Final Drive (Sable Ridge Crew #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Reese

Forty-seven notifications, and I’ve been staring at my phone for six minutes watching the number climb every time my mother finds a new way to phrase “you’ve ruined everything.”

The team house kitchen smells like bacon and coffee.

Zane’s at the stove arguing with Beckett about whether the pancakes need more vanilla, Tyler has his laptop open and keeps losing the thread of whatever he’s reading to referee them, and Bo leans against the counter with his coffee going cold, watching the window like he expects somebody to pull into the driveway.

They’re all here. Jackson sits at the far end of the island nursing black coffee and looking like he slept about as well as I did.

Eli’s beside him, scrolling his phone and leaning into Jackson’s space the way he does when he’s worried.

Gray stands apart with his arms crossed, staring at the coffee maker like it owes him money.

Cameron has the corner chair and hasn’t said a word.

Yesterday we swept the SRC Championship at Lake Hartwell and set a course record, and my teammates threw me in the water afterward in the best tradition of the sport.

Then my mother called me a whore in front of fifty strangers, and Gray told his father he was no longer a Lockwood.

“The legal framework is straightforward,” Tyler says, giving up on the pancake debate. “Pack bonds have been federally recognized since 2019. Processing takes about three weeks, but the declaration of intent is immediate.”

“And that protects us from the administration?” Gray asks. He hasn’t looked at me directly since we got back to the house last night.

“It should. University policy prohibits disciplinary action against legally recognized pack units. They can’t penalize us for biological bonding if we’re in the middle of formalizing.”

“Morrison gave us a deadline.”

“That’s the good part. We file intent and the clock stops. They have to wait for the legal process to finish before they can touch us.”

Jackson makes a low sound from his spot at the island. “So we’re doing this.”

“We’re discussing it,” Gray says.

“Discussing.” Jackson sets his mug down hard enough that coffee comes over the rim. “We show up as a pack or we lose everything. That isn’t a discussion, it’s an ultimatum with better manners.”

“He’s right,” Eli says. “The administration backed us into a corner and this is the only way out of it.”

“It protects the team.” Bo’s palm settles on my lower back. “Protects her.”

Her. Not Reese, and not even our Omega.

“We need to move fast,” Tyler continues. “I can have the paperwork ready by tomorrow. We’d need signatures from everyone, proof of biological compatibility, and a statement of consensual intent.”

“Biological compatibility won’t be an issue,” Beckett says. “Pretty sure we’ve established that.”

Cameron snorts, which is about as much commentary as he offers before noon.

“So we’re agreed.” Gray straightens into captain mode. “We file for pack recognition this week and present a united front.”

Murmurs go around the room. Zane slides a plate of pancakes in front of me with a wink, Jackson’s hand finds Eli’s under the table, and every one of them is ready to formalize a bond that will tie us together for the rest of our lives.

“Reese?” Gray’s voice cuts through. “You good with this?”

They all turn to look at me, waiting for me to say yes, this is what I want.

These men chose me over their families yesterday. They stood on that dock and told their parents where to go, and that has to mean something.

But everything in this kitchen is strategy. Protection and survival and paperwork and united fronts, and not one of them has looked me in the eye and said he’s doing it because he wants to spend his life with me.

“Yeah.” I make myself smile. “I’m good. Let’s do it.”

Gray nods and turns back to Tyler, and the conversation flows around me the way water goes around a stone.

My phone buzzes.

Mother: We need to talk. I may have spoken hastily yesterday. Call me.

“Everything okay?” Bo asks, his voice pitched just for me.

“My mother wants to talk.”

“That’s good?”

“It’s damage control. She called me a whore in front of witnesses and now she’s trying to spin it.”

His hand tightens on my back. “You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

Gray’s phone rings. He checks the screen and his jaw goes tight before he smooths it over.

“I need to take this.” He’s already moving toward the back door.

Through the window I watch him pace the deck with the phone against his ear. His shoulders stay rigid the whole time and his free hand keeps opening and closing at his side.

“Harrison won’t let this go,” Tyler says, following my eyes. “The Lockwoods don’t lose. They regroup and come at it from a different angle.”

Gray comes back inside with his face locked down. “He wants to meet. Tomorrow, lunch at the club.”

“You’re not going,” Jackson says.

“If I don’t show up he’ll take it as a declaration of war. Right now he still thinks we’re negotiating.”

“Negotiating for what?” I ask.

Gray looks at me. Actually looks, steel eyes on mine for the first time since the dock. “Me. He thinks he can talk me out of this.”

“Can he?”

