Chapter 11
The problem with history is that it doesn’t stay where you put it.
It should.
That’s the deal, isn’t it? Something happens, it hurts, time passes, and eventually it settles into the part of your life you only visit when you mean to.
A memory becomes a story. A wound becomes a scar.
A mistake becomes something you can shake your head at and laugh over later because it doesn’t own any part of you anymore.
That’s how it should work.
It does not, apparently, work that way with Jimmy Baker.
Because all it takes is one stupid fight at Ambrosia, one sharp look, one rough question asked in a voice that still gets under my skin, and suddenly I’m right back there.
Right back in that dark stretch behind the clubhouse, with summer air sticking to my skin and his mouth on mine and my whole stupid heart opening like it thinks this time is finally going to be different.
It never is.
I should’ve gone home after I left Ambrosia.
That would’ve been the smart thing to do.
Get in my car, drive back to my place, wash my face, crawl into bed, and let the humiliation burn itself out in private.
Instead, I end up at the clubhouse because muscle memory is stronger than dignity and because the clubhouse has always been the place I come when I’m too full of something to sit with it alone.
The parking lot is crowded when I pull in, bikes lined up in a jagged row near the side and a couple of trucks taking up the rest of the gravel.
The front porch light is already on, warm gold washing over the railing and the old wooden steps where we all used to sit when we were kids, and music drifts out faintly through the half-open front door.
Not loud enough for a party, just enough to fill the quiet spaces between voices inside.
I sit behind the wheel for a second longer than I need to.
My hands are still wrapped too tight around it.
I can still feel where Jimmy grabbed my wrist, quick and instinctive and gone just as fast, and the worst part is not that it made me angry.
The worst part is that it made me feel everything all over again.
The fight. The charge in the air. The way his eyes looked when I asked him why he cared and he couldn’t answer me.
Or wouldn’t.
I blow out a breath and force my fingers to loosen. Then I get out of the car and head inside before I can talk myself out of it.
The common room is calmer than it was earlier.
Softer. The kind of evening quiet that settles over the clubhouse after dinner when everybody’s spread out and worn down enough to stop trying so hard.
The television is on low in one corner, ignored.
A couple of brothers I don’t pay much attention to are posted up at the far card table with beers and a deck between them.
Someone’s kid left a stuffed rabbit on the floor by the couch.
The air smells like barbecue, detergent, and the last of the coffee Aunt Lucy made after dinner.
Brooke’s on the sectional with her feet up and a blanket over her legs, one hand absently rubbing slow circles over the curve of her stomach while Carter sits on the ottoman in front of her pretending not to hover.
Mac’s in the armchair nearest the fireplace, one leg crossed over the other, a book open in her lap even though I’d bet money she’s only read half a page in the last ten minutes because Logan keeps glancing up from his phone to ask her if she needs anything.
Kya’s sprawled out on the loveseat with Dom’s hoodie on over leggings and a tank, looking deeply annoyed at the world while eating dry cereal straight out of the box.
Normal. Comforting. Family.
For one second, just seeing them eases some of the hard knot under my ribs.
Then Brooke looks up, spots me in the doorway, and her face immediately shifts. “There you are,” she says. “We were starting to think you went home.”
“I thought about it.”
Brooke smiles softly. “You look pretty.”
I bark out a short laugh. “That’s because the lighting in here is forgiving.”
Mac lifts her eyes from the book and studies me for exactly one beat too long.
That’s all it takes with her. Mac doesn’t ask pointless questions.
She doesn’t poke around for the fun of it.
She just looks at you in that quiet, terrifying way and somehow makes you feel like she already knows exactly what shape your bad decisions take.
I hold her gaze just long enough to prove I’m not afraid of it.
She arches one brow, then flips a page she definitely still hasn’t been reading.
“You eat?” Kya asks around a mouthful of cereal.
“At Ambrosia.”
“Was it good?”
I think about vodka, irritation, Jimmy’s hand around my wrist, and the sick little ache I’ve been carrying ever since. “Not really.”
Kya squints at me. “That sounds suspicious.”
“Everything sounds suspicious to you.”
“Because everybody around me is dumb.”
