Chapter 32 #2
The words land hard.
Blaze’s expression shifts first, some of the bullshit dropping away long enough to reveal the man underneath it.
Shadow’s face doesn’t change at all. That somehow says more.
“Pretty sure she already loves you too much for that,” Blaze says after a second.
I look at him.
He shrugs. “What? She does. She just hasn’t caught up to how fucked she is.”
That almost pulls a laugh out of me.
Shadow pushes off the bench and crosses his arms. “You can’t solve what happened in the kitchen with more security.”
“I know.”
“You also can’t back all the way off just because she hit a nerve.”
I know that too. That’s the problem. I know all of it and still don’t know where the line is between keeping her alive and making her feel watched into a panic spiral every time I tighten the net around her.
“I don’t know how to do both,” I admit finally.
The words feel ugly in my mouth.
Weak, maybe.
Shadow doesn’t flinch from them.
Neither does Blaze.
“Then you do what you’ve been doing,” Shadow says. “You keep her breathing and you let her yell at you when the fear scrapes her wrong.”
“That sounds shitty.”
“Yeah,” Blaze says. “Love usually is at first.”
I stare at him.
He lifts one shoulder. “What? I contain multitudes.”
The point lands.
Because maybe that’s all there is right now.
No perfect answer. No clean way through. Just staying in it long enough for both truths to exist at the same time:
She needs protection. She hates what protection feels like when it brushes old wounds. And if I’m really hers and she’s really mine and this thing between us is as permanent as I’m starting to think it is, then maybe surviving that contradiction together is the job.
Maybe that’s the whole damn thing.
I scrub a hand over my face and let out a long breath. “She said she knew I wasn’t him.”
Shadow nods. “Believe her.”
“I do.”
Blaze’s voice goes quieter than usual when he says, “Then believe the other part too.”
I glance at him.
He tips his chin toward the clubhouse. “Her body remembered. That ain’t the same as her heart doubting you.”
That one lands deep. Maybe because it’s true. Maybe because I needed somebody else to say it before I let myself fully trust it.
Either way, I stand there in the hot little garage with my brothers and the oil smell and the fan rattling in the corner, and I decide something.
I’m not backing off completely. I’m not crowding her either.
I’m going to keep the net tight. I’m going to stop making her feel it every second if I can help it.
And I’m going to let her come back to me on her own terms before I try to fix what happened with words that won’t matter half as much as consistency will.
That’s the best I’ve got.
It’ll have to be enough.
For now.
The next two hours disappear into work.
Useful work. Deliberate work. The kind that keeps my hands occupied and my head from slipping back into the kitchen every ten minutes.
I reassign two prospects to the south edge where the tree cover’s thickest. I have Cain add another internal rotation to keep eyes on the women and kids without making it obvious enough to feel like a prison guard setup.
I coordinate with Dom on check-in intervals for the town eyes and make sure he’s pulling every traffic camera ping he can get without tripping official attention.
Logan takes chapter-level control the way he always does when things start turning from messy into dangerous. He doesn’t bark. Doesn’t posture. He just makes decisions and the whole machine shifts around them.
By early evening, we’ve got extra patrols, wider surveillance, rotating bikes on the roads in and out of town, three new eyes in places nobody would look twice at, and enough contingency routes mapped out to move Raven and Lexi off property inside four minutes if we absolutely have to.
Still doesn’t feel like enough. It never does when the thing you’re protecting has a face.
The sun’s almost fully down by the time I finally circle back inside.
I haven’t seen Raven since the fight. Not properly.
Caught sight of her once through the common room window, sitting with Lexi in her lap while Emma talked to her low and soft enough that I knew better than to interrupt.
That helped. And hurt. And settled nothing.
I tell myself I’ll go to her once I’ve checked the final camera sweep with Dom.
Once I’ve seen the gate myself. Once I’ve confirmed the rotation at the back lot. Once I’ve put one more practical step between me and the fact that I miss her like something got physically cut off my body when I left that kitchen.
Cowardly.
True.
I’m halfway down the back hall when Dom steps out of Logan’s office and says my name in the kind of flat, urgent tone that makes every muscle in my body lock before my brain even catches up.
“What?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Just holds up his phone.
On the screen is a still frame from one of the road cameras. White SUV. Parked at an angle on the shoulder by Miller’s Bend, just outside the range of the main property line but close enough to matter. Driver’s side door open. Two men.
