Twenty Two #3
“I don’t have the energy to sweet-talk anyone,” he said. “Consider it appreciation. And strategic. We’re stronger when we’re not scattered to the wind.”
She glanced at her girls, then back at him.
“We’ll come,” she said. “We’ve still got adrenaline to bleed off.”
Blackjack nodded and gave the order to return back to the clubhouse.
We mounted up.
This time, when we left, nobody needed to say anything over the comms. The war had had enough words for one night.
Engines lit. Headlights carved slices through the dark. We rode back toward the clubhouse with sand in our boots and with each other. That was enough.
***
The Devils’ clubhouse had seen a lot of moods in its life.
Rage. Grief. Boredom. Horny stupidity.
Tonight, it held that strange, high, humming thing that comes after you walk away from a bullet that had your name on it and realize you’re still breathing.
“You know the drill,” Blackjack says, sliding off his bike. “Weapons checked in, wounds checked out if you got any. Then we drink until we forget how close some of you came to getting ventilated.”
“That’s specific,” Priest says.
“I’m a man of clarity,” Blackjack replied.
Liberty swung her leg off her bike and stretched her back.
“Feels weird walking into someone else’s house for the afterparty,” she says, eyeing the clubhouse door.
“Think of it as neutral territory that happens to have my name on the title,” Blackjack says. “You’re safe here.”
“I know we are,” she says. Then she raises her voice. “Vipers! Park your asses and your bikes properly. We’re guests, not raccoons.”
The main room filled quick—only now it’s stacked with a mix of leather and cuts that’s never shared this same floor before. Devils and Vipers.
Jackal’s behind the bar, moving like he’s got eight arms—pulling beers, sliding shots, grabbing bottles. Badger runs backup, hauling crates up from the storage room. Mirage prowls, keeping one eye on the bottles and one on how fast they’re disappearing.
Valkyrie and I were almost the last in. As soon as we entered, heads turned.
For a heartbeat, the noise dipped.
Then it spiked.
Cheers. Shouts. Hands slapping shoulders.
“About fucking time,” Miami calls from his stool near the bar, casted leg stretched out, Quinn tucked in close at his side. “We were about to drink without you.”
“That would have been rude. You couldn’t wait?” I asked, taking in the empty glasses beside him.
“I said we were about to,” he protests. “Past tense. Present tense. Whatever fucking tense. Come over here, I got to look at your stupid face to make sure it’s still intact.”
Valkyrie’s hand finds my lower back, guiding us through the mess. People clap me on the shoulder as we pass. Vipers nod at Valkyrie with that quiet, tight-eyed relief only club sisters have when they see one of their own walking back in under her own power.
Quinn is crying.
Not much. Just a sheen in her eyes and a tremble in her mouth when she sees me and Valkyrie together. She swipes at it quickly, but it’s there.
“You good?” I ask Miami.
He lifts his beer with his good hand.
“Define good,” he says. “I watched you idiots play Tower of Terror in a half-finished construct on a camera feed, then missed out on seeing a Russian get capped on a beach. My leg’s full of screws.
I’m pretty sure Quinn’s going to have PTSD any time she hears an elevator ding now.
But yeah.” He tips the bottle back. “I’m good. ”
Quinn elbows him lightly.
“You’re alive,” she says. “That’s what you are.”
“Technicality,” he mutters, but he leans his head against hers for a second, eyes closing briefly.
I slide in on his other side, Valkyrie slipping between me and the bar, her back resting against my chest like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Maybe it was. For us. My arms go around her waist without thinking.
My hands settle there. She leans back against me without hesitation, her weight fitting into my chest like she’d been made to be there.
Her hair smelled like the ocean, salt, and something warm under both.
Nobody comments.
Not in a bad way at least.
Tanya, perched two stools down, wolf-whistles once, sharp and amused.
“About fucking time,” she calls. “I was starting to think you two were just going to eye-fuck each other across rooms forever. Got boring.”
I flip her off. Valkyrie laughs under her breath, shoulders shaking against me.
Jackal appears with three beers and a pair of shot glasses, like he sensed the exact moment we needed both.
“Hydrate and dehydrate,” he says. “Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re not a doctor,” Ace says dryly from where he’s leaning against the wall nearby.
“Spiritual doctor,” Jackal says. “For the soul.”
He slides a shot toward Valkyrie.
She takes it, knocks it back, grimaces and exhales.
“Still not as bad as your coffee,” she mutters.
Jackal stares while Ace lets out a belly laugh.
