32. Alexandra
The room is smaller than I expected.
Not cramped—just contained. Purposeful. A desk worn pale along the edges, two mismatched chairs, a couch that’s sagged into the shape of too many late nights. A bookshelf with manuals, old paperbacks, and a framed photo of the club outside the bar.
It smells like Cole—leather, coffee, something clean underneath.
I step inside slowly, letting my fingers trail over the back of the chair, giving myself something to do while my pulse tries to outrun me.
He closes the door gently behind us.
No lock. Just a soft click.
Still, the sound feels heavy.
Cole stays near the door for a moment, watching me in that quiet, careful way he has—like he’s weighing every word before it’s even born.
I already know this isn’t a casual conversation.
I also know I’m standing in a place where laws bend, sometimes break. I’m not na?ve about that anymore. The bikes, the guarded doors, the way everyone moves like there are rules written in the air—I understand enough to know this club lives outside the lines most people pretend keep them safe.
I just don’t know how far outside.
“Bruiser wasn’t wrong to ask what he did,” Cole says finally. “He was wrong to do it in front of you.”
I turn to face him. “Because I’m not supposed to hear certain things.”
He nods once. Honest.
“In this club, there are layers,” he says. “Prospects. Hang-arounds. Old ladies. Patched brothers. Each level knows different pieces. Not to keep people powerless—to keep them safe.”
The word hangs between us.
Safe.
“Only patched brothers know the full picture,” he continues. “What we do. How we do it. The parts that don’t look good in daylight.”
I don’t pretend to misunderstand.
“I already figured some of that out,” I admit quietly. “I’m not blind, Cole.”
“I know you’re not.”
His voice softens, but his eyes stay serious.
“That’s why I don’t want us to follow those rules.”
My breath catches.
“I don’t want you on the outside of my life,” he says. “Not really. Not pretending you don’t see what’s right in front of you.”
He pushes off the door and takes a few steps closer, leaving space between us like he’s afraid of crowding the moment.
“So I’m giving you a choice.”
My stomach tightens.
“You can know as much or as little as you want,” he says. “We can keep you out of the details. Out of the danger. You can be with me without being in this.”
“And the other option?” I ask, already knowing.
“You step in with both feet.” His gaze holds mine. “Me. The club. The truth of what that means.”
No romance in his voice. No promises wrapped in silk.
Just reality, laid bare.
“I won’t think less of you either way,” he adds. “This life isn’t something anyone should walk into blind.”
The room feels very still.
He isn’t pushing me. He isn’t pulling. He’s handing me the door and asking which side I want to live on.
“If I say no,” I ask, “do I lose you?”
His answer is immediate. “No.”
Relief punches through me before he continues.
“But you’d only ever get pieces of me.”
There it is.
Honest. Brutal. Real.
I stare at the floor, then back at him. “You’re basically asking if I want the rated-G boyfriend package or the director’s cut with bonus felonies.”
That startles a laugh out of him. “Something like that.”
My chest feels tight, but not in a bad way. Like standing on the edge of something important.
“I’ve spent my whole life being the outsider,” I say quietly. “New country. New language. New start. I’m always the girl trying to catch up to everyone else’s rules.”
Cole watches me, letting me find the words.
“I don’t want to do that with you,” I admit. “I don’t want half. I don’t want to pretend I don’t see the scary parts just because they’re inconvenient.”
His expression shifts—careful hope, banked and controlled.
“I want you,” I say, voice steadier than I feel. “All of it. Even the shit that’ll probably give me grey hair by thirty.”
A slow breath leaves him.
“You’re sure?”
“No,” I admit. “I’m terrified. But I’m choosing you anyway.”
Something raw flickers across his face.
Cole crosses the last bit of space between us and cups my jaw, thumb brushing my cheek like he’s checking I’m real.
“Okay,” he murmurs. “Then you’re in.”
My heart kicks.
“Does this come with a welcome packet?”
His mouth curves. “More like a survival guide.”
I huff out a shaky laugh and lean into his hand.
Whatever this life is—messy, dangerous, probably illegal in ways I don’t want itemized—I know one thing with absolute clarity.
I want Cole.
And everything that comes with him.
Cole is quiet for a long time. Long enough that the room seems to breathe around us, the old walls settling, pipes ticking somewhere deep in the building. I can feel him searching for words he doesn’t want to say.
When he finally speaks, his voice is low.
“We have Justin.”
My heart stops. Not metaphorically—actually stops for a thin, dizzy second.
Cole’s jaw tightens. “He’s in the basement. Bruiser and Riot brought him in while I was busy getting you back here and Doc was cleaning you up.”
The room tilts.
Images flash—none of them clear, all of them loud. Justin’s smile on campus. His hand on my wrist. The weight of him on top of me. The gunshot tearing through heat and noise.
My stomach turns.
“I didn’t want to tell you yet,” Cole says, his eyes searching mine. “But you need to know why he’s down there. Men like him don’t just stop, Lex. He shot you. He tried to take you. If he’s out there, he’s a threat to you every single second. He’ll never stop trying to hurt you.”
Cole steps closer, like he can feel me slipping. “Lex—look at me.”
I do.
His eyes are dark, steady, wrecked around the edges.
“I’m going to kill him,” he says.
The words aren’t angry. They’re not theatrical. They sound like a decision he made hours ago and hasn’t wavered from since.
Air leaves my lungs in a thin line.
“For what he did to you,” Cole goes on. “For what he tried to do. For the way you looked when you ran in here bleeding the first time, and for today. It—” His voice cracks once, barely. “It tore my heart out when they took you.”
Something inside me fractures at that.
Not fear of him. Fear for him.
I stare at this man I know—the one who held me through nightmares, who touches me like I’m something fragile and irreplaceable—and try to fit him around the word murder.
For a second I’m only shocked that he told me. That he trusted me with something this dark.
Then the shock settles, and what rises underneath isn’t horror. It’s clarity.
I know him. Cole. Not an idea. Not a symbol. The man. And I love him.
The truth lands so quietly it almost scares me more than his confession. I don’t argue with it. Don’t question it. It’s just there—solid as bone.
“He shot me,” I whisper.
Cole flinches like I struck him.
“He put his hands on me,” I continue, voice shaking now. “He made me feel small and stupid and trapped in my own skin.”
“I know.”
“And part of me wants him gone from the world,” I admit, hating how honest that sounds. “I’m not as good a person as I wish I was.”
Cole steps into my space, careful. “You don’t have to be good right now.”
I swallow. “But before anything happens… I need to see him.”
His whole body stills. “Lex—”
“I need to look at him when I’m not running,” I say, the words gaining strength. “I need him to see me when I’m not afraid.”
Cole studies my face like he’s trying to read the future in it.
“I want to talk to him,” I add. “And I want to punch him. Hard.”
A breath leaves him—half disbelief, half something that might be pride in a language he’d never admit to.
“You don’t have to prove anything.”
“I know,” I say. “This isn’t about proving. It’s about taking something back.”
Silence stretches.
Cole’s thumb brushes my cheek, slow, grounding. “This goes against every instinct I have.”
“I figured.”
He searches me again—really looks—like he’s measuring whether this will break me or save me.
Finally, he nods once. “Okay.”
Relief and terror crash together in my chest.
“But you don’t go down there without me,” he says, voice turning iron. “You don’t get within arm’s reach unless I say so. And the second you want out, we’re done.”
I breathe out. “Deal.”
Cole rests his forehead against mine for a moment, steadying both of us.
Somewhere beneath this building, a man who changed the shape of my life is waiting. And for the first time since it all began, I don’t feel powerless walking toward him.