Chapter 15
WILL
Six Months Later
It's a Tuesday night, and Ironside is packed. Tuesdays used to be our quiet nights, the ones where I could catch up on paperwork while Cole restocked the bar and the regulars nursed their drinks in comfortable silence. But things are different now. Everything is different now.
The Brotherhood is gathered in force, taking up the big corner booth and spilling out onto the surrounding tables.
Tate is arguing with Shaw about something on his phone, probably some piece of surveillance tech that Shaw thinks is overkill and Tate thinks is essential.
A couple of the prospects are at the pool table, trash-talking each other between shots.
Cole is behind the bar, mixing drinks and laughing at something one of the regulars said.
And Gemma. Gemma is in the middle of all of it, a glass of wine in her hand and a smile on her face, talking to a woman I don't recognize.
Probably someone from the network of advocates she's been building, the community that's grown up around her consent education program like wildflowers after rain.
I built the Iron Brotherhood because I needed something to hold onto when everything else was gone. I didn't know I was building a place for her to find me.
The banner hanging over the bar reads "Iron Brotherhood" in blocky letters that Gemma painted herself, with the club's founding date underneath. Tonight is the anniversary of the club's founding, but it's also a celebration of something else.
Last week—after countless meetings, planning sessions, and late nights at The Forge—Gemma officially launched her program at The Forge, a series of workshops designed to help survivors of abuse and others understand the difference between healthy power exchange and coercive control.
She's been working on it for months, partnering with Dr. Reyes and reaching out to other clubs in the region.
Three of them have already asked to implement similar programs. By this time next year, she'll have changed more lives than she realizes.
I watch her across the room, this woman who walked through my door eight months ago with shadows in her eyes and fear in every line of her body.
She's not that woman anymore. The shadows are still there, will probably always be there in some form, but they don't define her.
She laughs now, really laughs, the sound carrying across the bar and settling somewhere deep in my chest. She touches people easily, a hand on an arm, a hug that lingers.
She takes up space in a room instead of trying to disappear into the walls.
She's radiant. And she's mine.
The thought still catches me off guard sometimes.
After Sarah died, I was so certain that part of my life was over.
That I'd had my chance at love and lost it, and the best I could hope for was a quiet existence surrounded by the family I'd built from broken men and shared purpose.
I didn't expect Gemma. I didn't expect any of this.
Craig's trial ended three weeks ago. Guilty on all counts: assault, stalking, violation of a restraining order.
The judge sentenced him to four years, which his lawyer is already trying to appeal, but Shaw says the appeal doesn't have legs.
Gemma sat through every day of the trial, her hand in mine, her spine straight and her chin lifted.
She didn't look at Craig once. Not when he took the stand and tried to paint himself as a misunderstood romantic.
Not when his lawyer implied that she'd exaggerated the abuse for attention.
Not when the jury delivered the verdict and he finally, finally understood that he'd lost.
That night, she didn't cry. She just held onto me and breathed, slow and deep, like she was learning how to fill her lungs again. And then she said, "It's done. I can stop looking over my shoulder now."
She hasn't looked back since.
I take a sip of my beer and let my gaze drift to the photos on the wall behind the bar.
There's one of Sarah there, taken a year before she got sick, laughing at something off-camera with her head thrown back and her hair catching the light.
For a long time, I couldn't look at that photo without feeling like I was drowning.
The grief would rise up and swallow me whole, leaving me gasping in its wake.
Now I look at her and I feel something different.
Not less painful, exactly, but softer. More like gratitude than grief.
My time with her taught me what love could be.
The years of watching her fight, of holding her hand through treatments that didn't work and nights that felt endless, taught me what it meant to stay.
Losing her broke me open in ways I'm still discovering.
But broken open isn't the same as destroyed. I know that now.
Sarah loved Gemma. I remember them together, back before Gemma left town, Sarah pulling her into conversations, treating her like a little sister.
She saw the strength underneath Gemma's uncertainty even then, the fire that Craig tried so hard to extinguish.
And at the funeral, when Gemma stood beside me at the grave without saying a word, Sarah would have understood what that meant.
She always understood things I couldn't see.
I can almost hear her voice. "You don't get points for suffering, Will. And martyrdom was never a good look on you."
The corner of my mouth twitches. She always could make me smile, even when I didn't want to.
Loving Gemma doesn't mean I love Sarah any less.
It took me a while to understand that, to stop feeling like I was betraying one by wanting the other.
But hearts don't work that way. They're not zero-sum.
The love I had for Sarah is still there, woven into who I am, part of the foundation I stand on.
The love I have for Gemma is something else, something new, built on different ground but no less real.
I can hold both without betraying either. It took me a long time to learn that lesson, but I finally have.
Gemma catches me watching her. She always does.
Her eyes find mine across the crowded room, and the smile that spreads across her face is just for me.
She says something to the woman she's been talking to, squeezes her arm, and then she's moving through the crowd toward me.
People part for her without being asked, the brothers nodding as she passes, the regulars smiling. She's family now.
She slides under my arm like she was made to fit there, and I pull her close against my side.
"Hey you," she says, tilting her face up. "You've been brooding in this corner for an hour."
"I don't brood. I observe."
"You were definitely brooding. I could see it from across the room." She pokes my chest gently. "What's going on in that head of yours?"
"Just thinking."
"About?"
"About how different things are from when you arrived. How different you are." I press a kiss to her temple. "How lucky I am."
She makes a soft sound and burrows closer. "I'm the lucky one."
"We could argue about it, but I'd win."
"You always think you're going to win."
"That's because I usually do."
She laughs, and the sound settles into my bones.
We stand there for a moment, watching the party swirl around us.
Cole is making some kind of elaborate cocktail while one of the prospects films him on a phone, probably for the bar's social media.
Tate has won his argument with Shaw and is showing off whatever's on his screen with the enthusiasm of a kid at show-and-tell.
Two of the prospects have abandoned the pool table and are now arm-wrestling at a corner booth, which seems like it's going to end badly for someone.
My family. Loud and chaotic and imperfect and mine.
"Come with me," I say, taking Gemma's hand. "I want to show you something."
She raises an eyebrow but doesn't question it, just lets me lead her through the crowd and out the back door.
The night air is cool and sharp with salt, the harbor spread out before us in a tapestry of dark water and reflected lights.
The dock stretches out into the bay, and we walk to the end of it in comfortable silence, our footsteps echoing on the worn wood.
"I love it out here," Gemma says, tipping her head back to look at the stars. "I used to sit on this dock when I was a kid. Cole and I would come down here after school and throw rocks into the water and talk about all the places we were going to go when we grew up."
"Did you go to any of them?"
"A few. Portland. Seattle. Phoenix, for a while." She's quiet for a moment. "Funny how the place I most wanted to leave ended up being the place I needed to come back to."
I reach into my pocket and close my fingers around the small box I've been carrying for a week. "I have something for you."
She turns to face me, curiosity lighting her features. "Is this why you dragged me out here? To give me a present?"
"Partially." I pull out the box, and her breath catches. It's small and velvet, the kind of box that usually holds a very specific piece of jewelry. I see the moment she registers what it might be, the flash of surprise and something else. Something that looks like hope.
"Will..."
I open the box. Inside, nestled against the dark fabric, are two items. A ring—simple platinum band with a single diamond, elegant without being flashy. And beside it, a delicate chain with a small iron pendant, the Brotherhood's symbol worked into the metal.
A ring. And a collar.
Gemma's hand flies to her mouth. "Will."