Chapter 8 #3
He took a swallow of whiskey, hand steady. I finished my drink too.
“Liberty wants me on you,” I added. “Her words. Part babysitter, part guard.”
“So, you’re my shadow now?” he questioned.
“Think of it like this,” I said. “If anyone comes to take that bag off you, they’ll have to go through me first. I’m curious what kind of idiot looks at this mess and still decides they want a piece.”
His throat worked once at that, and for half a second his eyes softened. Like he’d thought about me between him and a gun and didn’t hate the idea.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” he said.
“Good,” I replied, sliding off the stool. “Those are the worst kinds of jobs. I’ll consider you a particularly mouthy assignment instead.”
I moved away, half-turning.
“Oh, and Jersey Boy?” I said over my shoulder.
“Yeah?”
“That invisible string you keep pretending isn’t there,” I said. “Cut it. We’re on the same road for now, nothing more.”
He didn’t answer right away. When he did, it was only a small grunt of acknowledgement. But I saw something flicker behind his eyes.
You feel it too.
“Like I said. Loud.”
I walked over to Liberty, Indigo, and Rosé. They fell quiet as I approached. Only for a breath.
“You gave him the speech?” asked Liberty.
“Which one?” I replied. “The ‘welcome, don’t fuck this up’ or the ‘Don’t push your luck and I’ll bury you and let God sort out the pieces’?”
“A little of both,” Rosé said.
I nodded with a smirk.
Indigo just watched, ever the silent weight.
“He’s calmer than I expected,” Liberty added. “For someone who almost got shot in the head.”
“He’s shaken,” I said. “Just locked down. Miami’s in a bed he can’t protect. That bag’s a bomb he can’t drop. His Prez is a territory away. Yet he’s holding it together still.”
“And you can tell that from one ride and half a bar conversation?” Indigo asked gently.
I shrugged. “You didn’t see his face in that hallway,” I said. “He didn’t freeze. Didn’t grab for my gun. Dropped when I told him to. That kind of reaction doesn’t come from nowhere.”
Liberty’s eyes narrowed. “You trust him?” she asked.
I thought about it. Really thought about it.
“No,” I said. Not yet. “But I trust what he’d die for. His club. His best friend. And that’s more useful.”
Her lips curved. Approval. “Good answer,” she said. “Keep him that way. Useful and breathing. 8-Ball and one of his boys are on their way. Turnpike, I think.”
I nodded. I knew the name. Everyone did. 8-Ball was Blackjack’s right hand. His brother. His mirror in some ways. Voice of reason, if rumors had it right. It would be interesting seeing how much of that was true.
“What about the cops?” Indigo asked. “Birdie texted. Said they’re buzzing like flies.”
“I’ve got Mink scrubbing anything with our cuts on it,” I said. “Birdie’s on Miami. Any suit or stranger with a badge goes near his room, we’ll know before they finish signing the visitor log.”
“Good,” Liberty said. “If someone wants to play games in our streets, and hospitals, they’re going to find out quick that this isn’t a board they get to move pieces on without pushback.”
She squeezed my shoulder once. A silent, solid weight. Then she went to her office to wrestle whatever demons Alice had shoved into her ear.
The day bled. Time in a clubhouse has a way of stretching.
Laughs, clinks of glass, the thud of a cue ball on felt.
Someone put on louder music. Cobra argued with Medusa over which band counted as “real” punk.
Cali darted through with a box of inventory, nearly tripping over a discarded helmet.
Arizona snapped photos when she thought no one was watching.
Through all of it, Jersey stayed at the bar.
He moved once to take a piss. I walked with him without saying why. He didn’t comment, but he noticed. I could tell. After that, he relaxed about it. Accepted it.
He laughed a little at Raven’s jokes, the sound rusty. He answered Diamondback’s probing questions about his club with careful, vague truths. He didn’t brag. He didn’t play martyr.
