Chapter 2
Two
Emma
By the time the benefit started shifting from polite fundraiser to full-blown party, the room had changed completely.
What had been loud before was now chaotic.
Not bad chaotic.
Just… loose.
The kind of loose that happened when enough money had been raised, enough drinks had been poured, and enough people had decided the night no longer needed to behave like a charity event.
The line at the front bar had tripled.
Music pumped louder through the speakers.
Laughter cracked across the room in bursts.
Kids still ran between tables, though now they were sugared up and weaving dangerously close to adults carrying drinks.
Chairs scraped over the floor every few seconds as people rearranged themselves.
The air had gone warm from too many bodies packed into one space, and every time the side door opened a little bit of cool evening air drifted in before getting swallowed up again.
I checked the time on my phone and frowned.
5:46 p.m.
Almost six.
“Raffles should start soon,” Maya said, lifting her tequila drink and glancing toward the little stage where someone was fiddling with the microphone.
“Good,” I said.
I’d bought too many raffle tickets.
Way too many.
At first it had been one sheet just to support the cause.
Then another because of the kids’ baskets.
Then another because of the baking basket.
Then somehow I’d crossed into territory where I actively did not want to know the total amount I’d spent.
Unfortunately, I did know, because I had glanced at my banking app in a moment of weakness.
Three hundred and twenty dollars.
On raffle tickets.
For one terrifying second I’d considered feeling embarrassed about that.
Then Derek’s nieces had come running back over asking if they could have more tickets for the toy baskets and any potential embarrassment had died a quick and noble death.
Worth it.
Completely worth it.
Especially when their faces lit up like Christmas every time I handed them another strip.
“Pick your favorites,” I’d told them.
They had taken the assignment extremely seriously.
One of the girls had studied every basket with the grim concentration of a tiny auction expert before deciding the Barbie Dream House basket was clearly superior to all competitors.
Another kid had made a beeline for the remote-control car like there was no universe where he would accept any other outcome.
The smallest one had simply chosen anything containing candy, which honestly felt like the purest form of strategy.
Watching them run around with excitement twisting through their little bodies had done something to me.
Softened something.
I didn’t have a lot of family left. Not anymore.
My parents had died when I was twenty. A car accident.
Sudden. Ugly. Final in the way things always were when you didn’t get to prepare for them.
We hadn’t been one of those impossibly close families people wrote heartfelt Facebook posts about, but they’d still been mine.
Losing them had left this strange, quiet emptiness in the middle of my life that had never really gone away.
No siblings.
No nieces or nephews.
No giant family holidays.
Just me and a house full of memories I’d learned how to live beside.
So yeah, maybe seeing Derek’s family here—loud and messy and worried and hopeful all at once—got to me a little.
Maybe handing a curly-haired five-year-old extra raffle tickets had made something ache in my chest.
I lifted my drink and took another sip.
Cold. Sweet. Easy.
My third.
I wasn’t usually a big drinker. One socially, maybe two if I was trying very hard to relax somewhere I didn’t totally want to be.
Tonight, though, the bartenders had apparently decided my can should never be empty for longer than thirty seconds. Every time I looked down, there was another cranberry Carbliss within reach like I had accidentally entered some kind of very specific alcohol sponsorship.
At this point, my limbs felt pleasantly loose.
My cheeks were definitely pink.
Maybe red.
Alcohol always did that to me.
I could feel the warmth high in my face and knew if I looked in a mirror I’d resemble someone who had just been complimented too aggressively.
I didn’t really care.
Across the room, the emcee tapped the microphone twice, producing that awful screeching burst of feedback that made half the room wince.
“Alright, folks,” he called. “Last call for raffle tickets!”
A cheer went up from one side of the room.
Somebody wolf-whistled.
Maya leaned closer to me, eyes glinting with something that immediately put me on alert. “Hey.”
“What?”
She lowered her voice, though not nearly enough to hide how entertained she was. “Don’t look right away.”
I stared at her.
That sentence had never once in human history been followed by a good time.
