Chapter 24
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— Handful —
Dutch’s text came in early evening.
Clubhouse. Now.
I stared at it. We’d been in bed for nearly twenty-four hours — short exits for food, water, one shower that had turned into another round. I’d sent Glitch a text at some point asking him to cover Venom Virtues for another night. Austen had sent one to Derek and Jamie.
Austen had her head on my chest and her hand over her name and no intention of moving. I had no intention of making her. I did not want to let her out of my sight for the foreseeable.
Now, Dutch had said.
I groaned. She lifted her head, read my face. “You gotta go?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t move. Didn’t particularly want to. Then it hit me. “You’re coming with me.”
“To the clubhouse?”
“Yeah. Come on.” I handed her the t-shirt she’d thrown at me the night before.
Thirty minutes later, we walked into the clubhouse together.
The common room exploded.
Fairy lights, a banner that read Congratulations, SAA, every brother, old lady and prospect, all of them yelling. Austen grabbed my arm. I stood there like an idiot with my mouth open.
Indira materialized at my shoulder, beaming, entirely too pleased with herself. “Surprise.”
“How did you—”
“I’ve had this ready since Dutch gave you that patch. But I wasn’t throwing your party without your girl in the room — so I waited for the right night.” She patted my arm. “Glitch texted me the good news last night.”
I looked across the room. Glitch raised his beer from his usual spot, Wren tucked under his arm, both of them grinning. Fewin was next to him, the picture of innocence.
“Gossips,” I said, loud enough to carry.
“Intel sharing,” Glitch called back, without missing a beat.
“Been through this, brother,” Fewin added - and sent a heated look at his old lady beside him, who was whooping at me and Austen. He shut her up with a slap on the backside that made her grin.
It hit me then that the two men I’d left running Venom Virtues were both standing right here with beers in their hands. “Who’s at Virtues?” I called across the room.
“Baxter, Target, couple of prospects.” Glitch lifted his beer. “Ran fine without you. Somehow.”
I was still shaking my head at him when Dutch put two fingers in his mouth and whistled — one sharp cut through the noise — and the room went quiet. He lifted his beer.
“Some of you know I held the SAA patch empty for years,” he said.
“Waiting on the right idiot to grow into it.” The room laughed.
“He took the scenic route. Cost me a few gray hairs and about a year of my patience.” He looked at me.
“But the man wearing Sergeant-at-Arms tonight earned it. To Handful.”
“TO HANDFUL,” the room roared back.
Colt got me in a headlock before the noise died, Smoke shoved a shot of something unidentifiable into my free hand and told me to drink. I got it down sideways, bent under Colt’s arm, half of it down my chin, and grimaced.
“Your cocktail mixing needs a bit of work.”
Smoke huffed. “We’re an MC, brother, not some fancy-pants cocktail bar.” A glance at Austen, no malice in it anywhere. “No offense.”
“Six days,” Colt said in my ear, still locked on. “You made us wait six days for a party, Handful. That’s deranged behavior.”
“I had things going on,” I protested.
“You had a redhead on you last night.” He finally let me go and punched me in the arm — hard. “Glad you sorted your shit out, brother. Knew you were done for the day you said you’d met someone.”
“I wasn’t done for. I was intrigued.”
“Same thing.” Then he looked past me to Austen and grinned. “And there she is. The reason nobody’s seen this idiot’s face in twenty-four hours.” He looked her over, delighted, not a scrap of shame in it. “Please tell me you two showered before you came out. I’ve gotta stand next to him all night.”
“We showered,” Austen said, level as you like. “Twice.”
That got a bark of a laugh out of him. “Twice.” He jabbed his beer at me like I’d just proved his point. “He moped the whole six weeks you were gone, by the way. Constantly. Wanted you to know that in case he had you thinking he played it cool.”
“I did not mope.”
“He moped,” Colt told her. “It was embarrassing for everyone.” He raised his beer to her. “Welcome back. Don’t do that to us again.” And he was gone.
Austen looked up at me. “You moped?”
Lilac got to us before I could deny it — came out of the crowd grinning and hooked an arm through Austen’s. “Right. The women want her. Come on, Aust.” She started to tow her off.
I caught Austen’s other hand and didn’t let go.
Lilac stopped. Looked at our hands. Looked at me. “You’re joking.”
“Nope.”
“It’s across the room, Handful.”
“Still no.”
“You talk shit about me and Colt being attached at the hip.” She put her free hand on her hip, building a head of steam. “You’ve spent twenty-four hours stuck to this woman with your dick, and now you can’t let her walk across a room for five minutes?”
