Twenty Two #4
“But we didn’t do it alone,” he says. “The Shore Vipers rode when we needed them. They could’ve stayed behind their walls up north and waited to see who crawled out, but they didn’t.
They aimed their bikes at our fire and hit the gas full throttle.
That counts. Remember that. Remember this.
Devils. Vipers. Somehow all of us managed to hit the same target without shooting each other in the face.
I don’t know what that says about the war, but here we are. ”
Lady Liberty lifted her chin. “We wanted to see if you Devils could dance,” she called. “You didn’t trip over your own dicks. That’s a win in my book.”
Laughter snapped through the tension like a whip.
Vipers hooted. Devils answered.
Blackjack smirked.
Liberty lifts her glass slightly in acknowledgment.
“This war with Tesauro, the Vincinos, the Serpents, and the Bolivar cartel?” Blackjack continues. “It isn’t over. Tonight isn’t a victory parade. Tonight was a warning shot. Theirs and ours. Tomorrow, we start counting the costs more seriously.”
A sound rolled through the room—agreement, low and rough.
Blackjack then glanced at me and Valkyrie.
“In the middle of all that,” he says, “some of you still managed to be stupid enough to catch feelings. Sometimes that’s worse than bullets.”
Everyone laughs louder this time. Tanya whistles again. Miami drums his bottle lightly against the bar in an obnoxious little rhythm.
Blackjack smirks.
“I’m not saying it’s a good idea,” he says. “But I’m saying if anyone’s earned the right to cling to whatever light they can find in the middle of all this shit, it’s the two idiots wrapped around each other over there.”
I feel my face heat. Valkyrie stiffens against me for a beat, then relaxes, leaning into it.
I decide to go with it.
I slide one hand up, fingers curling under her chin, tipping her face back toward mine.
She meets my eyes, searching, like she’s checking to see if I’m serious.
I am.
I kiss her.
Not a quick, shy thing. Not something half-hearted. I kiss her like we were a second away from never getting the chance to, and everyone here knows it.
The room reacts like we just sunk the final ball on a ridiculous table shot.
Cheers. Whoops. A couple of catcalls. Someone yells, “Finally!” again. Definitely Tanya.
Valkyrie smiles against my mouth and kisses me back just as hard.
When we break, she’s a little breathless, eyes bright.
Blackjack raises his glass higher.
“We’d be idiots if we didn’t take nights like this when we get them,” he said.
“Take the little wins. Count the ones still standing. Remember we’re still human, not just weapons on legs.
To the Devils. To the Shore Vipers. To everyone who walked out of that building tonight.
To bad odds, good fucking aim, and to whatever the fuck comes next. ”
“Here, here,” Liberty said. She raised her own shot. “From the Vipers. We bleed with you, we drink with you, and if anyone tries to fuck with the shore again, we will stand beside you and happily reload.”
Glasses clinked. Shots went down. Someone started another song.
The party surged back up.
For a few hours, the clubhouse belonged to something that almost looked like joy.
It wouldn’t last. We all knew that.
But for now, it was real.
Eventually, the noise started to feel too loud. The pressure in my chest that had been easing since the beach shifted again and wanted something smaller.
I ducked my head toward Valkyrie’s ear.
“Come with me,” I murmured as I tugged her hand.
She arched a brow. “Demanding.”
“Requesting,” I corrected. “Politely. Before I go deaf.”
She smiled. “Okay.”
We slipped through the crowd, past Miami and Quinn—who were deeply involved in an argument about whether their future hypothetical children would be allowed on motorcycles—and out the side door that led to the little patch of concrete that passed for a back porch.
The door swung shut behind us.
The sound of the party muffled instantly. You could still hear it—bass, laughter, the clink of glass—but it was like it was happening behind a wall instead of in my bones.
Out here, the night was cooler. The moon hung lower than it had at the beach, fat and pale above the rooftops. The air tasted like salt and distant ocean instead of blood and death.
