Nash (The Outsiders Motorcycle Club #4)

Chapter 1

Nash

Fence. Gate. Tree line.

The sweep runs left to right from my position on the wall. Sun at my back. Bolts holding. Electronic lock holding. Woods still. Then back across the table.

Malachi and Candace are at the center, Candace leaning into his shoulder while he talks with his hands.

East has his palm flat against Darla's belly.

She's five months along with twins; the pregnancy is impossible to miss under her sundress.

Knox stands at the grill, one hand on a spatula, the other resting at the small of Sloane's back.

She's barely a few weeks along, but Knox hasn't taken his hand off her since the test came back positive.

James and Maggie sit at the end of the table, passing a bowl of potato salad between them.

Kyle stands by the cooler, already deep into a story, hands moving faster than his mouth.

Rider is next to him, shaking his head at whatever Kyle just said but grinning anyway.

Frankie's cross-legged on the bench at the far end, quiet, her eyes drifting toward the tree line every few minutes.

Arden stands at the edge of the yard near the fence. Unmoving. Running his own sweep.

And the goat. Nasty Nash Jr. has chewed through two leads this month and is standing on the picnic bench next to Kyle wearing a rhinestone collar Ruby bedazzled in the back room of Amaranth, Frankie's tattoo shop. Kyle scratches behind his ears without breaking his story.

Fence, gate, trees. Clean.

Between sweeps, I check my phone and the secure messaging app Knox built for the club.

Three days. Denied again.

I pocket the phone.

Maggie crosses the yard with a paper plate. Burger. Pile of fries. She pushes it into my hands before I can refuse. "Eat, Nashville." That tone doesn't take no for an answer. I set the plate on the low wall beside me.

Fence. Gate.

"Sorry I'm late! The line at the bakery was a damn war zone. I almost threw a cupcake at someone's grandmother." Ruby's voice carries clean across the yard, louder than anything between her and the table. "But I didn't. Personal growth."

I don't finish the sweep.

Her copper hair is loose in the low sun.

Red lipstick. A vintage band tee ripped at the shoulder, the tear exposing a strip of freckled skin.

Jeans look painted on. She has a twelve-pack balanced on one hip.

A pink bakery box stacked on top with the ribbon already half-undone because she probably opened the box in the car.

She stops at the gate. Chin up. Weight shifting to one hip while she surveys the yard.

Greetings volley back. Candace waves her over. Darla pats the bench. Kyle launches into a new story aimed at her before she's taken three steps.

I reset. Fence, gate. I'm back on her before the tree line.

Ruby sets the bakery box on the table and flips the lid.

There are cupcakes piled high with frosting.

Darla reaches for one. Ruby smacks her hand, then points to a specific cupcake in the corner.

"That one's lemon. I had them make two." Darla takes it with both hands.

East steals a second one. Ruby doesn't blink, already moving down the table, sliding beers from the twelve-pack to each person.

She stops at Knox, accepts a burger with a theatrical bow.

Scrapes the mustard off Darla's burger with a plastic knife before passing it down.

Tells Sloane something low that makes Sloane laugh and Knox's mouth twitch.

Balances a paper plate on one palm while she distributes the last of the beers with the other.

Kyle is mid-story when she passes him a beer. He's got his phone out, showing Rider something on the screen. Ruby glances over his shoulder and stops dead.

"Kyle. Is that your dating profile?"

"It's updated."

"Kyle, your bio says 'fluent in sarcasm.'" She takes the phone out of his hand. "You have a shirtless mirror selfie. In the gym bathroom. With the toilet visible." She turns the phone toward the table. "There's a toilet in his dating profile."

Rider puts his head in his hands. Darla reaches for the phone. East is already wheezing.

"The lighting's good in there," Kyle says.

"The lighting is fluorescent, Kyle. You look like a Cops episode." She hands the phone back and pats his shoulder. "We're fixing this. All of it. I'm scheduling an intervention."

Nasty Nash Jr. bleats from the bench on cue.