Miami lifts his glass toward us.
“To not wasting time,” he says.
He’s looking at me when he says it.
I meet his eyes, then glance down at Valkyrie in my arms.
No fight left in me on that front.
“Yeah,” I say. “To that.”
We clink and drink.
The party swells around us. Music cranks up a notch. A game of pool starts on the far table—8-Ball breaking, because of course. Liberty’s girls cluster near one corner, laughing at something Rebecca’s saying. Devils drift around them like planets, drawn into their gravitational field.
At some point, Blackjack ends up arm wrestling Liberty at one of the high tables.
It starts as trash talk.
“You were never that strong,” she tells him, slamming her elbow down.
“I’ve been lifting the emotional baggage you left me with for years,” he replies, setting his own.
They grip hands.
The whole room leans in as they strain, faces contorting like this is more important than any gunfight.
For a second, Blackjack has the advantage. Then Liberty grins and slams his hand down the rest of the way with a sharp crack against the tabletop.
The room erupts.
Blackjack winces, shaking his hand out.
“Cheating,” 8-Ball says.
“With what, my biceps?” Liberty replies.
“You distracted him,” Tanya calls. “He’s old. His back probably locked up mid-match. Typical man excuses, you know?”
“Fuck all of you,” Blackjack says, but he’s smiling.
He calls for more drinks with a wave and gets them.
Cali wanders over to the bar at some point. She looks younger than most of us until you see the way her eyes never stop scanning the room. She’s seen just as much as the rest of us, if not more.
“Valkyrie,” she says—voice still rough from her injury—sliding onto the stool next to her. “You said you wanted to introduce me to someone before we ride back?”
Valkyrie twists in my arms slightly, eyes lighting just a little.
“Yeah,” she says. She nods at Jackal. “Cali, this is Jackal. Jackal, Cali. He’s the one I told you about—the one who keeps this place running while everyone else pretends alcohol replenishes itself.”
Jackal blinks, caught mid-wipe on a glass.
“Hi,” he says. “Uh. Welcome to the Devil’s Daycare.”
Cali smiles, slow.
“Hi,” she says back. “Valkyrie told me you’re the one who alphabetized the bottles back there.”
He looks offended. “Of course I did. How else do you find anything when everyone’s shouting for something different?”
“You color-coded the pour spouts too?” she asks.
He squints. “You snooping?”
“I like systems,” she says. “And I like people who like systems.” She leans a little closer, elbows on the bar. “So… serious question. When it’s late and quiet and nobody’s looking, what’s your go-to game? Mario Kart or old-school Tetris on a beat-up console somebody left under the TV?”
He stares at her like she’s just proposed marriage.
“Tetris,” he says immediately. “Mario Kart is what you play when you’re pretending you’re not anxious. Tetris is what you play when you accept that you are.”
Her smile widens.
“I fucking knew it,” she says. “You’re my people.”
He laughs, a little helplessly.
They’re still talking fifteen minutes later, deep in some debate about the perfect playlist and then onto the best horror franchise. They agreed on Scream.
At one point, I saw Jackal actually lean on the bar with his chin in his hand like some teenaged idiot, listening.
It made me weirdly happy.
On the other side of the room, India’s half-dancing, half-grinding on Turnpike near the front of the pool table, the two of them laughing loud enough to cut over the music. Someone hoots when she spins around and drops low. Turnpike’s face is red as hell, but he doesn’t look like he’s complaining.
Roadkill’s wife, Rebecca, is now sitting at a table with him, Mirage and Rosé, watching the chaos with a hi-ball glass in hand, expression fond.
Blackjack eventually walks to the center of the room and gestures for the music to drop a little.
“All right,” he said, voice carrying even without a mic. “Listen up, you ungrateful assholes.”
The noise settles. Heads turn.
Liberty joins him, shot glass in hand.
Blackjack raises his drink.
“First off,” he says, “thanks to all of you for not dying. That was very considerate. I’m too tired to have to plan another funeral this week. One is already too much as it is.”
A ripple of dark laughter moves through the room.
He nods once, acknowledging the unspoken name floating there—Raptor—and then keeps going.
“We’ve had a clusterfuck of a few days,” he says.
“We’ve been shot at, betrayed. We’ve lost one of our own, nearly lost more, and watched our city get treated like a playground by men who think money is the same thing as power.
Tonight, we walked into a half-built statement for Roman, pulled his wife and daughter out from under a traitor, Serpents, and the cartel, and walked away under our own power. That is not nothing.”
He looked at Liberty.