Chapter Seventeen
WILL
The clubhouse smells like it always does on a ceremony day of good beer and tasty food. It’s the combination of a place that knows something is about to shift, even if the walls can’t say it out loud.
Brothers move through the space with purpose, adjusting cuts, straightening chairs, the low hum of voices carrying that easy, familiar charge.
Koa has commandeered the far end of the bar and is arguing with Mace about where the folding tables need to go.
Deek has already lost interest in helping and is instead sitting on the counter, eating whatever Ro put out early, looking entirely unbothered by the glare she is giving him.
This is supposed to be the day everything changes for me.
I arrived early because I couldn’t settle after leaving Millie’s.
My head kept replaying the sight of her standing barefoot in the doorway in those damn pajamas, looking at me like I already belonged there.
I kissed her once, and then I made myself leave, and the whole ride to the clubrooms, I turned one thing over and over in my mind like a stone I couldn’t put down.
I have to tell Sin about Jonas.
I made up my mind somewhere between the driveway and the highway. I can’t stand as a brother at this table and let these men patch me in while carrying something they don’t know.
It isn’t the kind of man I want to be.
It isn’t the kind of brother I want to be.
And if Sin sends me packing for it, then I’ll deal with that.
At least I’ll have gone in honest.
I find him in the hallway outside the Chapel, his shoulders carrying the weight they always carry, though today there’s something else in it… something that belongs to this day specifically.
“Sin.” My voice doesn’t crack, but it lands with enough strain beneath it that he looks up immediately, his attention sharpening in that instinctive way a president has learned to read shifts in tone before they become problems.
“Yeah?”
“I need a minute.”
He studies me for only a fraction of a second, but in that brief span, I see the calculation begin, the subtle realignment of priorities that always occurs when something moves outside the expected rhythm of the day. He nods at me and gestures to the door. “Chapel.”
There are no follow-up questions, no attempt to soften the directive into conversation. That has never been Sin’s style, and I find myself strangely grateful for it now, because it means I don’t have to navigate small talk on the way toward something that already feels like judgment.
We walk the hallway in silence, the sound of our boots muted by old carpet worn thin from years of pacing men who have come here to deliver news they would rather not carry.
By the time the Chapel door closes behind us, I feel the steady, unrelenting pressure of what I am about to say sitting hard, like the onset of a storm that has already decided its ferocity.
The table occupies the center of the room as it always does, solid and unmoving, the club’s crest embedded into the felt with a permanence that feels ceremonial.
Sin remains standing, folding his arms loosely across his chest as he waits, his stillness conveying more expectation than any verbal prompt could have. “Talk.” The word is neutral in tone but absolute in intent.
I draw in a breath that doesn’t feel large enough to support what follows. “It’s Jonas.”
There is a subtle shift in his expression, not alarm, not even surprise, but the unmistakable signal that the information has registered as relevant. “What about him?”
“He’s sick.”
The silence that follows deepens, thickening the air between us until every word that comes after feels heavier. “How sick?”
“Pancreatic cancer,” I say, forcing the clinical clarity of the diagnosis past the resistance in my throat. “Stage four.”
He begins to move slowly around the table, not pacing in agitation but circling in thought, as though physically mapping the implications while he processes them. His gaze remains distant for a moment, then returns to me with renewed focus. “How long?”
“Doctors gave him six months.”
The words sit between us, stark and unembellished.
“And you knew.”
It is not phrased as a question, and I do not treat it like one. “Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Long enough to know better.”
He stops moving, his focus narrowing, and it feels like stepping straight into a beam of light.
“And you’re only just telling me now because?”
Because she asked me not to.
Because I chose her silence over your expectation.
Because I have spent every day since trying to calculate the cost of both.
“Because Millie asked me not to say anything.”
He absorbs that without visible reaction, but the stillness that follows grows more precise.
“And you agreed.”
“Yes.”
“Over the club?” The phrasing is calm enough to be surgical, and I feel it lands with that same clinical accuracy.
“It wasn’t that simple.”