Ruby drops into the seat next to Darla. Their heads tip together.

Darla's hand goes to her belly, and Ruby's hand covers it.

A beat. Two. Then Ruby leans over and says something into Darla's ear that makes her snort so hard East looks over in alarm.

Candace catches the tail end and covers her mouth.

Ruby keeps going, hands carving shapes in the air, her voice pitched just low enough that I catch the rhythm but not the words from the wall.

She touches Sloane's arm. Passes Rider a beer he didn't ask for. Leans across the table to point at something on Frankie's phone, and Frankie pulls it away with a look that would stop most people. Ruby just grins and holds her palms up in surrender.

It's been five minutes since I checked the tree line.

She detaches from the group with a bottle in each hand. Her eyes scan the yard until they find my shadow against the wall. She crosses toward me with a stride that can't commit to walking, her boots bouncing off the ground with too much energy for the distance.

I keep my eyes on the tree line.

"You look like you're guarding the wall from existential despair." She stops just inside my space. Ruby smells the way she always does. Vanilla. Coconut. Something warmer underneath, sun-soaked and close.

I look at her. I don't say anything.

"Tough crowd." She holds out a beer.

I take the bottle. Keep my fingers clear of hers.

"Peace offering," she says. "I heard you almost smiled at the cookout last week. Rumor has it, it was at me."

"Wasn't."

"My sources are impeccable." She keeps the last beer for herself and takes a sip, studying me over the rim. Those eyes cataloging me the same way I catalog a room. "Mostly Darla. She said you asked about my shift at the shop."

I didn't. Darla's a liar. Ruby knows it and repeated it anyway.

"She's mistaken."

"Uh-huh." Ruby shifts beside me and sets a shoulder against the wall. She mirrors my posture with a loose, restless energy that makes the mirror a joke. Her shoulder is four inches from my arm. I know because I measured it when she settled. "So, Sergeant-at-Arms. What's your verdict?"

"On what?"

"On me." Her grin opens fully. She turns her head just enough to look up at me, and the angle puts the line of her throat in the low sun. "Am I a security risk? Should I be patted down?"

My jaw sets. I let the silence hold for three seconds. Long enough for her grin to flicker. Long enough for her fingers to tighten on the bottle.

"Keep testing me," I say. Low. "See what happens."

Her eyes widen. A fraction. Her lips part, and for half a second she's got nothing. The pulse at the base of her throat jumps once. She breathes in. The grin rebuilds. Crooked at the left corner where it usually sits even.

I exhale through my nose.

"Promises, promises." She takes a sip. "That's actually the security risk. I've got too much personality in one body. Destabilizes the whole damn clubhouse."

"I've noticed."

Her mouth opens. Closes. She takes a sip of beer instead of answering, and her throat works on the swallow. The quiet stretches between us, and Ruby holding quiet is new.

"High praise." The laugh comes, bright and unchained. "I'll take it."

She pushes off the wall. Her shoulder drags across my arm on the way. Deliberately. The contact lasts a full second. Vanilla and warm skin and the friction of bare shoulder against the sleeve of my shirt. My stomach tightens. I grip the bottle hard enough to hear the glass creak under my hand.

"Don't be a stranger, Nash." She's already moving. "Ghosts are allowed at the party too."

She starts to turn, then stops. Her eyes land on the untouched plate on the wall beside me.

Ruby reaches across and snatches a fry. Pops it into her mouth and holds my eyes while she chews. Slowly. Her red lips curl at the corners. Her tongue catches salt from the edge of her mouth.

I track the movement. My jaw sets until it hurts.

I've let her. Every time.

"You could stop me, you know." She tilts her chin. "Anytime."

"Go sit down, Trouble."

My jaw locks a beat too late. It lands. Her lips part, and her weight shifts forward, a millimeter. Then she catches herself.

"Sir, yes, sir." She mock-salutes, already turning, already gone.

My jaw clenches. Something low in my gut pulls tight and stays there.

I watch her cut back through the group until bodies fill the gap.

