Chapter 2 #2
The second curve came fast, banking the opposite direction, and we swung through it like a pendulum finding its center. Tyler's arms had tightened around my waist, not with fear but with exhilaration—I could feel it in the way he pressed closer, the way his whole body had come alive against mine.
The descent leveled into a straightaway and I opened the throttle wide.
The world became a blur. Fence posts strobed past like a film running too fast. The engine howled beneath us, a sound that lived in the chest rather than the ears, primal and hungry. The wind was a solid thing now, a wall of pressure that we punched through with every heartbeat.
I heard Tyler laugh.
The sound was muffled by helmets and wind and engine, but I heard it anyway—startled, wild, the kind of laugh that escapes when something inside you cracks open and lets the light in.
We came out of the curve and I eased off the throttle, letting the speed bleed away, letting the world slow back to something approaching normal.
The road straightened ahead of us, climbing gently toward the clubhouse access road, and I felt Tyler's grip loosen as his body remembered how to exist at ordinary velocity.
His hands were still on my waist. His chest was still warm against my back. His thighs were still pressed against mine.
Just physics. Just how you rode passenger.
We pulled into the clubhouse lot and I killed the engine.
The silence was sudden, total, the kind that rang in your ears after too much noise. I felt Tyler shift behind me, his weight changing as he prepared to dismount, and then he was standing beside the bike, pulling off his helmet, and his face—
His face was transformed.
The careful blankness was gone. The guarded watchfulness, the calculated neutrality—all of it stripped away, replaced by something raw and open and alive. His cheeks were flushed, his hair wild from the helmet, his eyes bright with something that looked almost like joy.
"That was—" He stopped, shook his head, laughed again. "I don't have words. That was—"
"That was easy." I dismounted, keeping my voice level. "The real riding is harder."
"I don't care." He was still smiling, the expression strange on a face I'd only ever seen guarded. "I want to learn. I want—" Another shake of his head, like he couldn't quite believe what he was feeling. "I haven't felt like that in years. Maybe ever."
"Like what?"
"Free." The word came out quiet, almost wondering. "Like nothing else mattered. Like I could just... be."
I busied myself with the bike, checking the mirrors, wiping a smudge from the tank. Easier to focus on metal than on the brightness in his face.
"Same time tomorrow. We'll start you on the Sportster. Basic controls, balance work. You'll stall out a dozen times before you get it right."
"I don't care." Tyler's voice was fierce now. "I'll stall out a hundred times if I have to."
I nodded and turned toward the garage, needing distance, needing space from whatever had just shifted in the air between us.
I was halfway across the lot when I heard it.
Engines. Multiple, maybe half a dozen, approaching from the main road at a speed that announced itself before the bikes came into view.
I turned. Tyler had gone still, his body shifting from open to coiled in the space of a breath, every line of him suddenly alert.
The bikes appeared around the bend—six of them, riding in loose formation, chrome catching the midmorning sun. They wore cuts I didn't recognize at first, dark leather with patches that resolved as they drew closer: a wolf's head in silver thread, jaws open, teeth bared.
Iron Wolves.
They didn't slow as they passed the clubhouse entrance. Didn't stop, didn't turn in. Just rolled past at a steady cruise, close enough that I could see faces beneath helmets, close enough that I could count the men and catalog their builds.
The rider in the second position turned his head as he passed.
I saw Tyler flinch.
The rider's face was visible through his open visor—sharp features, dark eyes, a jaw that looked carved from stone.
He didn't wave, didn't nod, didn't acknowledge the clubhouse or the two men standing in its lot.
He just looked. A long, deliberate look that swept across the property and lingered, for just a moment, in Tyler's direction.
Then he was past, the formation pulling away down the road, engines fading into the distance until the morning was quiet again.
Tyler hadn't moved.
"Tyler." I crossed back to him, watching his face. "That was him. Cross."
"I couldn't tell." His voice came out tight, controlled. "The visor—the speed—maybe. I don't know if he saw me."
"He was looking right at you."
