27. Diesel
DIESEL
The rumble of a car engine, not a bike, pulls my attention to the clubhouse windows.
Most of the guys are out on runs this Tuesday afternoon.
It’s been a week since Penny started dealing with Wexler, and she hasn’t had a good word to say about him.
I set down the AR I’m cleaning and glance through the blinds.
Penny’s truck. Not her cruiser.
She climbs out wearing jeans and a plain gray shirt, hair down around her shoulders instead of pulled back in that bun she always wears on duty. No badge on her hip. No gun belt. Just Penny, looking smaller somehow without all that armor.
“That your cop?” Gunner asks from the pool table, cue stick paused mid-shot.
“That’s Penny,” I confirm, already moving toward the door.
She’s got her chin up when she walks through the door, scanning the room until she finds me. A few of the guys go quiet, watching her the way you’d watch a fox that wandered into the henhouse. She doesn’t flinch from any of it.
“Can we talk?” she asks. “Privately.”
“You’re not in uniform.”
“I know.”
“You’re not in your cruiser either.”
“Also know that.”
I lead her toward the back hallway, aware of every eye in the room tracking us. Bone’s watching with his arms crossed, waiting to see what kind of trouble just walked through our door. I don’t care. I stopped caring about optics weeks ago.
We end up in the small room off the kitchen, the one we sometimes use for quick meetings that don’t need the whole table.
“I quit,” she says.
The words don’t land right away. “You quit what?”
“The force. This morning. I walked into Wexler’s office and handed him my badge and my gun.” She says it steady, like she’s reciting facts from one of her case files. “I’m done.”
“Jesus, Penny.” I lean against the counter, studying her face for cracks, but she looks calmer than I’ve seen her in weeks. “Why?”
“Because I couldn’t do my job anymore. Not really.
Not the way it needed to be done.” She crosses her arms, but it’s not defensive, more like she’s holding herself together.
“Katrina Doss saw something three years ago, and I couldn’t even get approval to interview her without three signatures and a week of red tape.
Addison would’ve died in that basement if we’d waited for procedure. ”
“You’re not wrong.”
“I know I’m not wrong. That’s the problem.” She meets my eyes. “I’m going to be a private investigator. I’ve checked the requirements. I’m applying for the license.”
I let that settle for a second, the weight of what she’s telling me. “And you came here because…”
“Because I want you to help me. The way you helped with Addison.” Her jaw tightens like she’s bracing for my reaction. “When I need it. When it’s someone innocent who’s falling through the cracks.”
I stare at her, waiting for the joke, but there isn’t one. “You do remember what I do for a living, right? Guns. Drugs sometimes. Things that would’ve had you cuffing me a week ago.”
“I remember.”
“So what changed?”
“You want the honest answer?”
“Always.”
She takes a breath, like she’s been building this speech the whole drive over.
“I used to think the law was black and white. Right and wrong, clean lines, no room for anything in between. That’s why I became a cop in the first place.
I wanted to be on the side that made things right.
” Her voice catches slightly. “But Addison was in that basement for six days, Evan. Six days, and the system that was supposed to protect her did nothing. Worse than nothing. It protected the man who put her there.”
“And we didn’t.”
“You didn’t.” She swallows hard. “I hate what you do. I hate that guns you steal end up God knows where, hurting God knows who. I’m not going to pretend that doesn’t matter to me.
But I also can’t pretend anymore that wearing a badge automatically puts you on the right side of anything.
Not after what I watched happen with Pemberton.
Not after watching Morris fold because he was scared of losing his pension. ”
“So you’re saying you’re okay with what we do,” I murmur.
“I’m saying I can live with it if it means innocent people get saved when the system fails them.” She steps closer, close enough that I catch her familiar vanilla perfume. “I’m not asking you to change who you are. I’m asking if you’ll help me be who I want to be.”