One of them is on the phone. The other is looking through binoculars toward the tree line.
I don’t ask how recent it is.
Dom answers anyway. “Thirty-seven seconds ago.”
Everything in me goes very, very still. Not the hurt now. Not the fear. Not the confusion.
Just the cold. The useful kind. The violent kind.
The kind that strips everything down to instinct and action and makes you grateful for all the pain you shoved into work instead of bleeding it onto the people you love.
“Who’s on the line?” I ask.
Dom’s fingers move over the screen, zooming. “Can’t confirm. But Logan already has Shadow and Blaze moving. Cain’s locking internal positions.”
Good. Perfect.
I look past him toward the common room where I know Raven and Lexi are still somewhere inside the belly of this building, still breathing, still unaware that the impact I’ve been feeling all day just finally showed its face.
Before I can move, my phone vibrates in my cut.
Unknown number.
I already know who it is before I answer. The second I put it to my ear, I go still in that deep, cold way that means whatever happens next is going to end in blood. “Yeah.”
For a second, all I get is static and the low sound of a man breathing like he’s got nowhere better to be. Then his voice slides through the line smooth as oil and twice as filthy. “So you’re the one playing house with my wife.”
Every muscle in my body locks so hard it feels like my bones might crack under the strain.
Cal.
No question now. No maybe. No theory. No guesswork.
The real thing. And somehow his voice is even worse than I expected.
Not loud. Not unhinged. Not screaming like some sloppy bastard who lost control of his life and wants to blame everybody else for it.
No.
He sounds calm. Pleasant, almost. Like he’s making a business call instead of talking about the woman he terrorized like she was an object he forgot at somebody else’s house.
That alone makes my vision go dangerously sharp.
I don’t speak right away. I let the silence sit there. Let him hear exactly how little of a reaction he’s getting.
Eventually, he chuckles low under his breath like he thinks that means something. “Not much of a talker, huh?” he says. “That what she likes about you? Big, quiet, stupid enough to mistake somebody else’s mess for your problem?”
I lean one shoulder against the wall outside Logan’s office and force my breathing to stay even.
Because if I let myself picture Raven hearing this man’s voice right now, I’m going to walk straight out of this building and start shooting at shadows until I find the right one.
“You got thirty seconds,” I say flatly. “Use them well.”
He laughs. The sound of it crawls straight up my spine. “Touchy,” he says. “I’d ask if she told you I don’t like other men touching what’s mine, but I’m guessing you’ve already figured out she’s not real good at following instructions.”
My jaw locks so hard it hurts.
There’s a flicker of movement in the hall where Dom’s still standing close enough to read my face and know exactly who’s on the line. He doesn’t interrupt.
Good.
Because right now, if anyone breathes wrong in my direction, I might shoot.
Cal keeps going like he’s enjoying himself. “Tell me something,” he says casually. “Does she still twist that ring finger when she’s nervous?”
The question lands like a blade. Not because it surprises me. Because I’ve seen it. Seen her thumb rub the bare skin where a ring used to sit. Seen her do it when she’s scared, cornered, trying to convince herself she’s okay when she’s not.
And the fact that he knows it too, that he knows her body well enough to recognize the damage he built into it, makes something ugly and ancient rise in my chest.
“She’s not yours,” I say. The words come out low. Controlled. Murderously calm.
He makes a soft, amused sound. “That’s cute.”
Cute.
My hand tightens around the phone until the plastic creaks.
“I married her,” he says. “That makes her mine in every way that matters.”
That one nearly strips the skin off my restraint. I push off the wall and pace two steps down the hall, needing movement before I put my fist through drywall and ruin Logan’s property for no reason.
“You married a woman,” I say, voice rougher now, “not a fucking dog.”
He hums like he’s considering it. “You bikers always this emotional?”
“You always this stupid?”
That gets a little laugh out of him too.
Then his voice shifts just enough to lose some of the false warmth.
“She embarrasses me,” he says. The words are quiet.
Matter-of-fact. And somehow that’s worse than yelling ever could’ve been.
“She runs off with my kid, hides behind criminals, makes me waste time and resources tracking down a woman who should’ve known better than to make this difficult. ”
My entire body goes still again. Not because I’m calm. Because rage just moved from hot to lethal.
My kid.
There it is.