We leaned against the low metal rail that separated the back lot from the narrow alley, shoulders brushing.
For a minute, neither of us said anything.
I looked at her instead.
The light back here was mostly all moon. It caught in her hair, turning a few strands silver. It hit her eyes and did something I wasn’t prepared for—turning that familiar blue into something almost translucent.
The same moon that had watched Vladimir die in the sand was washed over her now and somehow made her look even more alive.
It was fucking beautiful.
She was fucking beautiful.
I knew, in the stupid, sudden way some things just land, that I was going to see this exact image in my head for the rest of my life. Her face tilted up, blue eyes catching moonlight, safe key glinting at her throat. The war behind us for the moment. More battles ahead.
“You planning on sharing what’s going on in that head of yours?”
“Thinking about the beach,” I said. “About the boardwalk. About that stack of patio chairs.”
Her mouth tugged up at one corner.
“King and Queen,” she said.
“Yeah,” I replied.
We’d been pinned down. Outnumbered. Trapped. We’d counted together. One, two, three. We’d decided that if we went out, we were going to do it on our feet, standing next to each other.
“We meant that, right?” I asked. “That wasn’t just the adrenaline talking?”
“I don’t say shit like that lightly,” she said. “Not in my clubhouse. Not in yours. Definitely not behind shitty patio furniture while people try to ventilate us.”
“That’s a high bar,” I said.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “It is.”
I took a breath. It didn’t stick in my throat the way it would have even a week ago.
“You quiet the noise,” she revealed.
I blinked. “What?”
“In my head,” she said. “It’s loud in there most days.
Responsibilities. Liberty. The girls. The compound.
The shit from before I ever picked up a patch.
” She shrugged her shoulders. “Then you walk into a room and it changes. Goes from static to something I can actually hear myself think through. I didn’t realize how much I needed that until it was there. ”
My chest did something tight and aching.
“You do the same thing,” I said. “I get so wrapped up in being the one who swings first, who takes hits so other people don’t have to, that I forget I’m allowed to want things too. You show up and suddenly I remember there’s more to this than just not dying.”
She huffed a small laugh. “We’re a mess,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “But we’re our mess.”
“You sure about this?” she asked quietly. “About me. About whatever comes with it. I’m not easy, Evan. I’m not soft. I’m not going to suddenly turn into Quinn. I have a club full of women who depend on me, and I’m not giving that up for anyone.”
“I don’t want you soft,” I said. “I don’t want you easy. I want you exactly how you are. The woman who walked into our Church and showed a room full of Devils that she wasn’t afraid of any of them.”
She smiled softly.
A silence then stretched, but it wasn’t empty.
A gust of wind passed and shifted her hair. I reached up, slowly. My fingers brushed her temple, guiding the strand of hair back off her face. My fingers then continued gently along the line of her jaw. Her eyes fluttered half shut, then opened again, locking on mine.
It was a small gesture. Stupid, almost. But it felt like it was truer than any other shot I fired tonight.
“This isn’t going to be simple,” she says.
“You know that. Different presidents. Different patches. Different territories. Liberty and Blackjack will back us, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be conflicts down the line.
Times when our clubs want different things.
Times when we’re on opposite ends of a decision. ”
“I know,” I say.
“And we’re in the middle of a war,” she continues. “Tesauro Vincino, the Bolivars, the Serpents, whoever else is hiding under their rock. Vladimir said this was just one hand. That there’s more cards on the table. More bodies waiting to drop.”
“I know,” I say again.
She searches my face as I take a breath.
I think about Raptor’s body on the club floor. About Miami, defenseless in a hospital bed with someone trying to finish the job. About Liberty’s girls riding through gunfire on splintering planks. About Gianna’s calm eyes while she drove a knife into a man she used to call uncle.
Then I think about the way Valkyrie laughed at the bar earlier, that quick, unguarded sound. The way her shoulders dropped when she saw Miami alive. The way she stood at my side on that boardwalk even when it was a bad bet with the odds stacked heavily against us.