“No. But I need him to believe he has a chance, and it buys us time to get the paperwork filed.”

I nod and look down at my phone, pretending to check it. There’s another message from my mother, and one from somebody else.

Quinton: Saw the race coverage. You were incredible out there. Congrats on the sweep!

Then, a minute later:

Quinton: Coffee this week? I know things are crazy but that project won’t finish itself

The smart move is to delete it, block his number, and forget Quinton Whitmore exists.

My thumb hovers over the keyboard anyway.

Quinton doesn’t want anything from me. He doesn’t need me to be his Omega or his coxswain or his angle against the administration. He asks about my classes and makes bad jokes about Professor Hawthorne and talks to me like I’m a person instead of a problem on somebody’s whiteboard.

Me: Thanks. Maybe on the coffee. I’ll let you know.

I pocket the phone before anyone can see it.

“We should practice this afternoon,” Gray is saying. “AVNC qualifiers are in two weeks.”

“We just swept a championship,” Zane protests. “Can we have one day?”

“You can have a day after nationals.”

The bickering settles something in my chest, because at least it’s normal.

Then Gray’s eyes find mine again. “Reese, can I talk to you for a minute?”

We step into the hallway. The old hardwood creaks under us as he leads me toward the front of the house, and he stops by the window and runs a hand through his hair.

I’ve watched this man take a boat through conditions that should have swamped us and face down his father on a crowded dock without moving a muscle in his face. Right now he looks lost.

“About yesterday. The dock. What my father said.”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“I want to.” He meets my eyes. “I meant every word of it. I’m choosing this. Choosing the pack.”

I wait for the rest, for him to close the three feet between us and tell me yesterday wasn’t only about defying Harrison.

He turns back to the window.

“He won’t give up. He’ll go looking for leverage, and if he decides to make our lives difficult, we need to be ready for it.”

“Ready for what?”

“For it to get worse before it gets better.”

I want to reach for him, but he’s standing the way he stands in a boat bay at six in the morning, and the man who knotted me and held me afterward isn’t anywhere in the hallway.

“Tyler says our legal position is stronger if the bonds are complete before we file,” he continues. “Multiple claims demonstrate genuine pack formation rather than a strategic alliance.”

My stomach turns over.

“Makes sense,” I manage.

“So we should figure out the logistics. Timing. Who and when.”

“Sure.”

We stand there three feet apart and neither of us moves.

“We should get back,” he says. “Tyler wants to go over the paperwork.”

He heads for the kitchen. I stay where I am with my palm flat against my chest.

I chose this. I chose them. Yesterday I stood on that dock with lake water running out of my hair and looked my mother in the eye and told her I was home.

So I don’t know why it feels like I’m outside the window looking in at a life that belongs to somebody else.

My phone buzzes again.

Mother: Your father and I would like to meet. Dinner on Wednesday. We can discuss this situation calmly.

And beneath it:

Quinton: No pressure. Just thought you might need a break from all the intensity. I’m good at being low-key

I type back before I can stop myself.

Wednesday might work. I’ll let you know.

Then I put the phone in my pocket and walk into the kitchen, where my future is being worked out in spreadsheets.

Zane looks up from the stove. “Finally. These are getting cold.” He slides a plate across the island. “Eat. You had nothing yesterday except adrenaline and lake water.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re deflecting, which is a different thing.” He gives me a look sharper than his usual grin. “You okay, Cox? Actually okay, not the kind where you say fine so everyone stops asking.”

The question catches me sideways, and for a second I consider telling him the truth. That I’m drowning in a room full of people who would die for me. That I keep waiting for one of them to say he wants me and not just that he intends to keep me safe.

“I’m tired,” I say instead. “It’s been a lot.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t buy it, but he lets it go. “It has.”

Around me the pack keeps planning. Tyler runs numbers, Gray frowns at a text, Bo and Jackson talk low at the far end of the island, and Cameron makes coffee while he listens to all of it.

Beckett catches my eye across the room and raises an eyebrow.

It’s been happening more since the bonds started forming, this business of reading each other without saying anything, and I’m still not used to it. I give him a nod he doesn’t believe either.

So I eat my pancakes and smile when somebody looks my way. Jackson claimed me. Beckett claimed me. Cameron knotted me in a way that still makes my hands unsteady when I think about it. Gray stood on a dock and burned his family down for what we’re building here.

I have a pack to help build and a championship to win, and I can want the rest of it later.

Zane slides the syrup across the island without being asked, and I take it, because it’s the only thing anybody has handed me this morning that wasn’t a strategy.