Every time someone’s attention wandered too close to his shoulders, his eyes flicked up. The backpack never left his body. Not once. Not when he shifted stools. Not when he shrugged the cut to adjust.
Like I said. Bomb.
Night crept up gradually. Outside, the yard darkened. The fence lights flickered on, bathing the gate in yellow. Someone turned the music down without talking about it, like the whole building had exhaled.
Liberty found me near the back wall.
“He’s staying the night, obviously,” she said simply.
I nodded. I’d already assumed as much.
“In your room,” she then added.
I raised a brow. “What, we short on actual beds?” I asked.
“You trust him more than anyone else here right now,” she said.
“I don’t trust him.”
“And yet that’s still more than anyone else.
So, even if that trust looks more like wanting to put your boot on his neck until you figure him out, I need your boots at the ready.
You’ll notice if he twitches wrong. I want him in sight of someone who won’t freeze if that bag suddenly becomes everyone’s problem. ”
“He’s not going to like that,” I said.
“Good,” she replied. “He’s not here to feel comfortable.”
“Isn’t 8-Ball coming?”
Liberty sighed, held her phone up and wiggled it. “Club business. He’ll be here in the morning now.”
She clapped my shoulder again and walked away, leaving the order hanging in the air like smoke.
I went back to the bar.
He was sitting with his empty glass on the counter, staring at the shelves like they had answers written in the labels.
“Come on,” I said. “Field trip.”
He looked up. “Where?”
“Bedtime,” I replied. “Liberty says you’re not leaving, and you’re not sleeping in a chair or staying up drinking all our good shit. We’ve got a spare mattress.”
He scanned my face for a second, then nodded. He then pushed off the stool and followed.
No argument came. He was too tired to waste energy on protest.
We walked down the hall past closed doors and open ones. The building grew quieter with each step. Behind one door, I heard soft laughter. Behind another, the sound of pages turning. Behind another, muffled music.
At the end of the corridor, my room waited. The door was open. I always left it that way unless I was sleeping.
He stepped in and stopped just inside, taking in the space.
Walls painted dark. Not black, but close. Posters framed from old shows, some signed, some torn. Hooks holding spare helmets. A shelf of knives, each one cleaned and sharpened, lined up like silver teeth.
My bed sat against the far wall, thick black comforter, and two pillows. Across from it, in the corner under the small window, an inflatable mattress lay rolled out, already inflated. Someone had tossed a spare pillow and thin blanket on it already. Probably Liberty.
“Were you expecting me?” he asked dryly.
“Liberty plans ahead,” I said. “You’re on the air bed. Try not to pop it. You blow a hole in it, you’re sleeping on the floor and buying us a new one.”
He set his jaw like he wanted to ask where I was sleeping, then seemed to realize how obvious the answer was. This was my room. My space. There was only one actual bed.
He shifted the backpack off his shoulders carefully and set it down beside the air mattress, the strap still looped around his wrist. Then he lowered himself onto the plastic with a faint grunt.
The movement pulled his shirt a little tight across his chest. I looked away, annoyed with myself for staring longer than a glance.
“You staying?” he asked after a second. “Or do I get the privilege of a locked door and trust?”
“You get me in a chair or at the foot of my bed,” I said. “That’s all the trust you’ve earned.”
He huffed something that wasn’t quite a laugh and wasn’t quite an exhale. “Better than I expected,” he said.
He kicked off his boots, laid back, and folded an arm under his head. The other dropped across his ribs, his fingers resting near where the backpack strap disappeared from view. It wasn’t possessive. It was reflex.
I pulled the chair from my small desk and set it near the now closed door, angled so I could see him and be hidden behind the door should anyone try to enter.
From here, I had a clear line of sight of his face.
In sleep, he looked different.
He hadn’t been unconscious for more than three minutes before his breathing lengthened. The hard line between his brows softened slightly, though it never fully vanished. Even sleeping, he looked like he was carrying weight.
The thin lines of healing cuts mapped along his knuckles.
A bruise shadowed his jaw where someone else’s fist had left a memory not long ago.