Two full perimeter cycles missed along with the motion alert on my phone I dismissed without checking. A stolen fry and red lips I'd like to see wrapped around me.

I ball my hand into a fist. Fence, gate, trees.

The yard settles as the sun drops. Conversations shift from loud to low.

East and Darla lean into each other, his arm around her shoulders, his thumb running a line across her skin.

Kyle puts on music from a speaker propped on the cooler lid.

Knox and Sloane clean the grill, working around each other in silence with the rhythm of people who've already mapped each other's movements.

James catches Maggie's hand when she passes behind his chair.

The string lights come on, bathing everything in warm amber.

Ruby outlasts all of them. She's telling a story that has the whole table locked in. I catch pieces from the wall.

"—and then she goes, 'Ma'am, that's a service animal.

' And I'm standing there looking at this woman, then I'm looking at the quote-unquote service animal, which is a ferret in a vest that says Emotional Support in rhinestones.

" Ruby stands up from the bench, shoulders back, fully committing.

"So I go, 'Ma'am, your emotional support ferret just shit in aisle nine.

'" She puts on the woman's voice, chin high, offended as hell.

"'He has anxiety.'" Ruby drops back to her own register.

"So does everyone in this Walgreens now, Susan. "

Kyle has his head on the picnic table. East is wheezing. Candace is doubled over. Darla's wiping her eyes. Knox turns away from the grill, and his shoulders shake once. Even Arden, at the edge of the yard, has turned his head.

"Was the ferret's name Malfoy?" Frankie asks, grinning.

Ruby points at her. "That is an incredible question, and I love you for asking it."

She glances back toward the wall. Toward me. Looking for it. The smile she's been trying to crack out of me for over a year.

I bite the inside of my cheek. Hard.

Her eyes narrow. She caught it. The corner of my mouth, whatever fraction of movement I didn't kill fast enough. Her whole face lights up and she points at me across twenty feet of yard.

I shake my head once.

She mouths something I don't need to hear to read. Knew it.

Then the grin loosens. Her hand drops to her side. The string lights hum in the silence between one song ending and another starting. The table keeps talking around her. She doesn't hear them. Her chin is tipped up and her hands are still for once in her goddamn life.

Five seconds. Then Candace grabs her arm and pulls her back into the conversation, and the gap fills with noise.

I stay on the wall until the last bike pulls out of the lot and Ruby's red convertible disappears down the road.

Later, when the clubhouse has gone dark and quiet, I ride back to my apartment.

I sit on the edge of the bed. There's a dresser, a single lamp.

Bare walls. The cut hanging on the back of the door.

I look at the faded red headband knotted on my left wrist. A few strands of dark hair still caught in the weave. The skin underneath is paler than the rest of my wrist.

Copper hair in dying sun. Red lips around a stolen fry.

I press my thumb into the headband until the weave bites bone.

Fuck.

The crack in the plaster runs from the corner to the window frame. I trace its path until the light outside shifts from black to gray.

An hour before dawn, I dress in the dark, shrug into my cut, and head for the parking lot.

The predawn air is sharp and clean. The complex sleeps. My boots hit asphalt as I approach the Harley and run a hand over the handlebars. Pre-ride ritual.

Something stiff catches. Paper, wedged tight between the right grip and the brake lever.

I hold still.

What's tucked is a small, square photograph.

I peel it free.

The image is grainy. Long lens, taken from a distance.

Ruby, unmistakable with her red hair under the glow of Amaranth's neon sign, pushing open the back door of Frankie's shop.

The angle is from across the street. Same leather jacket she was wearing when she pulled into the lot yesterday, the one she tossed across the back of her chair before Candace even waved her over.

I turn the photo over.

Two words. Black marker. Harsh, blocky print.

SHE'S NEXT.

My vision narrows to the two words and the black ink.

I fold the photo with a single precise crease and slide it into the inner pocket of my cut against my ribs. Then scan the lot. Parked cars, a dumpster's shadow, the street in both directions. The lot holds still.

I throw a leg over the Harley and kick the engine to life.