“No,” I said, and laughed, because she wasn’t wrong and I didn’t care even a little. “Not five minutes. Not one. You can have her tomorrow. Maybe.”
Austen didn’t pull her hand back out of mine. “You heard the man,” she told Lilac, no complaint in it.
Lilac threw her hands up, beaten and loving it. “God help us all. There’s two of them now.” And she went off to share the gossip with the women. Intel sharing, as Glitch called it.
I stood there a second and let myself have it.
Every face in that room I’d have bled for, grinning at me like I’d finally done something right. The SAA patch, earned, Dutch’s voice still in my ears. And the woman — wearing my shirt and her name already inked over my heart, her hand finding my side without her having to look for it.
Dutch found us a while later, somewhere in the middle of the noise. He tipped his head at a spot along the wall, away from the worst of it, and started that way.
I went to take Austen with me — I had her hand and wasn’t letting go for anyone, not even Dutch. She didn’t move. I looked at her, and she shook her head.
“I think Dutch wants to talk to you,” she said.
“Us.”
“It looks private.” She slid her hand free, easy, and laid it flat over my heart. “Go. I’ll be right here.”
We stood there while the party went on around us. He looked at the patch, not at me. “Suits you. Took you long enough.”
“You gave it to me in about four words after church, old man. Handed it over like you were passing the salt.”
“You’d earned it by then. Didn’t need a speech.” He drank. “Speech was for tonight. But this is for you, so listen.” He looked at me straight, the way he had across that desk. “That morning in my office. When I told you I’d take your cut.”
“I remember.”
“I meant it.” Nothing soft in it. “Get that clear. You’d gone on the way you were, I’d have done it and slept fine.”
I didn’t doubt him. Dutch never said a thing he couldn’t stand behind.
He took a pull of his beer, eyes going out over the room. “But I wasn’t guessing about you. I’d already watched you do the work. I knew what was in there. I just had to make you sick enough of yourself to go dig it out.” He looked back at me. “You don’t hear soft. Never have. So I went hard.”
I remembered his words — and how they had gutted me worse than losing the girl had. “And if it hadn’t worked?”
“I’d have found a harder way. Knocked it into your skull if it came to that.” The corner of his mouth moved. “You were getting there one way or the other. I gave you the fast route.”
“Charming.”
“Not a charming man.” He looked at me a second longer. “I’m proud of you.” He slapped me on the back, hard. “You climbed out of a hole you dug, in the dark, with me standing over you telling you it might not be enough. That’s the man I wanted at my table. He showed up.”
I nodded, figured that was the end of it.
But Dutch wasn’t done. He turned and found Austen — she’d stayed close, the way she’d said she would — and tipped his head, calling her over.
She came. He bent and said something that I didn’t catch over the noise.
She nodded, and whatever it was put a shine in her eyes.
“What’d he say?” I asked her when he’d moved off.
“Nope.” She shook her head. “My ears only.”
I didn’t push. I watched Dutch go back into the crowd, Indira folding into his side, and thought — not for the first time that year — that I’d have followed him into anything.
After that, a beer got shoved into my hand.
Somebody tried to start a chant of my name and got three words in before it fell apart laughing.
I lost track of all of it — the music, whoever was yelling — everything except Austen.
She stayed mostly stuck to my side, and the couple of times she drifted an inch I pulled her back into me.
She tugged on my arm. I looked down at her, then followed her eyes across the room.
Glitch and Wren had found a table off to the side of the noise.
Wren was tucked into him, looking up at him the way she always did — like he’d personally hung the stars — and Glitch had an arm around her, easy and sure, the way a man holds onto the thing he means to keep. She was giggling up at him.
“Made for each other, those two,” Austen said, soft.
“Yeah,” I said, watching them. “They are.”
She pressed in closer, fit herself under my arm, and slid her free hand inside my cut, flat over my heart, where her name was.
I stood like that a good long while — a beer I wasn’t drinking in one hand, her other hand in mine, lifting it every so often to kiss her knuckles for no reason except that I could — and let the party roar on around us.
A while in, she leaned up to my ear. “Tyler. You’re going to have to let me go.”
“Never.”
“I need the bathroom.”
“Straight there and straight back,” I said. “No stopping to talk to strangers.”
She laughed at me, kissed my jaw, and slipped out from under my arm. I let her go like it cost me something, because it did.
Then I watched her cross the room, because I couldn’t not. The last time she’d walked away from me in here she hadn’t come back, and it wrecked me for six weeks.