“I’m done with simple. We might die next week. Tomorrow. In our sleep. On a run. In some stupid bar fight. I’d rather spend whatever time I have left knowing you’re mine and I’m yours instead of being too scared of logistics to claim it.”
Her eyes go dark and bright at the same time.
She swallows.
“Say it then,” she says.
I don’t need to ask what she means.
“Claim,” I say.
“Claim,” she repeats, voice a little rough.
Her hands come up, palms resting flat against my chest, feeling my heartbeat through leather and cotton and scar tissue.
“We ride side by side,” she says. “Through whatever this turns into. Darkness. Light. Asphalt. Ruin. Roman’s plays. Tesauro’s counterplays. Liberty’s schemes. Blackjack’s bullshit. All of it. You don’t get to shake me off when it gets hard.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” I say.
“And if our clubs end up on opposite sides of something someday…” She grimaces. “We talk first. We don’t let anyone else write our script.”
“Deal,” I say. “If it comes to that, we’ll figure it out. Together.”
She stares up at me for a long moment.
Then she nods.
“Okay,” she says.
That one word carried more weight than some vows I’d heard at weddings.
“Okay,” I echoed.
“Dramatic bitch,” she said.
“Still here,” I replied with a smirk.
We moved in at the same time.
The kiss out here was different from the one inside. Slower. Deeper. Less about proving something to a room and more about staking out some territory in each other we hadn’t quite dared to claim yet.
Her hands slid up over my chest, fingers curling into my cut, dragging me closer. Mine found her hips, then her back, holding her there like I was afraid she’d disappear if I loosened my grip.
She tasted like whiskey and a good decision. Underneath that was something that was just her.
When we finally broke apart, foreheads resting together, we were both breathing harder than the kiss alone justified.
We fell quiet again, just standing there, her back now pressed into my chest, my arms around her, both of us staring up at the same moon that had watched a man die on a beach and now watched two idiots in leather decide they wanted something beyond sheer survival.
Inside, someone shouted as a game of pool turned dramatic. A glass broke and was met with a chorus of “Fuck you!” and laughter. Music bled into the alley like a heartbeat.
Out here, everything felt suspended.
Tonight had gone… well, by our standards.
We’d walked into a half-built coffin and walked back out. We’d stopped a kidnapping. We helped Roman put his traitor in the ground and handed the old man a reason to turn his full attention on Tesauro.
We’d also painted a target bigger than ever on our own backs.
The Vincinos. The Bolivar Cartel. The Steel Serpents. They were all licking their wounds and counting their dead. Roman was sharpening his knives. The Vipers had just publicly tied themselves to us in a way you couldn’t untangle.
This was the tip of the iceberg.
More bodies were going to fall. More people were going to get caught in the crossfire. More nights like the one at The Black Velvet were waiting on the horizon, dressed up in different lights.
And then this?
This was the calm.
The breath between the blows.
Valkyrie’s fingers laced with mine, squeezing once.
“Think we get a few more nights like this before it all goes to shit?” she asked.
“I think we steal them when we can,” I said. “And when it does go to shit, we make sure we’re still standing in it. Together.”
She exhaled. “Deal.”
War doesn’t stop.
It’s not done with us. Not even close.
It doesn’t end clean, with a bullet in a traitor on a beach under the silver moonlight.
It just changes volume.
Tonight, it had whispered. Let us laugh. Let us kiss. Let us pretend we were just people in a bar instead of pieces on someone’s chess board.
Tomorrow?
Tomorrow it would turn the dial back up.
When it did, I’d be there.
With my brothers at my back.
With Valkyrie and her sisters at my side.
With blood on my hands and something worth bleeding for finally, and now fully claimed in my arms.
Whatever came next, we’d ride into it.
King and queen.
Devil and Viper.
Still standing.
Together.