Chapter Sixteen #2
“Thank you,” she says, then she turns and walks out of the pantry, letting out a heavy breath as she goes to the kitchen, which is filling with smoke. She rushes over to the stove, switches it off, and throws the pan into the sink.
I walk out behind her, my eyes shifting to Jonas, who says and does nothing, just keeps his eyes forward on his paper—simply turning another page. I grin, thanking every fucking thing I can that he hasn’t lunged across the table to beat the shit out of me.
I move to the table, taking a seat, saying nothing.
Millie brings over what she can salvage for breakfast. And then, as though nothing had even happened, we eat breakfast with Jonas at the table, the three of us, eggs, toast, and the orange juice Millie poured into glasses with the focused generosity she brings to everything domestic.
Jonas eats unhurried, reads his paper, and makes occasional observations about nothing in particular, like he’s already decided the details of this morning are none of his business and intends to keep it that way.
The slight crinkle at the corner of his eye when Millie sets down the butter dish is the only indication that he is absolutely, entirely aware of everything that happened in that pantry, and has chosen to be a gentleman about all of it.
I like him.
I have always liked him.
And that makes what I’m carrying feel heavier than it already did.
The ceremony cake sits boxed on the counter, white cardboard, a bow Millie tied herself, slightly crooked in the way she always ties bows, like she starts with good intentions and then gets impatient.
There’s something about that box that keeps pulling my eye all through breakfast—something both enormous and ordinary about it.
She walks me to the door at eleven-thirty, with her hair still loose, her feet bare on the front step, and for a moment we look at each other on her front porch, with the whole day stretched out ahead of us and everything already decided.
“I’ll see you there,” she says.
“You’ll see me after.”
“I know.” Her chin lifts slightly when she says it, a small and certain thing.
I lean in and kiss her, long and slow, her hands resting on my arms, her body leaning into mine with the easy trust of something already established, already claimed. When I pull back, her eyes are still closed for a half-second longer than they need to be.
But… I make myself leave.
My Harley settles under me the way it always does, the low thunderous idle of the engine filling up the space between me and the rest of the world. I pull out onto the road and let the bike carry me toward the clubhouse, and for a mile or two, everything is simple.
Everything is clean.
My last ride as a prospect.
By the time I pull through those gates today, the patch on my back will mean something different. I will be a full brother. No more running errands I don’t question, no more biting my tongue in Church, no more existing in the space between belonging and not belonging.
Today, I’m all the way in.
I’ve wanted this longer than I’ve wanted almost anything.
And somewhere in the space of the last few months, I’ve started to want something else with the same ferocity.
Someone else. A woman with dark hair, bare feet on a porch, and a crooked bow on a cake box she made for me.
A woman carrying a secret that sits in the hollow beneath her ribs and makes her eyes go heavy when she thinks no one is watching.
The problem is that I know the secret.
I’ve known for days, and I’ve carried it alongside her, and I thought, for a while, that maybe I could keep carrying it into the ceremony and through the other side. But riding now, with the road unreeling ahead of me and the weight of what’s coming pressing down, I know I can’t.
I cannot walk into that clubhouse, take that patch, and call myself a brother in the fullest sense of the word while I am sitting on something Sin deserves to know.
Jonas McClane is dying.
Stage four.
The man who has kept our arrangement running clean and quiet for years has cancer. The same man who helped build the foundation this club stands on, who sat across tables from Sin, honored every commitment, and trusted Defiance with his daughter long before he ever trusted us with his gold.
And Millie has been carrying that almost entirely alone while she bakes ceremony cakes, ties crooked bows, smiles through dinner, and tries to love me without letting me see how scared she really is.
Sin needs to know.
Even if it costs me Millie’s trust. Even if telling him breaks something between us that I might not be able to repair. I cannot walk into my patch ceremony as anything less than completely honest.
That’s not the kind of man I am.
That’s not the kind of patch I want.
The clubhouse gates are visible ahead, and I ease back on the throttle, the bike slowing, the world around me sharp, still, and certain.
I have never felt more sure of anything.
And I have never been less certain of what comes next.
Both of those things are true at once, and somehow, that’s the most honest thing I’ve felt all morning.
And I’ve never been more terrified that I’m about to lose it all.