Chapter Twenty-Three #2
Not despite the exhaustion, but because of the truth of it. Because she is standing here in the middle of chaos that she didn’t choose, and still looks like something I would cross any line to reach.
The world narrows down to the distance between us.
Everything else fades.
Something in me stops, looks, and then commits to what comes next before my brain catches up to it.
I don’t slow down, I walk straight to her, covering the distance with a kind of certainty I don’t need to examine, and I pull her in before she has a chance to prepare for it.
One arm wrapping around her waist and pulling her against me, my other hand cupping the back of her head, holding her there with everything I have.
She makes a small sound against my chest, something fractured and relieved at once.
Her hands find my shirt with both fists, and she grabs it like she’s not going to let go, like she has decided somewhere in the last three days that letting go is no longer something she’s willing to do, and I feel that decision in every knuckle of her hands.
Her breath comes out in a long, shaking exhale.
Mine does too.
We stay like this for a moment that is longer than what’s considered brief and shorter than what I need, and then she tips her face up.
I look down at her, and several things are happening on her face that she’s not bothering to hide from me, things that would normally take her several layers of composure to get through.
And the fact that she’s not doing any of that, the fact that she’s looking at me like this, openly and completely, does something to me that I am not going to be able to articulate for some time.
So I lean down and kiss her.
Right here, in the parking lot, with the full weight of Defiance standing twelve feet behind us.
She kisses me back immediately, her fists tightening in my shirt, her whole body leaning into me like she’s been holding herself at a careful distance from the world for three days, and I am the first solid thing she’s been allowed to press against. The kiss is not brief or casual.
It is the kind of kiss that says everything that three days of silence, one phone call, and a recording played in a concrete room could not completely contain.
When I pull back, I rest my forehead against hers, and her eyes stay closed for a breath before they open.
“I meant everything I said on that call,” I tell her, low enough that it belongs only to her.
She exhales softly, her face still tipped up toward mine, and it settles somewhere against my chest. “I know.” Her voice is rough at the edges, worn down from a handful of days she clearly did not spend sleeping. “I love you too,” she finally tells me in person.
“I know,” I say. “I heard.”
She pulls back slightly, enough to see my face, searching it the way she does when she’s checking whether she needs to be worried about something.
“Deek sent it,” I tell her.
“I know… he recorded it without my knowledge, and then he sent it to Ghost, and Ghost apparently had it delivered through your attorney, which is, objectively, an unhinged sequence of events.”
“It worked.” I tilt my head with a sly smile.
She looks at me for a moment, and there’s something in her expression that is fighting between exasperation, gratitude, and losing badly to both. “He’s going to be insufferable about this.”
I glance over her shoulder. Deek is openly watching us, looking like he considers himself the primary architect of this outcome and expects full recognition.
He doesn’t even pretend to look elsewhere.
Arms crossed, chin tipped up, his smile has pushed well beyond anything that could be called subtle.
“He already is,” I say. “I can see his face from here.”
Deek’s voice, for the second time this morning, carries through the gap with unshakeable cheerfulness. “Still counts. I can still feel the love from here. This is my moment. I am in this moment!”
Koa loses it. The laugh that comes out of him is big and unguarded, and it sets off Nitro, and even Ghost, usually the last man to crack, tips his head back with his eyes closed in the way that means he’s suppressing something genuine and failing.
Millie makes a sound against my shoulder, trying very hard to be dignified and not succeeding.
I look down at her.
She looks up at me, and something in her expression lands sour immediately. Not fear or grief exactly, but something deeper. Like she’s been holding herself together with both hands and is running out of grip.
“What’s happened?” I ask.
Her mouth opens, closes, and she swallows hard enough that I can see the movement in her throat. “It’s Dad.”
The words hit like a fist I didn’t see coming.
“What about him?”
“He… collapsed. At the house.” Her voice is steady. It’s the only thing she’s got left under control. “Heart complications. They rushed him in. He’s… stable, for now. But it was bad, Will. It was really bad.”
Something cold moves through my chest. “When?”
“Two in the morning, two nights ago.”
Two in the morning.
I was sitting under fluorescent lights while she was watching her father fight to breathe.
