Chapter 8 #2
I tell him about Colombia. About the Diego rescue. About Mateo Torres strapped to a chair in a cinder block room and Doom carrying him out.
Dad listens to all of it without interrupting, his hands folded across his stomach, his eyes on me.
When I finish, the patio is quiet except for the hum of the pool pump and a mockingbird going through its whole catalog on the fence.
"I know Doom," he says.
I sit up straighter, my hands dropping from my knees. "You do?"
"Of course I do. He prospected in Montana before he transferred to Mexico.
" Dad picks at a callus on his palm, turning his hand over in the late afternoon light.
"Quiet kid. Barely said two words to anyone.
But I watched him, the way I watch everyone who comes through.
He worked harder than any prospect I'd seen in years.
Never complained, never cut corners, never tried to shortcut the process.
" He pauses, rubbing his thumb along the callus.
"And there was something in him. Not a chip on his shoulder.
More like a man trying to build something he'd never had.
He wasn't out to prove he was tough. He was trying to prove he belonged somewhere. "
My throat tightens. I pull at a loose thread on the hem of my shorts. "You never told me that."
"You didn't ask." He shrugs one shoulder.
"And he was a prospect. I wasn't going to push my daughter toward a man who hadn't earned his place yet.
" He meets my eyes and holds them. "But I'll tell you this, Nova.
A man who walks away from his father's club—an enemy club—to build something on his own?
That man is the opposite of a threat. He chose.
The same way I chose your mother, the same way I chose you and Kat and Jordyn.
He looked at what he was born into and said no, and he went and found something better. "
My eyes are burning. I press my fingers against them hard enough to see white behind my lids.
"He should have told the club," I manage.
"Yeah," Dad agrees, nodding once. "He fucked up by not telling them. And you did right by going to Amara. One doesn't cancel out the other, sweetheart. He made a mistake by keeping it quiet, and you did the right thing by speaking up. That doesn't make either of you the villain."
I lean into his shoulder. He wraps his arm around me and pulls me close.
He smells like road dust and the coffee he probably drank at every gas station between Montana and Nevada, and underneath that, the same detergent Mom has used since I was a kid.
He holds me on the patio in the Vegas heat while I try to figure out how to live in the space between loyalty and love, and he doesn't rush me. He never has.
Dad stays through dinner that night.
He and Damon talk club business over beers while Kat and I sit on the couch and watch something on TV that neither of us is paying attention to.
When he heads to the room he’s crashing in, he kisses the top of my head and tells me he'll see me in the morning.
He does. He shows up with coffee and breakfast tacos from a place he found, and we eat on the patio and don't talk about Doom.
We talk about Mom, about Jordyn, about Pops rebuilding the deck at the Montana house and making a mess of it.
Normal things. Easy things. The kind of conversation that reminds me I'm still a person with a life outside of this.
By afternoon, Dad heads back into his room for a shower and Kat runs to the store.
I'm alone in the clubhouse for the first time since I arrived.
That's when Chase makes his move. He’s a prospect here and he's been circling me since the day I arrived.
He's young—twenty-two, maybe twenty-three—with the confident swagger of a man who's good-looking and knows it.
He's got a sleeve tattoo that probably cost more than my tuition, teeth too white to be natural, and absolutely no ability to read a room.
His cut is clean and stiff, barely broken in, which tells me he hasn't been prospecting long enough to earn the wear.
He finds me in the clubhouse kitchen making lunch. Chase has clearly been waiting for exactly this.
He leans against the counter while I make a sandwich, crossing his arms so his biceps flex. "So you're Damon's sister-in-law, huh?" He flashes a smile he probably practices in the mirror.
I don't look up from the bread. "Yep," I say, reaching for the mustard.
"Must be rough, being away from home." He slides closer along the counter. "If you need someone to show you around Vegas, I know all the good spots."
I set the knife down and look at him.
"Chase." Something in my voice makes his smile falter. "I'm going to be very clear with you right now, so listen carefully. I'm not interested. Not in a tour, not in company. Go find someone else to practice on."
His smile thins but holds. He pushes off the counter. "Damn." He brushes imaginary dust off his cut. "Harsh."
