2. Colt
COLT
“I’m asking once.”
Kane’s voice cuts through the clubhouse without needing to rise.
Griz sits opposite him. Judge is beside Kane and Wilder leans against the table with his arms folded, his expression still carrying the kind of hard edge it’s had since we got Lucy back from Perdition.
I’m only here because Kane told the patched brothers who were around to stay put.
Nobody’s accusing Griz of anything, but it doesn’t mean the question can be skipped. Not after everything that happened between the clubs. Kane looks at him. “You answer me straight, then we never speak about it again. Did you know what Chains was doing?” Griz doesn’t flinch even a little bit.
“No. I didn't.”
“Did he tell you anything about Perdition? Cyrus? Lucy?”
“Nothing.” His voice is rougher on the last word. “If I’d known he was taking Wilder’s wife through that gate, he wouldn’t have fucking made it through himself.”
Wilder’s jaw flexes, but he doesn’t say anything.
Kane studies Griz for another second before nodding.
“All right. We’re done.” And that’s it. No speech about loyalty.
No asking Griz to prove himself after he already put a gun on the man who’d been his closest brother for most of his life and refused the chance to ride away with him.
Kane said he'd ask once and he meant it.
My phone starts vibrating against the table and I pull it toward me without thinking.
Then I freeze. A name I haven’t seen light my screen in twelve years is staring back at me.
Jayne. Conversation continues around me, but I don't hear any of it.
My eyes stay fixed on the name on the screen.
The phone vibrates again. I answer before it can ring a third time.
“Jayne?”
Silence. One fucking second of it, maybe less, but I hear her breathing and every year since I last saw her seems to fold in on itself.
“Colt.”
My grip tightens around the phone. Nobody else ever says my name the way she does and it still has the same effect on me after all these years.
“Where are you?”
“I’m at home.”
Something in her voice puts me on my feet.
“Has something happened? Are you okay?”
“I... I just need to talk to you.”
“Tell me.”
“Not on the phone, not like this.”
I’m already reaching for my keys before she finishes the sentence. Kane’s eyes are on me now. So is everybody else’s.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Did somebody touch you?”
Another tiny pause.
“No. Colt, I’m okay. I just need to see you. Meet me at the diner?”
“Twenty minutes, I'll be there.” I end the call.
Kane lifts an eyebrow. “Jayne?” The fact he knows exactly who she is shouldn’t surprise me. Chains talked about his daughter enough over the years, even if she stopped coming around long before Kane took the gavel.
“Yeah.”
Wilder straightens in his chair. I don’t give any of them time to ask another question.
“She says she needs to talk to me. I’m going.”
Kane nods once. “Call me if it touches the club.” I’m out the door before Judge can tell me what my face is apparently giving away.
The ride into Ransom should clear my head, but it doesn’t.
It's been twelve years. I’ve fucked women since Jayne.
Plenty of them. I’ve slept beside women whose last names I couldn’t have given you the next morning and walked out without wondering whether I’d ever see them again.
But not one single one of them made me forget the girl who cried when she told me she couldn’t live with me in the club. Not one ever came even close. I pull into the parking lot behind the diner. Neutral ground is sensible, maybe, and it means something. I just don’t know what yet.
Jayne is already waiting beside her car when I pull in. I see her before I kill the engine. And for one stupid fucking second, I’m twenty-two again. Then she turns fully toward me and there’s nothing nineteen about her anymore. She’s thirty-one.
Older in all the ways she should be. Curves that weren’t there when she was a girl.
Hair falling loose around her shoulders.
A face I would have known anywhere, changed enough to make staring dangerous.
Her eyes hit me just as hard. They move over my cut, my arms, my face.
The tattoos she never saw because half of them came after her. Then back to my eyes.
“Hi,” she says as I swing off my bike.
“Just hi after all this time?”
One corner of her mouth twitches, and fuck me, I remember that smile too.
“I didn’t exactly prepare an opening line.”
“You called me after twelve years. You’re allowed a bad one.”
Her almost-smile disappears and that gets my attention back where it belongs.
“What happened?”
She glances toward the diner. “Can we sit somewhere?”
“No.”
Her eyebrows lift.
“I’m not eating while you look like that. Tell me.”
She looks around the lot, then leans against the side of her car.
“My dad came to my house.”
Every muscle in my body tightens. Chains isn't exactly a popular topic at Kingdom Come right now.
“With Raze from Perdition MC.”
That does the rest.