“It never is,” he replies evenly.
“I didn’t know what my loyalty was supposed to look like in that moment,” I admit, the honesty in it scraping through me. “She has been carrying this alone. I wasn’t prepared to take the one thing she asked of me and hand it over like it meant nothing.”
He studies me for a long moment, measuring not just the content of what I am saying but the foundation beneath it.
“And now?”
“Now it affects the club whether she wants it to or not,” I continue, the words gaining steadiness as they find their footing.
“The mine is not just her family’s livelihood anymore.
It is infrastructure. If he declines quickly, everything tied to that operation shifts with him.
I cannot sit on information like that indefinitely. ”
Another silence unfolds, heavier this time, edged with consequence.
“You understand…” he says at last, his voice low and completely immovable, “… that you are admitting to withholding information that impacts club stability.”
“Yes.”
“And you understand what that usually results in?”
Letting out a heavy exhale, I nod. “Yes.” The acknowledgment comes without hesitation, even as the reality of it tightens somewhere tight inside me.
“And you still chose to bring it to me now?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Because I cannot build a future on divided ground.
Because the man I am trying to become cannot afford selective integrity.
Because loving her does not cancel the oath I am about to take.
“Because I am either Defiance or I am not,” I say finally. “And I would rather find that out now than after the patch.”
He exhales slowly, the tension in the room shifting in response to something internal recalibrating behind his eyes. When he speaks again, his tone carries a different weight, less interrogative and more directive. “You do not make that call alone again.”
“I understand.”
“You bring me anything that touches club infrastructure, regardless of who asks you to keep it quiet.”
“Yes.”
“And you remember that personal loyalty and club loyalty are not parallel lines. One sits above the other… whether you like it or not.”
“I understand.”
There is a pause, then he regards me with a level of directness that feels almost personal. “You love her.” It is not phrased as speculation.
“Without question.”
He nods once, the smallest acknowledgment, before turning away to complete another slow circuit of the table, as though sealing the conversation into the space itself. “All right,” he says at last.
It is a simple acknowledgment, but it shifts the ground beneath my feet all the same.
Sin holds my gaze for a long moment. Then he gives a single nod, the kind that settles things without needing another word.
“We’re going to talk about this more. There are decisions to be made about Jonas, about the mine, about what Millie’s situation means for the club going forward.
But today…” He straightens. “Today I’m letting it go.
Because you came clean, and because I know what it cost you.
But don’t make a fucking habit of keeping shit from me. ”
The relief that moves through my chest is so complete it almost knocks me sideways. “I swear I won’t.”
“Good. Now get the fuck out of my Chapel. Ceremony starts in an hour.”
“Yes, Pres!” I duck out of the Chapel into the hallway and stand there for a moment with my back against the cool wall, eyes closed, letting the weight of the last two weeks drain out of me.
I thought I was going to lose this.
I thought I was going to walk in there and come out the other side with nothing.
No patch, no club, no future that looked like the one I’d started to let myself want.
And instead, Sin looked at me and told me to come back in an hour.
I’m still standing there when Millie walks through the front door.
She comes in with the cake box held in both hands and her eyes scanning the room the way they always do when she’s in a familiar crowd, that small, careful assessment that she does before she lets herself relax.
Then she finds me against the wall, and her entire face settles.
She looks beautiful.
She always looks beautiful.
Today, she looks like something I don’t yet have the right words for.
Or maybe I do—Old Lady.
I cross the room to her and take the box without asking, setting it on the nearest flat surface. She’s already looking past me toward the far corner of the clubhouse, and when I turn to follow her gaze, I see why.
Jonas is already here.
He’s positioned near the wall where he can see the whole room without being in the middle of it, a cup of something in his hand, and a look that says he’s going to enjoy today, no matter what it costs him physically.
Penny is beside him, talking to Ro with the easy comfort of someone who has made herself at home in under ten minutes.
I look at Millie. Her eyes are bright, her throat is working, and she is not going to cry, but it’s close.
“He came,” she says, very softly.
“He came,” I confirm.