was shaking.
What I should have done years ago.
What did that mean? What was he talking about? What secrets had he been keeping all this time?
What was he going to do?
I thought about King. About the Silver Shadows. About the way the brothers treated me. I knew what I’d been signing up for. I’d done it willingly. No one forced me, no one hurt me. The Diamond Creek Chapter was filled with good men.
And I thought about my father—the man who’d raised me with patience and love, who’d taught me to ride a bike and helped me with my homework and never once raised his voice at me even when I deserved it.
Who’d bandaged my scraped knees and scared away the monsters under my bed.
Who’d told me I could be anything I wanted to be, do anything I wanted to do.
The man who’d just walked out of my room with murder in his eyes.
I pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them, and tried to breathe through the panic rising in my throat. Tried to slow my racing heart. Tried to think clearly through the fog of fear and confusion and bone-deep exhaustion.
Something had shifted.
Something fundamental and irreversible. Like tectonic plates moving beneath the surface of the earth, reshaping the landscape of my life.
My father knew about the club now. About the tattoo. About what I’d been doing for the past five years. About the choices I’d made and the person I’d become.
And whatever he was planning to do about it, whatever action he was about to take, I had a feeling it was going to change everything.
Was going to turn my world upside down all over again.
Was going to drag me into something I didn’t understand, something bigger and more dangerous than anything I’d faced before.
Again.