“No.” Her face doesn’t change. “Why?” #3
That one gets through. Because I know she’s right.
I’ve seen it. The difference between Lexi being polite and Lexi settling. The difference between her taking direction from one of the women and instinctively reaching toward me when she’s tired or uncertain or carrying a toy she wants fixed.
Raven glances at Lexi, then back at me. “I don’t think she’s been this…easy with anybody new in a long time.”
There’s too much trust in that sentence. Too much weight.
I should probably hand it back. Tell her not to read into it. Tell her kids are weird. Tell her it doesn’t mean anything beyond proximity and timing.
Instead I hear myself say, “She’s easy to like.”
Raven goes still.
Not because I’ve said anything outrageous. Because I’ve said something honest. And honesty has gotten harder to avoid around her.
Her gaze drops for half a second, and when it comes back up, there’s something new in it.
Warmth. Worry. Maybe both.
“Yeah,” she says quietly. “She is.”
I leave after that because staying would mean standing in a room too small for the amount of feeling suddenly crowding it.
I head outside, cutting around the far side of the clubhouse where the light from the porch doesn’t quite reach.
The air is cooler now, night settled in fully, tree line dark and still around the property.
Somewhere out front, voices carry from the main group of brothers drinking and talking shit near the bikes, but back here it’s quiet enough to hear my own breathing.
I lean against the wall and drag a hand over my face. The night smells like cut grass, smoke, gasoline, and summer humidity.
For a minute, I just stand there.
Let the dark press in around the edges. Let the memory I’ve been holding back all damn day catch up enough to sting.
My sister’s face never comes back cleanly when I want it to. That’s the problem.
Grief doesn’t work like a movie. It doesn’t line itself up in neat, mournful scenes.
It hits in pieces. A laugh that sounds wrong because hers used to be higher.
A tiny hand on your finger in a hallway.
The weight of a sleepy child against your shoulder.
A cartoon voice in the distance that shoves a crack in the wall whether you wanted one there or not.
Tonight it’s the hand. That tiny trusting grip that felt so fucking familiar it made my chest ache.
I tip my head back against the siding and close my eyes for a second. Not long enough to get lost in it. Just enough to let the hurt move through instead of pretending it isn’t there.
She would’ve been grown by now. That thought comes uninvited and mean.
Would’ve had her own life. Her own disasters. Maybe kids. Maybe some asshole boyfriend I would’ve had to threaten for sport. Maybe nothing like that at all. Doesn’t matter. She would’ve had more. That’s the point.
Instead, all I get are scraps.
And now there’s this kid in my hallway and on my shoulder and in my goddamn head, brushing right up against old scar tissue like she can’t tell the difference between fresh and buried.
I laugh once under my breath, no humor in it. “Perfect,” I mutter.
Because of course this is how it happens. Not with some dramatic revelation. Not with one big moment.
Just a hundred little ones that keep landing harder until suddenly I’m standing outside a clubhouse at night realizing the line moved a while ago and I was too busy pretending not to care to notice.
I am already thinking about Raven and Lexi as my responsibility.
Not Logan’s. Not the chapter’s.
Mine.
That truth settles into place so cleanly it almost makes me angry.
Because it’s irrational. Because it’s too fast. Because there is no world where picking up a woman and her daughter for a six-hour night drive is supposed to end with me recalibrating my whole damn protective instinct around them.
And yet.
The chapter is housing them.
Fine.
The chapter owes Grinder.
Fine.
The chapter would absolutely protect them because that’s what we do.
Also fine.
But that’s not what this is anymore and I know it.
Because the chapter isn’t the one who knows which cereal Lexi likes, how Raven takes her coffee, which floorboard in the downstairs hall creaks loudest outside their room, or how many times Raven checks the locks when she thinks nobody’s watching.
I know those things.
I’m the one watching. I’m the one adjusting cameras and checking windows and mentally cataloging who gets too close and how fast I can correct the mistake. I’m the one who heard “Carry” and moved before her mother could answer.
Mine doesn’t mean ownership. It means responsibility. It means if something comes through that gate looking for them, it’s getting me first. And for reasons I’m not ready to unpack, that thought feels less like a burden than it should.
I push off the wall eventually and head back toward the light, because standing out here all night like a miserable bastard isn’t going to solve anything.
But the realization follows me inside anyway.
Raven and Lexi aren’t just under this roof.
They’re under mine.
And I’m already acting like it.