Chapter 32
The second Allison’s text comes through, every part of me that still knows how to think stops being in charge.
It isn’t dramatic. It isn’t loud. It’s just immediate. Cold. Clean.
The kind of shift that happens when something in you decides all at once that whatever came before this moment no longer matters as much as what happens next.
I’m in the garage with Cain and Joker when my phone buzzes. We’d been halfway through talking logistics for the weekend handoff, standing over a workbench with a map spread out between us and a list of times, routes, and plate numbers I should’ve been paying more attention to.
Instead, my eyes hit Allison’s name on the screen, and the world narrows down to that one message.
Allie: Leaving now. Blaze is with me. I’m okay.
No.
No, she is not.
I know it before I even text back.
Know it in my bones. Know it in the way she wrote I’m okay when she never says that unless she thinks she has to. Know it in the fact that Blaze is there. Know it in the fact that the second message follows the first like she knew I’d already be coming apart.
I text her before I’m even fully aware of moving.
Me: Where are you?
My voice cuts through the garage before either Cain or Joker can ask what’s wrong. “Keys.”
Cain doesn’t ask why.
That’s what I love most about this club and hate most in moments like this. The men around me know the difference between curiosity and urgency, and when something in my tone hits wrong enough, they stop wasting time on the first one.
Joker tosses my keys across the workbench. I catch them one-handed.My phone buzzes again.
Allie: Coffee shop on main. I’m heading back now
Then another.
Allie: Jimmy please don’t overreact
Too late.
I text it back before my brain can think about whether I should.
Me: Too late
Cain is already moving.
Joker too.
“What happened?” Cain asks, voice flat in that dangerous way his gets when he’s keeping it together on purpose.
“I don’t know yet.”
That’s true. Technically.
But my body’s already working with a much uglier version of the answer than facts are likely to give me.
Because Drew.
Because I knew. Because every instinct I had about letting her go near him alone has been trying to claw through my skin all goddamn day.
Because if Blaze just happened to be there and Allison still felt the need to text me I’m okay, then something happened bad enough that she knew I’d lose my whole damn mind if she didn’t soften it first.
And if she’s softening it?
It’s worse.
Joker falls into step with me as we head for the garage doors. “You want Logan?”
“Not yet.”
Cain grabs his cut off the hook by the side entrance. “You sure?”
No. Not even a little. Because if this is what I think it is, Logan’s going to be the least of Drew’s problems once the room knows.
So I force air into my lungs and say, “I want eyes on her first.”
Cain nods once. Joker says nothing. But they both keep moving with me, which is answer enough.
I’m about to get on my bike when Logan comes out of the clubhouse, “Jimmy”
I shake my head, “it has to wait.”
“No.” Logan’s voice cracks. “They’re on their way back. I just talked to Blaze.”
I climb off the bike irritated as fuck. “Why didn’t he call me then?”
Logan smirks, “cause he knew your stubborn ass wouldn’t listen, They’ll be here in five.”
My hands fist at my sides, minutes feel like hours. By the time Allison’s car pulls in just as Blaze’s bike pulls in behind her I’m ready to snap.
The second I see her get out of the driver’s seat, the entire world tilts.
Because she’s walking. Because she’s upright. Because thank God for that.
And because even from twenty feet away, I can see she is not okay.
Her face is too pale. Her mouth is pressed tight in the way it gets when she’s trying very hard not to let whatever she’s feeling show too much. And when she closes the car door, she does it one-handed because her other arm is held just slightly away from her body like she’s guarding it.
Something savage wakes up in me so fast I have to physically stop myself from heading straight back to town and putting Drew through a plate glass window.
“Allie.” The word rips out of me before I’m even all the way to her.
She looks up. And the second her eyes hit mine, I know.
Not because she says anything. Because she doesn’t.
Because she goes softer for half a second.
Because some of that braced, held-together tension in her face gives the second she sees me and knows she doesn’t have to keep it locked down alone anymore.
That does something ugly and protective and violent to my insides all at once.
I get to her in three strides and stop myself half an inch before my hands hit her, because I don’t know where she’s hurt yet and I’ll die before I put a hand on something that’s already been roughed up. “You okay?”
It’s a stupid question.
I know it as soon as it leaves my mouth.
She huffs the tiniest laugh, tired and shaky. “You really have to stop asking me that like I’m ever going to answer it honestly right away.”