"He was looking at the clubhouse. At all of it." Tyler's hands had curled into fists at his sides. "It doesn't mean he recognized me. It's been eight months. I look different now. He might not have—"
"Tyler."
He stopped. Met my eyes. And I saw the fear there, underneath the desperate hope—the knowledge he was trying not to acknowledge.
"We need to tell Hawk."
"I know." Tyler exhaled slowly, and I watched him rebuild his walls, brick by brick, until the open joy from ten minutes ago had vanished entirely. "I know."
We walked toward the clubhouse together, close enough that our shoulders nearly touched.
Church was tense.
Hawk sat at the head of the table, face unreadable, while I relayed what we'd seen. Six Wolves, passing the clubhouse on the main road. Cross among them. The look that might or might not have been recognition.
"They're scouting." Axel's voice was flat, certain. "Establishing presence. Letting us know they're watching."
"Or sending a message." Irish drummed his fingers on the table. "We know where you are. We can reach you whenever we want."
"Both." Hawk nodded slowly. "It's classic intimidation. Keep us on edge, make us reactive instead of proactive."
"We should hit them first." Ghost leaned forward, his voice sharp with eagerness. "Take the fight to them before they're ready."
"And start a war on two fronts?" Blade shook his head. "The Wolves have federal backing. We hit them without provocation, we're handing them exactly what they need to bring the law down on us."
"So we just wait? Let them circle us like prey?"
"We prepare. Watch. Gather intelligence." Hawk's voice cut through the rising tension. "And we don't let them dictate the terms of engagement."
The room settled into uneasy silence. I watched the faces around the table—Irish drumming his fingers, Ghost practically vibrating with suppressed energy, Blade's expression carved from stone.
Axel's hand had found Kai's beneath the table, that automatic gesture of comfort they probably didn't even notice anymore.
And Tyler, at the far end, his face carefully blank.
"There's something else we need to address." Blade's voice cut through the quiet.
The temperature in the room dropped. I felt it—the collective attention redirecting, sharpening.
"The Wolves aren't here for our territory. Not primarily. They're here for him." He nodded toward Tyler. "Cross is here for him. And as long as he's at this clubhouse, he's painting a target on everyone in it."
Tyler didn't flinch. Didn't react at all, his face a careful blank, but I saw his hands tighten where they rested on the table.
"What are you suggesting?" Hawk's voice was neutral, but his eyes had gone hard.
"I'm suggesting we consider whether one man is worth risking the whole club." Blade met Hawk's gaze steadily. "Tyler's been here three months. He's not a member. He's not even a prospect. He's a liability—a connection to the very institutions that have been trying to destroy us for years."
"He bled for this club." Axel's voice was quiet but firm. "That should count for something."
"It counts for a lot. But it doesn't change the math." Blade turned to look at Tyler directly. "I'm not saying you haven't helped. You have. But that doesn't change what you are: a target that the enemy is specifically here to eliminate. Every day you stay, you put everyone else at risk."
Ghost shifted uncomfortably. Irish was studying the table. Kai had gone pale, his hand gripping Axel's tightly.
"He's got a point," someone muttered—I didn't catch who.
"We can't just throw him out." Irish's voice lacked conviction. "After everything that happened with Chen—"
"I'm not saying throw him out. I'm saying we need to have an honest conversation about the cost of keeping him here.
" Blade's tone was measured, reasonable.
That was what made it dangerous. "If Cross wants Tyler badly enough to move an entire MC across state lines, what happens when he decides to stop circling and start attacking? How many of us are we willing to lose?"
The question hung in the air, ugly and unanswerable.
Tyler opened his mouth to respond, but I was already speaking.
"He stays."
The words came out hard, flat, leaving no room for argument. I felt the room's attention swing to me—Blade's eyebrows rising, Hawk's expression flickering with something I couldn't read.
"Tank—" Blade started.
"He stays." I didn't raise my voice, didn't need to.
"Three months ago, Tyler fed us the intel that let us hit Chen's operation before they could move the victims. He bled with us.