My jaw tightens.
Hard.
“And nobody thought to fucking tell me?” It comes out angrier than I mean it to.
Her eyes flinch at the edge my voice contains. “Sin said it would complicate your release. We didn’t tell you because there was nothing you could do,” she says quickly. “And because we know you. You’d have tried to get out. You’d have made it worse.”
I look away for a second because the alternative is saying something I can’t take back. My hands curl into fists at my sides, leather creaking softly. “They let me sit there,” I say. “While you were—”
“W-Will.” She steps closer, her voice breaking for the first time. “They didn’t let you sit there. They protected you. And me. And him. They were trying to get you out.” Her eyes shine, but she refuses to let the tears fall. Typical Millie. Managing even now.
“I wanted to tell you,” she continues. “I tried. I called Sin at the hospital. But he was already moving pieces. And I… I trusted him.”
I drag a hand through my hair, my breath coming harder than I like. The anger is there—a hot, instinctive reaction to being cut out of something that matters.
But underneath it is something heavier.
Perspective.
Fear.
The realization that she has been living in a hospital chair while I was pacing a cell, and we were both trapped in different kinds of helplessness.
“Jesus,” I mutter. My eyes find hers again. “You should’ve told me,” I say, quieter now.
“I know... but we couldn’t.”
Silence stretches between us, full of things neither of us has the energy to unpack right now. Then I notice the way she’s swaying slightly. The way her shoulders are set too rigid. The way her hands are trembling just enough that she’s hiding them in the sleeves of her sweater.
“How long since you slept?” I ask.
She gives a small, humorless huff. “I don’t actually remember.”
That does it.
Everything else falls away.
I step forward and pull her into me before she can protest, one arm firm around her back, the other cradling the back of her head. She stiffens for half a second, then melts, and it tells me exactly how close she is to the edge.
“I’m here,” I murmur into her hair. “You don’t have to hold it by yourself anymore.”
Her breath shudders against my chest. “I’m so tired, Will.”
“I know, Brightside. I know.” My hand moves up and down her spine in slow, grounding strokes. The club fades into background noise, and the world narrows to the fragile reality of her weight against me.
“We’ll go see him,” I say. “Right now. Together.” She nods against my shirt. “And you…” I add, tipping her chin up so she has to look at me, “… are going to eat something and sit down before you fall over. That’s not negotiable.”
A ghost of a smile flickers across her face. “Yes, sir.”
I huff a breath that almost passes for a laugh.
“Don’t push it.” I take her hand, and this time, I don’t let go.
We’re both trying not to smile, and we’re both doing a terrible job of it.
The March air is cool, with the promise of heat still beneath it.
The parking lot smells of exhaust, and the club is all around us in every direction.
These people who showed up, who stood here, who did not go home and wait for the phone to ring.
I tuck her against my side and hold her there.
“Come on,” Sin says eventually, giving everyone a beat to collect themselves. “Let’s get out of here.”
I don’t move immediately. I stay exactly where I am, in the soft warmth of the day, the noise and the welcome weight of all of it, with Millie’s shoulder pressed under my arm, my father three feet away, my brothers around me, and I breathe in until my lungs are completely full.
Three days.
Charged, held, and cleared.
The case against me was dismantled by a man who followed the evidence the way it’s supposed to be followed, and by Ghost, who went somewhere beyond evidence into whatever dark architecture exists beneath it, pulling the truth up by its roots.
I owe them all a debt I’m not going to insult by counting.
For now, there is this.
The parking lot.
The club.
The weight of Millie’s hand finding mine and holding it without fanfare, without announcement, right here in front of everyone, where it has always belonged.
Deek appears at my other shoulder. “For the record,” he says, his voice dropping to something that is, not entirely, but almost sincere, “I was going to come in there and get you myself. I had a plan.” I look at him. “It was a very bad plan,” he acknowledges. “Dad talked me out of it.”
“Good,” I say. “I don’t think Dad would cope with both of us locked up.”
He grins, and this one isn’t the usual bullshit he throws at the world. It’s real. Rare enough that I notice it immediately. “Yeah,” he says. “Probably for the best.”