“What?” I repeated.
“That group of bikers keeps looking over here,” she said.
I blinked.
Then blinked again.
“What?”
“Casually,” she whispered. “Be casual.”
“I don’t know how to be casual when someone tells me to be casual.”
“Just look.”
Against my better judgment, I lifted my drink and let my gaze drift—not directly, because I did have some self-respect—but enough to see the table she meant.
Same table as before.
Same group.
And yes.
They were definitely looking over here.
Or more specifically, a few of them were looking at Maya, because of course they were, while one of them—
My stomach gave a strange, annoying little flip.
One of them was looking directly at me.
Again.
It was him.
The same man from before.
Still sitting back in his chair like the room bent around him instead of the other way around.
Broad shoulders. Dark eyes. Black t-shirt pulled tight across a chest that looked unreasonably unfair.
Leather cut open over it, front patches I couldn’t make out from this distance.
Tattoos crawling over his forearms. A short beard that somehow made him look rougher and cleaner at the same time, which didn’t feel legal.
He didn’t glance away when I caught him.
Didn’t even pretend to.
I looked down at my drink so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash.
“Oh my God,” Maya breathed.
I swallowed. “They’re probably looking at you.”
That was the logical explanation.
Maya was the kind of pretty that drew attention before she even opened her mouth. Tall, blonde, tiny waist, glossy everything. Men noticed her. They always noticed her. It was practically atmospheric at this point.
She made a thoughtful sound beside me. “Mm. Maybe.”
I ignored the smug note in her voice.
Unfortunately, the last few hours had already proven that most men in this room did, in fact, have functioning eyeballs. At least four had approached our table, and every single one of them had spoken directly to Maya like I was decorative furniture.
Not that I needed random men buying me drinks.
I didn’t.
But basic manners would’ve been nice.
If two women are sitting together, maybe acknowledge both of them? Even if one of us wasn’t your type and the other one clearly was? That seemed like a low bar to clear and yet, somehow, several had failed.
I took another sip.
Maya leaned in closer, practically vibrating now. “Oh.”
“What now?”
“They’re moving.”
I looked up just in time to see the men at the biker table standing.
My entire body went still.
There were four of them coming our way.
No.
Five.
One stayed behind for a second to finish whatever he was saying to another guy, then he followed too.
They crossed the room with the kind of confidence that made people shift without being asked. Not a big dramatic scene. Nobody parted like the Red Sea. But space opened for them anyway. People moved chairs. Adjusted. Stepped aside.
I told myself it was because they were large men and not because they carried themselves like they expected the world to make room.
My pulse picked up.
“Oh great,” I muttered.
Before I could decide whether that was dread or anticipation, they reached our section.
The empty chairs at the table across from us scraped back.
Then suddenly they were there.
Right there.
Too close for me to pretend this wasn’t happening.
Up close, they were even more intimidating than they’d looked from across the room.
Big. Broad. Tattooed. Heavy boots. Dark denim. Leather cuts worn open over shirts that did absolutely nothing to soften the amount of muscle involved.
One was blond and looked like he smiled before fights.
One had dark hair and a permanent expression of mild irritation, like the world rarely entertained him.
Another had longish hair pulled back and the kind of stillness that made me think he was probably the one who noticed everything.
One was scrolling through his phone even as he sat down, which should have made him seem less threatening and somehow did not.
And then there was him.
The dark-haired one.
He didn’t sit immediately. He stood there for half a second too long, eyes on me in a way that made something hot and unsettled move low in my stomach. Then his gaze dipped briefly to the table, the empty can near my hand, and came back up to my face.
One brow lifted.
Just slightly.
My cheeks heated.
I looked away.
Smooth, Emma. Very smooth.
“Evening,” one of them said, his voice easy.
Maya lit up like someone had flipped a switch. “Hi.”
And there it was.
The version of Maya I knew was coming.