I think I fell in love with her twice. Once at seventeen, when she looked at me like I was something worth having despite every reason not to. And now, standing in this cramped room off our kitchen, when she looks at me the exact same way, except this time she knows exactly what she’s asking for.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice rougher than I mean it to be. “Yeah, I’ll help you.”
The breath she releases sounds like relief.
I close the distance between us before either of us can say anything else, my hand finding her jaw, tilting her face up. She doesn’t pull away. She never pulls away anymore, not really, not when it counts.
I kiss her as we reach the doorway, one hand sliding into her hair, pulling her against me like I need her closer to believe she’s real. She melts into it, her fingers curling into my shirt, and I forget we left the door open.
Someone whoops from the main room. Then another voice joins in, a chorus of hollering and catcalls that makes Penny break the kiss with a startled laugh, her cheeks flushing.
“Get a room, Diesel!” Ace shouts from somewhere near the pool table.
“Oh my God,” Penny mutters into my shoulder, mortified.
“They’re just jealous,” I say, though I can feel my own neck heating.
“I can’t believe they saw that.”
“Come on.” I take her hand, threading my fingers through hers. “Let’s get out of here before they start taking bets on our wedding date.”
“They wouldn’t.”
“Riot’s already got a pool going on when I’m gonna propose again. Trust me, wedding bets are next.”
Her laugh follows us out the back door, past the smokers loitering by the fire pit who give us knowing looks but have the decency to keep their mouths shut.
The barn sits a couple hundred yards off, past Bluebell’s pen, the old building we use for storage and overflow parts.
It’s quiet out here, away from the noise and the eyes.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“Somewhere private. Since apparently privacy doesn’t exist inside that clubhouse.”
The barn door creaks when I push it open, dust motes floating in the shaft of afternoon light that cuts through the gap.
It smells like hay and motor oil, an old wooden structure that’s stood longer than the clubhouse itself.
I pull her inside and shut the door behind us, plunging us into cooler shadow.
“Romantic,” she says dryly, glancing at the stacked crates and the tarped motorcycle parts along one wall.
“Give me a minute. I’ll romance you.”
I press her back against the wall, my hands framing her face, and I stop trying to be clever with words. Instead, I just look at her, really look, taking in every detail I spent seventeen years trying to forget and failing.
“I never want to be without you again,” I tell her, voice low. “Not one more day. You understand that?”
“Evan—”
“I mean it. Every year you were gone, every year I told myself I was fine, I was lying. To you, to myself, to everybody.” My thumb traces her cheekbone.
“I don’t care what badge you wear or don’t wear.
I don’t care what happens with the club, with the law, with any of it. I just care that you’re here now.”
Her eyes glisten, and she pulls me down into a kiss that tastes like everything I’ve been chasing since that traffic light weeks ago. I lift her against the wall, her legs wrapping around my hips, and she gasps against my mouth when her back meets solid wood.
“Evan,” she breathes, and hearing my real name in her mouth still undoes something in my chest every single time.
I kiss down her throat while my hands work at her belt, at the button of her jeans, and she’s helping me, shoving denim down her thighs with an urgency that matches mine.
This isn’t like the other times, frantic and desperate in doorways or on the back of a bike.
This feels like something slower even as my hands shake with wanting her.
“I need you,” I tell her, working my own jeans open. “I’ve needed you since we were kids.”
“I’m here.” Her hands find my face, holding me still so she can look at me. “I’m not running this time.”
I push inside her slow, giving us both a moment to feel it, to feel everything we lost and everything we’re finally getting back. She makes a sound against my ear that sends heat straight through me, her nails digging into my shoulders as I start to move.
“God, you feel—” I can’t finish the sentence, can’t find words good enough for what she feels like wrapped around me, warm and slick and mine.
I keep moving inside her, slow and deep, savoring every gasp and every roll of her hips against mine. The barn creaks around us, dust swirling in that shaft of light, and somewhere in the distance a bird calls out, but none of it matters. Just her. Just this.