His tattoos crept up his throat and under his jaw, disappearing behind his ear.
I followed their pattern with my eyes, imagining the needle, the sting, the choice behind each piece. The pain. The trust.
I had no business finding any of it appealing.
He was trouble wrapped in leather and armed with a loyalty I hadn’t seen too often in men.
If someone had told me a year ago I’d be sitting in my room, watching the Devil’s Aces enforcer sleep while a backpack full of god-knew-what sat inches from his hand, I’d have called them insane.
Yet here we were.
I leaned back in the chair, crossing my arms over my chest, and let my eyes half-close, not in sleep but in that alert rest you learn when you’ve lived too long in houses that were never safe.
Memories skated close. A different room. Different walls. A door that never stayed closed. A man whose hands were never gentle. The smell of cheap whiskey and cheap cologne and expensive anger.
Liberty’s voice cutting through that fog. Pack your shit. You’re leaving. Now.
My fingers flexed around my own arms, grounding myself in the present. In the hum of the compound. In the faint vibration of music through the floorboards. In the sound of a soft even breath from the corner.
He shifted once, rolling slightly onto his side. His face turned toward me. A lock of dark hair fell across his forehead, boyish where everything else about him screamed hardened.
If he had a ring on his finger, I thought, if this were some other life, some other world, he’d probably be terrifying in a suit. Sitting at some table, smiling like that, hiding knives behind his teeth.
But this was our world. Our rules. Our war.
And what I found most attractive about him had nothing to do with his jaw or his tattoos or even his funny little smirk.
It was the way he wanted to cover that doorway in the hospital without thinking. The way his first instinct had been to shield his friend. The way he’d strapped a dangerous unknown to his back rather than leave it where someone else could take it and be someone else’s problem.
A man willing to die for his best friend and his club, and do it with a joke on his tongue.
Stoic. Stupid. Brave. The worst combination. The one that gets under your skin and stays.
“You’re not mine,” I murmured in my head. “You’re not anyone’s. You’re temporary. Just a problem to solve.”
Then a quieter voice whispered back.
For now.
I shifted in the chair. The wood creaked softly. He didn’t stir.
Outside, a bike started, then shut off. Someone laughed in the hall. A door closed. The compound settled into its version of sleep.
I stayed awake. Watching. Waiting. Guarding.
Every so often, my gaze dropped to the bag.
Whatever was in there had already tried to get him and his brother killed. It had already sent a hit man onto our roads and bullets into our hospital’s walls. It had already dragged one MC, and my whole damn world into its orbit.
I didn’t know whose names were written on the pages of whatever book had been mentioned. I didn’t know which empires were tied into this mess.
But I knew this much to be true if nothing else.
Whoever thought they owned it wasn’t going to stop coming for it. And whoever thought they could use it to burn our cities didn’t yet understand that snakes don’t run from fire.
We coil around it.
We sink our fangs in.
We survive.
I watched his chest rise and fall again, slower now, deeper.
Somewhere out there, 8-Ball and Turnpike were preparing to ride north, bringing answers or more questions with them. Somewhere in a hospital bed, Miami lay stitched and sedated, unaware of the target someone had painted on him.
Somewhere beyond all of that, men in suits with blood on their hands shuffled money and were planning another hit.
Well, they’re not the only ones playing the game.
They’d forgotten about women like us.
By the time the first smear of pale light crept in at the top of the window, my eyes burned, but my focus hadn’t shifted. Not once did it falter.
He stayed asleep.
The compound stayed standing.
The bag stayed where it belonged.
And I stayed exactly where Liberty put me.
Between his world and mine. Between his potential war and my nest. Between the past I’d crawled out of and whatever fresh hell was now barreling toward us.
I didn’t know yet if Jersey Boy was going to end up being an ally, a problem, or the kind of catastrophe that rewires your whole life.
I just knew one thing for sure.
He’d come into my territory on fire.
And if we weren’t both careful, we were going to burn together.