She turned in her seat, smile bright, posture open, every inch of her suddenly tuned toward them. Her laugh came easier. Louder. She pushed her hair over one shoulder in a way that looked absentminded if you didn’t know it was absolutely not absentminded.
The blond one grinned first. “You ladies enjoying yourselves?”
“We are now,” Maya said.
I closed my eyes for one brief second.
Not because it was shocking.
Mostly because it was exactly on brand.
The men laughed.
I took a very measured sip of my drink and focused intently on not making eye contact with anyone.
Maya, meanwhile, was in full form.
She leaned toward the blond one. “Your arms are insane.”
He laughed again. “That right?”
“Seriously,” she said, reaching out and grabbing his bicep like this was a normal thing people did within thirty seconds of meeting strangers. “If you hugged me too hard, you’d probably crack a rib.”
That got a bigger laugh from two of them.
I nearly choked on my drink.
But she wasn’t done.
Of course she wasn’t.
Maya tilted her head and added, “You look like you could throw me over your shoulder and carry me straight out of here.”
I turned my head so sharply I felt the movement in my neck.
What the hell?
The blond one looked delighted.
The dark-haired irritated one smirked into his beer.
The man on his phone finally looked up.
And him—
The dark-haired one at the center of all my problems—didn’t laugh right away.
He looked at Maya once, like he was acknowledging the sound coming out of her mouth.
Then he looked at me.
And there it was again.
That tiny, knowing pull at the corner of his mouth.
Like he’d seen my reaction.
Like he found it amusing.
Heat crawled all the way up my throat.
I looked down quickly, mostly because if I didn’t I might accidentally make a face.
From this close, I could finally see the small patch stitched over the pocket of his cut.
President.
My pulse stumbled.
President of what?
I had a pretty good guess.
And somehow that didn’t make him less attractive, which felt like a personal failure.
Maya kept talking.
Laughing.
Touching people.
Doing entirely too much.
I reached for my phone out of pure instinct and saw the screen flicker weakly to life with a bright, unwelcome warning.
Two percent battery.
“Of course,” I muttered.
Perfect.
Now I couldn’t even pretend to be busy.
I set it face down on the table and took another sip of my drink.
The dark-haired biker was still watching me.
Not in a gross way.
Not like the men who had looked at Maya earlier, all obvious hunger and ego and expectation.
He was… studying me.
Noticing.
Like he was waiting to see what I’d do if left long enough in his line of sight.
That should not have made my heart race.
But it did.
One of the bikers said something to Maya that made her laugh again, louder this time, and then suddenly a bartender appeared at my elbow like he’d materialized out of thin air.
“Another cranberry Carbliss?” he asked.
I blinked up at him. “Oh. Uh… sure.”
He set the fresh can on the table in front of me and disappeared before I could even ask how he knew.
Slowly, carefully, I looked back across the table.
The president hadn’t moved.
But that little smirk was there again.
Not mocking.
Not exactly.
Just enough to tell me he’d noticed the empty can.
And done something about it.
My fingers tightened slightly around the new drink.
Maya kept talking, fully engaged now in whatever game she thought she was playing, but the noise around the table had dulled for me again. Not gone. Just blurred. Like my brain had decided one thing mattered more than everything else happening in the room.
His attention.
The strange, quiet weight of it.
I should have looked away.
Instead, I made the mistake of meeting his eyes.
For one second.
Two.
Long enough for something sharp and electric to pass between us.
Then the emcee’s voice boomed over the speakers.
“Alright, everybody! We’re starting raffles!”
The room erupted.
Chairs scraped.
People shouted for others to sit down.
The tension snapped.
Just like that, conversation shifted, and the table around us turned toward the front of the room.
I exhaled slowly, like I’d been holding my breath without realizing it.
Maya shot me a look. “Well.”
I opened my drink. “What?”
Her mouth curved. “This just got a lot more interesting.”
I ignored her.
Or at least I tried to.
But as the first winning number was called and applause broke out somewhere near the stage, I could still feel it.
The president’s attention.
Steady.
Intent.
And entirely too focused on me.