22. MARCY
MARCY
Isink deeper into the plush lounge chair, cucumber slices over my eyes, a warm lavender towel wrapped around my head like a crown. The scent of eucalyptus drifts through the air, and soft acoustic music plays in the background like we’re in a commercial for luxury and self-care.
Bianca’s stretched out next to me, sipping some sort of cucumber-mint-green thing in a fancy glass that makes her look far more civilized than she actually is.
“This is the life,” she sighs. “I may never return to the outside world.”
I lift a corner of my towel and peek at her. “You said that at the mud bath, too.”
“And I meant it. I stand by it.”
I smile, but it doesn’t reach all the way to my eyes. Something’s off. Not with the spa—it’s perfect. But with… everything else.
I shift, reaching for my phone from the side table. No new messages. Not from CJ. Not from Hawk. Not from Ryder.
Not even a single emoji.
“Hmm,” I murmur.
Bianca glances over, already knowing. “You thinking about them?”
I don’t answer right away. Instead, I check the signal—full bars. My battery’s fine, too. So why haven’t they texted?
“Just… weird,” I say softly. “They usually check in.”
Bianca takes another sip of her drink and raises one perfectly waxed eyebrow. “You do realize you’re being massaged, steamed, polished, and pampered at a five-star spa while wrapped in towels that cost more than my rent. This is not the time for brooding.”
I huff. “I’m not brooding.”
“You’re ‘Quiet Marcy,’” she says. “Which is your version of a panic spiral.”
I open my mouth to argue, then close it. Damn her for knowing me so well.
“I just haven’t heard from them all day,” I admit. “Usually, Hawk sends a dumb meme by now. Ryder checks if I ate. CJ… he’s never silent this long.”
Bianca sits up slightly, setting her drink aside. “Okay. Let’s go through the possibilities.”
“Bi—”
“No, hear me out,” she says, holding up a finger. “Option one: they’re planning some super-secret sexy surprise for you and can’t text.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Option two: they’re working. Like actual adults. Who do adult things. With bikes and tools and fire or whatever you people do.”
“And option three?” I ask, even though I’m already smiling.
“Option three: you’re just really hot, and they all passed out from horniness and haven’t regained consciousness yet.”
I laugh, loud and genuine, finally relaxing a little. “Right. Obviously.”
She beams. “See? Mood fixed. Now put your phone down, close your eyes, and let the fancy oils do their thing. If something was wrong, they’d let you know. You’re not just dating these guys, Marce. They worship the ground you walk on.”
I nod slowly, slipping the phone back into my robe pocket. She’s probably right. Probably.
The conversation drifts like the steam in the spa room—light, bubbly, and full of nonsense. Bianca’s recounting a dramatic dating story involving a guy who claimed he owned a yacht but actually lived in his mom’s garage.
I laugh so hard, I nearly spill my herbal tea. “I swear, only you meet these men.”
“I attract chaos,” she says proudly. “It’s a gift.”
I’m finally starting to relax again, tension slipping from my shoulders. The oils, the scrubs, the facials—hell, even the stupid cucumber water—it’s working. I let myself melt into the moment.
Bianca sips her second cucumber mocktail and sighs. “God, I needed this. I’m so bloated lately, I feel like I’m three days from turning into a balloon animal.”
“Period?” I ask casually.
She groans. “Yeah. Started this morning. I swear, I could smell the chocolate in the gift shop from a mile away.”
I chuckle. “That’s your mutant power. Super-sniffing sugar during PMS.”
She smirks, then eyes me over the rim of her glass. “Wait… speaking of periods. You got yours this month?”
The question is casual. Offhand. The kind of thing best friends throw around like candy.
But my brain? Stops. Cold.
My laugh dies in my throat.
Bianca keeps talking, unaware. “Because usually, we’re off by like three or four days max. I remember last time we synced at your place when we were watching that trashy dating show?—”
“I haven’t,” I say quietly.
She pauses. “What?”
I look at her. “I haven’t gotten mine. Not last month. I think not even the month before that, either.”
She sets her drink down. “Marcy.”
I try to play it off. “Things have been chaotic! The bar, the guys, moving, ugh.”
Bianca leans forward. “You’ve also been sick for a week. Nauseous, moody, dizzy. Marcy.”
My mouth goes dry. My heart thuds. “I thought it was food poisoning.”
“Maybe it is,” she says gently. “Or maybe…”
“Crap,” I whisper.