I pick up the knife and go back to my sandwich. "No, it’s called being blunt."
He leaves. I eat my lunch in peace and think about Doom and the way he never tried to be charming.
He just showed up. Over and over, he just showed up.
The next night, the clubhouse is busy.
Damon's hosting a few of the Vegas brothers for drinks and cards in the main room.
The energy is loud and easy—laughter, beer cans cracking, music from a speaker on the bar.
Kat dragged me out of the guest room because she said if I stared at those walls for one more night she was going to lose her mind.
I'm sitting at the bar with a Topo Chico, talking to Kat about nothing important, when Chase appears again.
He slides onto the stool beside me with a beer and a grin that hasn't learned anything from this afternoon.
"Change your mind yet?" he asks, tilting his bottle toward me.
Kat's eyes narrow. She opens her mouth, but I put a hand on her arm.
"I haven't," I tell him, keeping my voice flat. "And I won't."
He shrugs like it doesn't sting, but his jaw tightens.
He takes a pull from his beer and stays on the stool. He's not done. He's just regrouping, then the front door of the clubhouse opens.
I hear the boots first. Heavy, deliberate. A tread I'd know anywhere.
My breath catches. Kat's hand finds my knee under the bar and squeezes.
He's standing in the doorway.
Doom.
Cut on his shoulders—they gave it back. Sig on his hip.
Dust coating his jeans and his boots and the red bandana tied around his head.
His face is windburned above his beard, his eyes bloodshot from hours of highway glare, his shirt creased and damp with sweat from riding across the desert in the heat.
He looks exhausted, like he hasn't slept.
He looks like he got on his bike the second they let him and didn't stop until he was here.
His dark eyes scan the room—quick, thorough—and then they land on me.
They stop.
He's here.
He rode eight hundred miles from Chihuahua to Vegas.
For me.
My hands are shaking. My Topo Chico is sweating against my palm and I can barely feel it.
Chase sees the shift in my expression and apparently decides this is his moment.
He leans toward me, close enough that his shoulder nearly brushes mine, angling his body between me and the door.
"Friend of yours?" Chase asks, loud enough to carry across the bar.
Doom's eyes move from me to Chase.
His expression doesn't change. Nothing visible happens at all.
But two of the Vegas brothers at the card table glance up from their hands.
Chase doesn't notice. Chase isn't built for noticing.
"Hey, bro." Chase lifts his beer toward Doom. "She's been telling me she's not interested in company, but I figured I'd keep trying. You know how it is."
Damon is beside Chase before the last word leaves his mouth.
He puts a hand on the back of Chase's stool and leans down, his voice carrying clean across the bar.
"You think my sister-in-law is a pushover, Chase? Because she isn't. She already told you no twice today, and if she doesn't want to be with this man then she can damn well speak up on her own account. She doesn't need you making that decision for her."
Chase's face drains. He sets his beer on the bar, slides off the stool, and disappears toward the back of the clubhouse without another word.
Damon straightens up, catches my eye for a half second, and walks back to the card game.
The room resettles. Laughter picks up again. Beer cans crack, but I don't hear any of it.
Because Doom is crossing the room toward me.
Each step deliberate, unhurried, his eyes never leaving mine.
He stops in front of me.
Close enough that I can see the dust in the creases of his knuckles and the cracked skin on his lips from the wind.
He smells like exhaust, leather, sweat, and the dry desert heat that's baked into his clothes.
His dark eyes are on mine. Tired. Raw. Open in a way I've never seen from him in public, in front of other people, in a room full of strangers.
The walls he keeps up—the stoic bullshit, the silence, the controlled stillness—are down.
All of them. He's just standing in front of me with everything showing, and it's the bravest thing I've ever watched a man do.
He doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to.
He rode eight hundred miles.
That's his speech. That's his declaration.
Every mile is a word he'd never be able to say out loud, and he laid them all down on the highway between Chihuahua and this barstool.
Kat squeezes my knee one more time, slips off her barstool, and walks away without a sound.
"You're here," I say. My voice barely holds together.
He nods once. "I'm here."