“Raze was at your fucking house?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“He wanted a drink with me.”
I stare at her. She sighs. “Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction too.”
“Did he touch you?”
“No... nothing like that.”
Her answer is immediate this time, and something in my chest unlocks by a fraction.
“But he got too close. He was disgusting, but he didn’t touch me.”
“And you say Chains brought him there?”
“Yeah, he did.”
I look away for a second because the urge to find Chains and start breaking bones is strong enough to need managing.
“Tell me everything.”
She does. Not dramatically. Not with half the shit I’d expect from someone who hadn’t grown up knowing exactly what men wearing cuts can be like.
She tells me about Chains’s stripped leather, how hard he's trying to impress Perdition for the promise of a patch, and how that apparently includes pushing his fucking daughter at Raze.
She tells me the things Chains has apparently told him about me and Jayne.
My teeth grind harder with every word. Then she tells me what she heard outside the house. Kane, Judge and me.
She says Cyrus is planning a sit-down between clubs, Chains told Raze we'd take the same route, and Raze said we wouldn't make it there alive. My anger goes cold.
“What route?”
“I don’t know.”
“When?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Where’s the sit-down planned for?”
She gives me an irritated look. “If I knew any of that, I would’ve started with it.” Fair. I pull my phone out.
“You’re coming with me.”
“To Kingdom Come?”
“Yes.”
Her face changes. Barely, but I still see it. Jayne spent half her childhood behind those gates and most of her adult life making sure she never went back through them.
“Kane needs to hear it from you.”
“Does he, though?”
“Yes.”
She studies me for a second before looking at my bike.
“I’ll follow in my car.”
“You remember the way?”
Her eyes meet mine. “I remember everything about that place.”
The gates open before I reach them. Jayne’s car follows my bike onto the compound, and I feel the shift before I even kill the engine.
Men notice and of course they fucking do.
Chains’s daughter just drove through the gate days after Chains used thirty years of trust to take Wilder's wife Lucy out of it.
Jayne gets out of the car just as Griz is crossing from the garage toward the clubhouse.
He stops and so does she. For a second I’m looking at something that existed long before me. Her face softens despite everything.
“Uncle Griz.”
Griz has known her since she was born. I remember Griz throwing her over his shoulder when she was ten because she stole his pack of cigarettes and refused to give them back, and her sitting beside him at cookouts, eating off his plate while he complained and kept moving the food closer anyway. She was like a daughter to him too.
He looks at her now like he doesn’t know what to do with those memories.
“Jayne.” That’s all he says, but she hears the difference and I see it land before she hides it.
Wilder comes out behind him. Whatever softness Jayne had left disappears. He doesn’t say hello and after what happened with Lucy, I can’t even blame him.
“Inside,” I tell her.
Kane and Judge meet us in the clubhouse. Wilder follows. Griz comes in last. Jayne tells the story again like she told me. Kane doesn’t interrupt until she gets to the call.
“Exact words you heard.”
She gives them. Judge asks what Chains said before Raze mentioned the route. Wilder wants to know whether they saw her at the window.
“No. I stayed behind the curtain.”
Kane leans back in his chair.
“You think Raze believes you’re interested?”
“No.”
That answer surprises me and Jayne sees it.
“He knows I’m not interested. He just doesn’t think that matters.”
Wilder’s expression darkens and mine probably does too. Then Jayne says, “But he wants me to be.” I look at her and she takes a breath. “He wants to impress me. Especially where Colt’s concerned. He thinks he's so much better.”
“No.”
She hasn’t even said it yet and I know where she's going with this.
“Colt—”
“I said no.”
Kane’s gaze moves between us. “Let her finish.” I look at him. “You don’t know what she’s about to suggest.”
“I think I do.”
Of course he fucking does. Jayne folds her arms. “Raze wants me to have a drink with him. One drink. It can be somewhere public.”
“Still no.”
This time Kane ignores me. Jayne continues. “He already thinks getting me interested would prove something about Colt, about this club. If I let him think I’m curious about Perdition, or about whether they’re really as dangerous as he says, he might tell me enough to fill in what I missed.”
“Absolutely fucking not.”
Her eyes snap to mine.
“I wasn’t asking you, Colt.”
That gets a couple of looks. Wrong answer, sweetheart, but also exactly the answer I should have expected from Jayne. Kane straightens. “It's a nice idea, but I’m not sending a civilian into anything.”
“I’m volunteering.”
“There’s a difference between volunteering and understanding the risk.”