“That’s not true,” Dom says from the far end of the couch, where he’s trying to assemble something made of plastic and metal that I’m guessing came out of one of the million baby boxes currently taking over the downstairs.
Kya points a cereal piece at him without even looking. “You googled whether my craving for pickles and peanut butter meant the baby was going to be left-handed.”
Dom doesn’t look embarrassed enough. “I was being thorough.”
Logan laughs from the arm of Mac’s chair.
Mac doesn’t even look up from her book when she says, “Careful.”
His laughter dies immediately.
I smile despite myself and move farther into the room. “You’re all ridiculous.”
“And yet here you are,” Brooke says.
And yet here I am.
That’s the thing, isn’t it? No matter how old we get, no matter how many houses or jobs or separate lives start pulling us outward, this place still works like gravity.
The clubhouse calls us back in. To each other.
To the same people who’ve watched us become ourselves whether we wanted witnesses or not.
I head for the kitchen mostly because I need something to do with my hands. Mom’s there, rinsing dishes at the sink while Aunt Lucy dries them and puts them away, the two of them moving around each other in the easy choreography of women who’ve spent half their lives doing this together.
Mom glances over her shoulder when I walk in. “Hey, baby.”
There it is.
That one word in her voice that still makes me feel younger than I am. “Hey.”
Aunt Lucy smiles. “You hungry?”
“No, ma’am.”
She narrows her eyes. “You sure? There’s still potato salad.”
I laugh softly. “I’m sure.”
Mom studies me for a second, then picks up the stack of cleaned plates and hands them to Aunt Lucy instead of me, which is her subtle way of deciding not to question me in front of anyone else yet.
Smart woman.
She knows me too well.
I grab a bottle of water out of the fridge and lean against the counter while they finish up.
The kitchen is warm from dinner cleanup, the overhead light softer than the one in the common room, and for a second I let myself sink into the familiar comfort of it.
Mom humming under her breath while she rinses a bowl.
Aunt Lucy swearing quietly at a stubborn cabinet drawer.
The distant sound of Logan and Dom bickering about whether they missed a step in whatever baby contraption they’re trying to put together.
It should settle me.
Instead my mind drifts again.
Back. Always back. To that night.
It’s been years, and I still remember every piece of it like my body recorded it separately from my brain and never got the memo that we were supposed to move on.
It was after one of the club parties.
The sticky summer air. The low bass of music from the outdoor speakers. The way the yard glowed under strings of lights and firepit embers and porch lamps.
And Jimmy.
Of course I remember Jimmy.
He’d been drinking. Not sloppy. I’d been pretending to be tipsy too.
That’s the embarrassing part nobody ever says out loud, not even in your own head if you can help it.
I wasn’t drunk. I just wanted an excuse.
An excuse to stay close without it feeling obvious. An excuse to be a little slower with my reactions, a little softer around the edges. An excuse to tell myself later that if something happened, maybe it had only happened because we were both a little off-balance.
Which is pathetic, yes, but so was I where Jimmy was concerned.
By then I knew better.
I knew he still put me in the same box he always had. Torch and Tracie’s daughter. Ana’s best friend. The girl who’d always been around. Familiar enough to protect. Off-limits enough not to touch.
And still, I wanted him.
Wanted him so long and so quietly that some days it felt less like a crush and more like a chronic condition.
At some point later in the night, after most of the guys had gone inside or drifted toward the back firepit, I found him leaning against the side of the clubhouse near the bike line, one hand braced on the brick and the other around the neck of a beer bottle.
He looked up when I came around the corner. That look still lives under my skin. His eyes had gone heavy-lidded and warm, his mouth tipped in the faintest hint of a smile like he was trying to place me through the haze of whiskey and noise and night air. “Allie-girl,” he’d said.
And just like that, I was gone. Not that I hadn’t already been.
“I think you’re cut off,” I told him, trying for teasing and landing somewhere dangerously close to breathless.
He laughed, low and rough. “You offering to save me?”
I should’ve walked away. Instead, I stepped closer. I took the bottle from his hand and set it on the low brick ledge beside him because that gave me something to do besides stand there and shake.
He let me. And that was the first mistake. The second one was staying when he didn’t move away.