Because I hadn’t thought of that. Because I should have thought of that.
We’re in a pharmacy twenty minutes later.
I’ve still got a little spa oil behind my ears, and my nails are pristine, but my hands are shaking as I grab a box—no, three boxes—of pregnancy tests from the shelf like they might self-destruct if I touch them too slowly.
Bianca’s right beside me, calm as ever. “Triple-check it. Different brands. Same science, but you know. Just in case the universe is feeling extra unpredictable today.”
We check out in awkward silence, the poor teenage cashier pretending not to glance at the stack of pink and white boxes as I fumble with my card. Five minutes later, we’re back at Bianca’s apartment.
I’m pacing. She’s tearing open the boxes.
And now… it’s time.
We go into the bathroom—together, like some weird sacred ritual—and I take the tests like a soldier going into battle.
Ten minutes later, the sticks are lined up on the edge of the sink. I sit on the closed toilet lid, arms wrapped around my knees, heart hammering so loud, I can hear it.
Bianca looks at the timer on her phone, then down at the tests. Her breath catches.
I know the answer before she says it.
“All three,” she whispers. “They’re all positive.”
For a beat, the room is silent. Then my mind explodes.
“No. No, that—that can’t be right,” I blurt out, jumping to my feet. “I mean, I was sick. Stress-sick. Stress makes your cycle late. Maybe these are defective?—”
Bianca grabs my arms, gently. “They’re not.”
I shake my head. “I got caught up in it. I wasn’t thinking about consequences.”
Panic tears through my chest like wildfire. I walk out of the bathroom, pacing the living room barefoot, rubbing my temples like that’ll stop the spiraling thoughts.
“I can’t be pregnant,” I moan. “Not now. Not like this. I mean, everything is upside down?—”
“Marcy,” Bianca says, cutting me off. Her voice is soft but firm.
I freeze.
She walks up to me and hands me one of the tests. The tiny word glows back at me.
Pregnant.
“Breathe,” she says.
I’m still staring at the pregnancy test in my hand, like the word might magically change if I blink long enough.
Pregnant. It’s still there. It’s not the universe playing some cruel joke.
It’s not a maybe. Not a faint line.
I sit down on Bianca’s couch, one hand resting instinctively on my belly, the other bracing myself against the cushions as the weight of it all sinks in. My breath slows. I’m not calm, exactly, but beginning to steady myself.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay… I can do this.”
Bianca sits beside me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “Whatever happens, Marce, you’re not doing this alone.”
And for the first time since my life went up in flames, I believe her.
Then my phone buzzes. A message.
Dad.
I shouldn’t open it. I know better.
But I do.
Told you they were trouble. Chase and Ryder are in custody. You should come home before you get dragged down with them.
My breath catches. I read it again. Then again.
The floor drops out beneath me.
“No,” I whisper. “No, no… what?”
Bianca snatches the phone from my hands, reads the message, and curses under her breath. “What the hell?”
“I—I just saw them yesterday. They were fine.” My hands tremble as I pull up a browser. News alerts are already swarming with photos of The Den being raided, headlines with words like trafficking, possession, and federal agents swarming MC headquarters.
And CJ and Ryder’s names. Right there, in bold.
Everything inside me unravels.
Bianca puts both hands on my shoulders. “We need to go. Now.”
We’re in her car five minutes later, racing toward The Den. I barely register the turns, the stoplights, the world outside the window. It’s all a blur.
The Den doesn’t look like a war zone anymore. No yellow tape. No flashing lights. No officers swarming the lot.
But the quiet? It’s worse.
That kind of silence doesn’t come after peace. It comes after something’s been gutted.
Bianca slowly pulls into the parking lot, headlights cutting through the early evening haze. I lean forward in my seat, scanning for anything. Anyone.
It’s not until we’re parked and out of the car that I really see it.
The building looks the same—same brick walls, same big rusted devil’s head mounted above the door—but the energy is all wrong. It’s hollow. Like the soul of the place’s been ripped out and shoved into a holding cell.
The front door is half-shut, one hinge creaking as the breeze brushes it open just a little. A couple of bikes sit out front, neither of them familiar.
My stomach sinks.
We step out of the car, gravel crunching beneath our shoes. There’s no music playing. No laughter. Just a dim porch light buzzing overhead like a warning sign.
“Are you sure we should be here?” Bianca murmurs beside me.
“I don’t care,” I whisper. “I need to know something. Anything.”