Her orgasm builds slow, her breath catching higher and faster until she’s shaking against me, crying out my name into the curve of my neck. I follow right behind her, spilling deep inside her without a second thought, without any barrier between us at all.
We stay like that for a long moment, foreheads pressed together, breathing hard, before reality creeps back in.
“Wait,” Penny says, blinking like she’s just now processing what happened. “We didn’t… Evan, we weren’t safe. Again.”
“I know.”
“That’s the fourth time.” She pulls back slightly to study my face. “You keep doing that, and you never even mention it.”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“Evan.” Her voice sharpens with something between worry and disbelief. “I could get pregnant. Have you thought about that?”
“Every single time.” I brush a strand of hair off her face, tucking it behind her ear. “Penny, I’ve never gone without a condom with anyone else. Not once. Not in seventeen years, not with any of them.”
That stops her. “What?”
“I always used protection. Every time, every woman, no exceptions.” I hold her gaze so she understands I’m not exaggerating for effect.
“You’re the only person I’ve ever been inside without one.
I’ve told myself I wasn’t putting you at risk.
The truth is, some part of me has wanted this since I was eighteen years old, standing outside a clubhouse with a ring in my pocket. ”
Her breath catches. “Evan, that’s not… we’re not eighteen anymore. If I got pregnant—”
“I know how old we are.” I press my hand flat against her stomach, feeling the warmth of her skin even through her shirt. “And yeah, I know what that means. I’m not stupid, Penny. I know exactly what happens if we keep doing this without protection.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Okay with it?” I laugh, low and rough. “I want it. I want to put a baby in you so bad I can barely think straight some days. We’re not kids anymore, waiting around for the right time or the right circumstances.
We wasted seventeen years already. I don’t want to waste one more minute pretending I don’t want everything with you.
The ring. The house. The kids. All of it. ”
Her eyes fill, tears spilling over before she can stop them, but she’s smiling even as they fall.
“You’re insane,” she whispers.
“Maybe.”
“We just started this. Really started it. A few weeks ago.”
“Doesn’t feel like a few weeks to me. Feels like two decades and a few weeks.
” I kiss the tears off her cheek, one and then the other.
“I’m not asking you to decide anything right now.
I’m just telling you the truth. If you end up pregnant, Penny, there’s no part of me that’s gonna panic.
There’s no part of me that’s gonna run. I’ve been ready for a family with you since before I had any idea what that even meant. ”
She laughs through the tears, shaking her head like she can’t quite believe what she’s hearing but wants to anyway.
“I quit my job today,” she says. “Told my boss where to stick his procedure manual. Slept with my high school sweetheart for the fourth time without protection. And now I’m having this conversation in a barn.”
“Welcome to the club,” I say, and she laughs harder, burying her face against my shoulder.
We stay tangled together a while longer, adjusting clothes eventually, though neither of us hurries. When we finally step back out into the afternoon light, her hand finds mine automatically, fingers lacing together like they’ve been doing it for years instead of weeks.
“So,” she says as we walk back toward the clubhouse, “about this PI thing.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to need an office. Something that doesn’t scream conflict of interest.” She glances sideways at me. “And I’m definitely not putting Wicked Sinners on my client intake forms.”
“Fair.”
“But if I need muscle. Or information. Or someone who knows how to get into places I legally can’t—”
“I’m your guy.” I squeeze her hand. “Whatever you need, Penny. I mean that.”
She stops walking, turning to face me fully, something soft and certain settling over her features. “I love you, you know. I know I said it that one time and then panicked, but I meant it. I’ve meant it since I was a teenager.”
“I know.” I bring her hand up, kissing her knuckles. “I’ve loved you since before I knew what the word meant. Just took me seventeen years and losing a ring on some backroad to finally do something about it.”
“We should probably head back,” she says, though she doesn’t move. “Before Ace organizes a search party.”
“Let him.” I pull her back into me, resting my chin on top of her head. “I’m not in any hurry.”
For the first time, neither of us is.