That nearly kills me.
Because even now, even like this, she’s trying to make it lighter for me.
“Tell me anyway,” I say, voice rough enough that Joker and Cain both go very still behind me.
Her throat works once. Then she nods, but it’s weak and automatic and not an answer I’m willing to accept.
My eyes drop to her arms first, because she’s still holding one differently, and the second I see her wrist, something in me goes black around the edges.
Bruising is already blooming there.
Angry. Purple-red. Clear enough that I can see the imprint of fingertips around the inside and side of her wrist like some motherfucker reached for her and decided he had the right to leave a mark.
For one second, I can’t breathe.
I just stare at it. At his hand on her. At the proof. At the fact that while I was standing in a garage trying to do the normal, useful, responsible version of my life, some other man put his hands on my girl hard enough to leave bruises.
My hands curl into fists so hard my nails bite my palms.
“Jimmy,” Cain says quietly behind me.
Not to calm me down.
To remind me where I am. To remind me I still have choices here. Not many. But some.
I drag my gaze up to her face again. “What happened?”
Her eyes flick over my shoulder toward Blaze first.
Because she’s not stupid. Because she knows if she says this wrong, I’m gone.
Blaze steps in before she has to carry it alone. “Coffee shop,” he says. “She tried to end it. He ran his mouth, got ugly, knocked the coffee down, grabbed her. I was there.”
I turn my head just enough to look at him.
His face is flat. Controlled. But I know him well enough now to hear the violence under it. “When he grabbed her,” Blaze adds, “he wouldn’t let go.”
I don’t answer.
Because if I open my mouth right now, I’m either going to start roaring or throw up from the force of everything happening in my chest at once.
Instead I look back at Allison and say, as evenly as I can, “Leg.”
She blinks. “What?”
“You’re holding yourself weird.” My voice drops lower. “Your leg.”
Some part of me must still sound like VP instead of a half-feral man on the edge of murder, because she doesn’t argue.
She just shifts the hem of her shorts enough for me to see the skin along her thigh and shin.
The burn isn’t huge.
It doesn’t need to be.
The skin is red and angry in a splattered line where hot coffee hit bare skin hard enough to make her yelp in a packed coffee shop.
And I know exactly how it happened before she tells me, because I can picture the coffee getting knocked over. Can picture her jumping back. Can picture his hand shooting out after her.
My whole body goes rigid. I look back at Allison and force my voice lower, steadier, even though every part of me feels like it’s two seconds from snapping clean in half. “What happened?”
Her eyes flick to Blaze first, then back to me.
“He got mad,” she says quietly. “I told him it was over, and he—” She swallows once, jaw tightening. “He got ugly fast.”
My gaze drops to her wrist again, to the bruising already darkening under her skin, and something in me goes cold and mean. “He did that?”
She nods.
“Knocked the coffee over too,” Blaze says from beside me. “It hit her legs. Then he grabbed her when she tried to leave.”
I’m already losing my mind, already standing on the edge of the kind of violence that makes men regret being born, and then Allison says, voice thinner now, “He texted me after.”
That gets my full attention so fast it almost hurts. “What?”
Her fingers tighten around her phone. She looks down at it like she hates the thing, then unlocks it with a hand that’s not as steady as she wants it to be. “He sent this.”
She turns the screen toward me.
I read the words once. Then again.
You’ll regret embarrassing me like that.
For one suspended second, I don’t hear anybody breathe.
I don’t hear the lot. I don’t hear the garage behind me. I don’t hear the clubhouse door opening as the women start spilling outside.
All I see is that text.
That threat.
That cowardly, ugly little warning from a man who put his hands on her and still thought he had the right to scare her after.
My whole body locks. Not hot this time. Cold. The kind of cold that strips everything down to one clean, brutal instinct.
Cain mutters, “Motherfucker.”
Blaze goes still beside us.
And Allison looks up at me with that same braced expression she’s had since she stepped out of the car, like she’s waiting to see if I’m about to explode so hard I make this worse before she even gets inside.
That alone nearly kills me.
Because she shouldn’t have to manage me right now. She shouldn’t have to soften any of this. She shouldn’t have to stand here with a bruise blooming on her wrist and coffee burns on her legs and still think about keeping me from doing something reckless.
I drag in one hard breath and look at her instead of the phone. “You should’ve called me sooner.”