We approach the door, and that’s when I spot him.
Cross. A low-level patched-in Devil. Tall, buzzcut, arms crossed in front of his chest like he’s part of the building itself. There’s something harder in his face than I remember. Less amused, more… on edge.
He doesn’t move as we get closer.
“Cross,” I say. “Where are they?”
He stares. “Marcy.”
He’s not cold, but he’s not warm, either.
“I need to know. CJ. Ryder. They were arrested. Where are they being held?”
His jaw ticks. “Taken to another county for processing.”
“Where?” I press. “Are they okay? Are they together?”
“I don’t know more than that.”
I blink, stepping forward. “Where’s Hawk? Is he?—”
“Don’t,” Cross cuts in, quick and final. “He’s not here right now.”
“Is he okay?”
Cross doesn’t answer. Just looks past me like this conversation’s already over.
I feel the burn behind my eyes before I can stop it. “You can’t shut me out. Not now.”
“You being here ain’t safe for anybody right now,” Cross says, softer than I expect. “For them. For you.”
Bianca places a hand gently on my back. “Marcy…”
I shake my head. I don’t want to leave. I can’t leave. But standing here like this, in front of the shell of the place I was just beginning to call home, I realize something.
I’m on the outside again.
“I need to know if Hawk’s okay,” I say, quieter now. “Just… tell me that.”
Cross looks at me for a long moment, then gives a single, reluctant nod. “He’s holding it down. That’s all I can say.”
I return to the car, dismayed.
The car is dead-silent as Bianca pulls out of The Den’s lot. Streetlights flicker past the windshield like slow, blinking warnings, but I barely see them. My chest is tight. My head’s pounding. I don’t know if it’s from the stress or the fact that nothing makes sense right now.
Bianca finally breaks the silence. “I found out what CJ and Ryder were arrested for.”
I turn toward her, pulse quickening. “What?”
“Possession. Of weed,” she says. “Enough for an intent-to-distribute charge.”
I blink, stunned. “That’s a lie. They’d never…”
Bianca glances at me, brows raised. “I’m just telling you what’s being reported. And now Hawk’s disappeared, too.”
I shake my head. “No. No, he hasn’t disappeared. He’s just… lying low. He has to be. After the raid, after my dad made that smug comment, after all those cameras—my father knew something was coming.”
“What are you saying?”
I stare out the window, fists clenched in my lap. “I’m saying my father has something to do with this.”
“Marcy—”
“Don’t,” I snap, sharper than I mean to. I breathe through it. “You weren’t there. The way he talked to me the other night, the way he knew they’d been arrested before it was even on the news? You know what my father is capable of. This is my father’s ammo. This is exactly how he gets things done.”
Bianca doesn’t speak for a second. Then she says, “Are you sure these are the kind of men you want to be around?”
The words hit harder than I expect. Because she’s not being judgmental.
She’s scared. For me.
I press my forehead against the cool glass of the window and whisper, “I don’t know what I want, Bi.”
But that’s not true. I know exactly what I want.
I just don’t know how to keep it without losing everything else.
Bianca takes a slow turn onto a quieter road, the lights of town fading behind us.
“You know,” she says after a long pause, “you could just… leave.”
I glance at her. “What?”
“Just for a little while,” she continues. “Let the press calm down, let things blow over. We’ll pack a bag, drive out to the coast, maybe rent a little Airbnb on the water, binge old movies, and eat everything in sight. Start fresh. Disappear.”
She’s not joking. She’s already planning it, the way she does when she’s trying to protect me without saying, You look like you’re about to break.
“You really think I could leave them right now?” I ask.
“I think you shouldn’t have to make that choice,” she replies gently. “But until you know more… you could protect yourself. And the baby.”
The baby.
It still feels unreal. Like I’m walking through someone else’s dream.
I rest my palm over my stomach, the warmth of it anchoring me to something bigger than the chaos.
I think about CJ’s steady voice, the one that grounds me even when everything is falling apart. About Hawk’s protective touch, the way he always puts himself between me and the world. About Ryder’s silence, how he sees me in ways I didn’t know I wanted to be seen.
I love them.
All of them.
And now… I have this, too.
A life. Growing inside me.
Bianca slows to a stop at a red light and turns toward me. “We can leave tonight. Say the word, and I’m with you.”
I look down at my hand, still resting on my belly, and my heart thuds so loud that I swear it fills the whole car. The light turns green, and just like that, I make a decision.