Fought with us. He's part of the reason many of us are still breathing and the women and kids from that disgusting trafficking ring aren't on a ship to somewhere worse. "
"That doesn't—"
"I'm not finished." I leaned forward, holding Blade's gaze.
"You want to talk about liability? Fine.
Let's talk about the time you brought your ex-wife's problems to the clubhouse door.
Or the time Irish's gambling debts almost cost us a supply route.
We've all been liabilities at one point or another.
That's what family means—you carry each other's weight. "
Blade's jaw tightened, but he didn't look away.
"Tyler's not a member. Fine. But he's not nothing either. He's earned his place here, and I'm not going to sit here and pretend otherwise just because the situation is complicated." I turned to Hawk. "He stays. That's my vote."
The silence stretched, thick and heavy.
Hawk looked at me for a long moment—measuring, considering. Then his gaze swept the table, taking in each face, reading the room the way he always did.
"Tank's right." His voice carried the weight of finality.
"Tyler stays. He's earned that, and we don't abandon people who've bled for us.
End of discussion." His voice hardened. "Anyone who has a problem with that decision can take it up with me privately.
But as of now, this club stands together. All of us."
He stood, signaling the meeting's end. Bodies rose, chairs scraped, conversation started up in low murmurs. But I wasn't paying attention to any of it.
I was watching Tyler.
He hadn't moved from his seat. His face was still carefully blank, but something in his eyes had shifted—something that looked almost like surprise, almost like gratitude, almost like something else entirely.
He met my gaze across the table.
I nodded once, short and sharp, and turned away.
The sun was setting by the time I found Tyler.
He was outside, at the far edge of the property where the lot gave way to scrub grass and the first scattered oaks of the tree line. He stood with his back to the clubhouse, looking toward the road where Cross and the Wolves had disappeared hours ago.
I stopped a few feet away, not close enough to crowd him, close enough to be present.
"You didn't have to do that." He spoke without turning around, his voice quiet against the evening air.
"Do what?"
"Defend me. In there." A pause. "What Blade said—he wasn't wrong. I am a liability. Cross is here because of me, and everyone in that clubhouse is at risk because I'm still breathing."
"That's not your fault."
"Fault doesn't matter. Results do." He turned finally, and the fading light caught his face, hollowed his cheeks, made him look older than thirty-one. "If I left—disappeared—Cross would follow. He'd have no reason to stay, no reason to threaten the club."
"And then what? You spend the rest of your life running?"
"I've been running for eight months. What's a few more years?"
"That's not living. That's surviving."
"Sometimes surviving is enough."
I stepped closer. My body moved before I'd decided to, closing the distance between us until I could see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes, the faint scar above his left eyebrow.
"You felt something this morning. On the bike. You called it freedom. Said it was the first time you'd felt like that in years." I held his gaze. "You really want to give that up? Go back to running, hiding, pretending to be someone else?"
Tyler's expression flickered. "That's not—"
"Same time tomorrow. We start you on the Sportster. Basic controls, balance, low-speed maneuvering. It'll be frustrating and boring and you'll want to quit after the first hour."
"Tank—"
"Same time tomorrow. That's what we agreed."
He stared at me. The light continued to fade around us, turning the sky to shades of amber and rose, and somewhere in the clubhouse behind us, someone laughed.
"Why?" The question again, the same one from this morning.
"Because you should know how to ride."
I turned and walked back toward the clubhouse before he could respond. I didn't look back—didn't need to. I could feel him watching me, feel the weight of his attention like something physical pressing against my shoulders.
The road where Cross had ridden was empty now, just asphalt disappearing into the growing dark. But the threat remained, hovering at the edge of everything, waiting.
Tomorrow, I'd teach Tyler how to work a clutch. The day after, we'd practice starts and stops. Eventually, he'd be good enough to ride on his own.
The why of it—why it mattered, why I'd defended him, why I couldn't seem to stop putting myself between him and harm—that could wait.
Same time tomorrow.
That was what we'd agreed.