Chapter 10 Finn
FINN
Not down the street. Not around the corner. Right there, in full view of the front windows, where anyone with eyes could see the sergeant at arms of the Guardians of Mayhem sitting on his chrome beast like he owned the whole damn town.
Let them look. Let them all look.
I'd spent the last few weeks hiding. Sneaking around.
Meeting Chloe in back rooms and borrowed beds like we were something to be ashamed of.
And maybe at first we were—or at least, maybe it made sense to be careful.
The task force was breathing down our necks.
One wrong move could have brought everything crashing down.
But the Cobras had taken that heat. The task force had their win. And I was done pretending the best thing in my life was something to hide.
The station door swung open, and there she was.
Chloe stopped on the front steps, her auburn hair catching the late afternoon sun like fire. Her eyes went wide when she saw me—then wider when she clocked exactly where I was parked. I watched the emotions flicker across her face. Surprise. Confusion. A flash of panic.
Then a smile that could have lit up the whole New Mexico desert.
She walked toward me with her head high, not hurrying, not sneaking. I caught a glimpse of movement in the station window—Peters, probably, or Malone, watching the show. Good. Let them see.
"You're going to get me in trouble," she said when she reached me, but she was still smiling.
"Already did that." I handed her my spare helmet. "Hop on."
She looked at the helmet, then at me, then back at the station. I could practically see the calculations running through her head. The questions she'd have to answer. The rumors that would start. The line she was about to cross in front of everyone she worked with.
She took the helmet.
When she climbed on behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist, something in my chest cracked open. Something that had been locked up tight for years, maybe forever. Her body pressed against my back, warm and solid and real, and I thought:
This. This is what I've been waiting for.
I kicked the bike to life and pulled out of the lot, not looking back.
I took her to the lake shoreline.
It was the place I'd gone the morning after my father died, when the grief was so heavy I couldn't breathe.
The place I'd gone after Pops told me to channel my rage, when I'd sat on the rocks and screamed at the water until my throat was raw.
The place I'd gone three weeks ago, the morning after Chloe first warned me about the task force, watching the sunrise and wondering what the hell I was going to do.
It was my place. My sanctuary. And I wanted to share it with her.
We parked at the edge of the overlook, where the scrubby desert gave way to a stretch of sandy beach and the water reflected the fading sky like a mirror. The sun was just starting to dip below the horizon, painting everything in shades of gold and pink and deep, bruising purple.
Chloe pulled off her helmet and shook out her hair, looking around with wonder in her eyes.
"I didn't know this was here," she said softly. "It's beautiful."
"Not many people do. That's the point." I swung off the bike and offered her my hand. She took it, letting me help her down, and didn't let go once her feet hit the ground.
We walked to the edge of the overlook and sat on a wide, flat rock still warm from the day's sun. The water lapped gently at the shore below. Somewhere in the distance, a bird called out—lonely, searching.
"I've been thinking," I said after a while.
Chloe bumped her shoulder against mine. "Dangerous habit."
I smiled, but my heart was pounding. I'd faced down rival gangs. I'd stared into the barrel of a gun. I'd held my father's hand while he took his last breath. None of it had scared me like this moment.
"About us," I continued. "About what you did. What you risked."
She went still beside me. I could feel her waiting, barely breathing.
"No one's ever done something like that for me." I kept my eyes on the water, because if I looked at her I might lose my nerve. "Not outside the club. And even then—this was different. You put everything on the line. Your job. Your freedom. Your whole life."
"Finn—"
"Let me finish." I turned to face her then, taking both her hands in mine. Her eyes were wide, luminous in the fading light. "I've spent my whole life protecting people. That's what I do. That's who I am. Protect the club. Protect my brothers. Protect thine own."
I squeezed her fingers.
"But you—you protected me. When you didn't have to. When it could have cost you everything. And I've been trying to figure out what to say, how to tell you what that means to me, and I keep coming back to the same thing."
I took a breath. The deepest breath of my life.
"I love you, Chloe."
The words hung in the air between us, raw and real and terrifying. I watched her face, searching for a reaction, bracing myself for—I don't know what. Laughter. Rejection. A gentle letdown.
Instead, her eyes filled with tears.
"You idiot," she whispered. And then she was laughing and crying at the same time, her hands coming up to cup my face, her thumbs brushing across my cheekbones. "I was going to say it first. I practiced the whole drive over here. I had a whole speech planned."
"You—" I blinked at her, thrown completely off balance. "What?"
"I love you too." She was grinning through her tears, the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. "I've been in love with you since you winked at me through those holding cell bars. Maybe before that. Maybe since high school, when you were the bad boy everyone wanted and I was too scared to talk to."
"You talked to me through those bars plenty."
"That's because I finally grew a spine." She laughed again, a watery, joyful sound that did something complicated to my heart. "That, and you looked really good in handcuffs."
I kissed her then, because I couldn't not kiss her.
I pulled her against me and claimed her mouth like I'd been starving for it, which maybe I had been.
She tasted like chapstick and coffee and home.
Her fingers tangled in my hair. My hands spread across her back, holding her close, closer, never close enough.
When we finally broke apart, both of us breathing hard, the sun had slipped below the horizon and the first stars were starting to prick through the darkening sky.
"There's something else," I said.
She raised an eyebrow. "More? I don't know if my heart can take it."
I took her hand again, running my thumb across her knuckles. This was the part I'd been building toward. The part that mattered.
"In the club, when a man finds his woman—his real woman, the one he wants to spend his life with—he makes it official. She becomes his old lady."
Chloe's breath caught.
"It means you're family," I continued. "Protected. Untouchable. Anyone messes with you, they answer to me and every Guardian in the club. It means you're mine, and I'm yours, and nothing comes between us."
I met her eyes, letting her see everything I was feeling. All the fear. All the hope. All the love I didn't know I was capable of until she walked into my life.
"I'm asking you to be mine, Chloe. Officially. Publicly. My old lady."
The silence stretched between us, filled only by the gentle lap of water and the pounding of my own heart. I waited, barely breathing, for her answer.
She didn't answer right away. Instead, she pulled her hands from mine and stood up, turning to face the water. My stomach dropped. Had I pushed too fast? Asked too much?
Then she turned back, and the look on her face made my heart stutter.
"I'll be your old lady," she said.
I started to grin, started to reach for her—
"But."
I froze.
She stepped closer, close enough that I could see the firelight of the fading sunset reflected in her eyes.
"I'm not going to sit at home waiting for you to come back from runs. I'm not going to be arm candy at club parties. And I'm sure as hell not going to stop being useful just because I've got your patch on my back."
She poked a finger into my chest.
"I'm in this with you. Partner. Equals. I've got access to information that can help the club, and I'm going to use it. I've already proven I can handle myself under pressure. So if you want me as your old lady, you're getting all of me. The brain, the backbone, and the bullshit detector. Deal?"
I stared at her. This fierce, fearless, impossible woman who'd upended my entire life in the best possible way.
Then I laughed. A real laugh, deep from my belly, the kind I hadn't let out in years.
"Deal," I said. "Wouldn't have it any other way."
She grinned—that wicked, fox-like grin that had caught my attention through the bars of a holding cell all those weeks ago—and threw her arms around my neck.
"Good answer, big boy."
I kissed her again under the emerging stars, slower this time, savoring it. My old lady. My partner. My Chloe.
When we finally pulled apart, she was shivering a little in the evening chill.
"Take me home," she said. "And I don't mean my apartment."
"Yes ma'am." I led her back to the bike, helped her on, and felt her arms wrap around me like they belonged there. Because they did.
The ride back to my place was the best ride of my life.