Chapter Thirteen
Willa
I was folding laundry when the knock came -- no warning, no rumble of a bike pulling up outside, just three sharp raps on the front door.
My hands stilled on the edge of the T-shirt I’d been holding, my head lifting as I listened for anything else -- a voice calling out, a foot shifting on the porch -- but there was nothing but the quiet that followed the sound, the deliberate silence of someone waiting to be answered.
The house was empty except for me. I glanced at the door, hesitating a moment. Then I set the shirt down and walked over to the door. The knock came again -- the same three quick raps, the rhythm of someone with news they couldn’t hold any longer.
I pulled the door open, the chain still on, and saw Whisper, red-rimmed eyes, the tear tracks dried on her cheeks, the tightness around her mouth that came with words she couldn’t find a way to say.
Her shoulders were pulled in, her arms crossed over her middle in a gesture I’d never seen her make -- Whisper, who carried herself with the certainty of a woman who’d decided exactly who she was and what she stood for, now standing on my doorstep looking like her whole world had fallen apart.
Without saying a word, she stepped forward the moment I slid the chain free, her body angled to fit through the gap before it was fully open, and wrapped both arms around me with the weight of someone who’d already started falling.
I held her automatically, one hand coming to rest against the back of her head, my palm against the soft curve where her neck met her skull.
She was trembling -- slightly, almost imperceptibly, the kind of shiver that came from holding too much in for too long.
I felt it against my chest, in the way she kept herself from pressing too hard against my belly, in the moment she buried her face against my shoulder and her body went completely still.
The embrace itself -- the wordless desperation of it -- told me everything before a single word was said. Not Daisy. Not Forge. Something else -- something that wasn’t about her family directly but would change it anyway. Something that had already happened and couldn’t be taken back.
When she finally stepped back, her hands still gripping my arms just above the elbow, her eyes were dry but the redness around them had deepened. She looked at my face, then at my belly, then back with the focus of someone making sure I was listening.
“Nitro was shot,” she said, the words coming out flat and even. “At the strip club. He’s in surgery.”
The floor beneath me didn’t change. The air around me didn’t shift.
The house behind me stayed exactly as it had been a moment before.
But something happened anyway -- something that made my ankles give out, that sent my hand shooting out to catch the doorframe with white knuckles, that folded my body forward at the waist before I could catch myself.
I dragged myself upright, one hand still braced against the wood, and felt Whisper’s grip on my other arm tighten -- not to steady me, but to make absolutely certain I knew she was still there.
My free hand went immediately to my belly, palm pressed flat against it, fingers spread wide as if I could keep the twins from hearing, from knowing, from being touched by what had happened.
I straightened my shoulders and looked Whisper directly in the face, my hand still pressed against the round curve of my belly where our children had made themselves known.
“I’m going,” I said, and my voice came out flat and certain.
Whisper -- still red-eyed, still undone by whatever had brought her to my door -- simply nodded and stepped back, giving me the exact amount of space I needed, and said, “Forge has already got a truck waiting at the gate. I’ll ride with you.”
I moved through the house mechanically -- grabbing my phone from the kitchen counter, my purse from the hook by the door, the jacket Nitro had bought me last week from the back of the dining chair.
I didn’t think about what I was doing or why I was doing it or what would happen when I got there.
Just kept moving, kept breathing, aware of the twins shifting beneath my skin.
They knew something was wrong -- I could feel it.
Whisper followed without speaking, her movements unhurried but precise, the economy of a woman who’d learned the hard way that rushing cost more than it gained.
She didn’t try to help me gather my things or steady me when I reached for the wall or do any of the things that would have made what was happening smaller somehow. Just waited by the door.
I paused in the doorway, one hand on the frame, and looked back at the house -- at the laundry still spread across the couch, at the half-empty mug of tea on the coffee table.
Not gone. Not gone. The thought moved through me.
I stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door closed behind me, the latch clicking into place with the finality of a decision that couldn’t be taken back.
The air outside was cool against my face, the gravel path leading to the gate empty except for a Prospect wiping down a bike near the clubhouse.
Whisper’s hand found mine on the path. Her palm was warm against mine, her breathing even and unhurried, her body a solid line of heat beside me from shoulder to knee.
It didn’t take long for us to reach the gate and the truck waiting beyond it, engine already running, Forge already behind the wheel with his phone to his ear and his attention on the road ahead.
* * *
The ER waiting room was everything a waiting room was: rows of hard plastic chairs bolted to the floor in shades of faded beige, fluorescent tubes buzzing overhead with a flicker that never quite resolves, a wall-mounted television cycling through a local news broadcast with the volume too low to hear.
The air smelled of antiseptic and burnt coffee from a machine in the corner that no one was using.
I sat in a chair against the far wall with my hands folded over my belly and waited for someone to tell me what I already knew.
The Reckless Kings filled the room around me -- patched members and Prospects taking up every available seat and stretch of wall, their cuts a solid wall of leather in a space that was not built for men like them.
No one spoke above a murmur. No one paced or pushed for answers the way people usually did when fear started clawing at them.
They just waited, their gazes moving between the double doors at the far end of the room and the place where I sat.
I’d been here for hours. Or minutes. Time in the waiting room had blurred together until I couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
Someone pressed a paper cup of water into my hands -- a Prospect whose name I hadn’t learned yet, his gaze carefully averted from my face, his movements unhurried but precise. I held it without drinking, my fingers curled around the thin plastic, feeling the give of the surface beneath my palm.
“They said he was conscious when the ambulance arrived.” The Prospect’s voice was low enough that I had to lean forward to hear him. “That’s a good sign. Means the bullet didn’t hit anything that would have…”
He stopped, his jaw working as he tried to find a different way to finish the sentence.
I nodded without looking at him, my attention still fixed on the double doors at the far end of the room, the ones marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in faded red letters.
They hadn’t opened since I’d sat down -- hadn’t admitted anyone or released any news or done anything but sit there, impassive and unmoving, while the clock on the wall moved with the cruelty of clocks in waiting rooms, each minute longer than the last.
“Do you know who it was?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m sure the higher-ups do.
All I know is he’s been taken care of. Since it happened at the strip club, I don’t think it was related to the MC.
Probably some drunk who decided he owned one of the girls, or was delusional they had a relationship.
You’d be surprised how often that sort of thing happens. ”
Did it matter? Knowing. Not knowing. Either way, Nitro had been shot.
Our babies could lose their daddy before they’d even gotten to meet him.
My thumbs moved in slow circles against my belly -- one for the boy, one for the girl.
I felt the rightness of their weight, and held that thought like a fixed point while the room moved around me.
The Kings had come in groups -- first Beast and Gator, arriving before the truck carrying Whisper and me had even pulled into the parking lot.
Then Scratch and Slider and the rest of the inner circle, their faces set in lines that told their own stories.
Finally the Prospects and newer members, filling in the spaces between chairs and along the walls, creating the architecture of protection that belonged to the Reckless Kings alone.
They didn’t look at me directly. Didn’t speak to me or about me. Just waited, their bodies arranged in the configuration of men who knew exactly what they were doing and why they were doing it.
Whisper had taken the chair beside me, her hand occasionally finding my knee in a touch that was neither possessive nor demanding just present in a way that felt solid and dependable.
Across the room, Lyssa stood with her back to the wall, her phone in her hand, her expression giving away nothing as she texted someone -- Madison, probably, or the babysitter who’d taken the girls for the night.
The things that weren’t being said hung in the air between us -- “if he makes it” and “depending on where the bullet hit” and “we’ve seen worse.
” I knew what they were thinking. Could read it in the set of Beast’s shoulders as he paced the far end of the room, in the way Slider avoided looking at the blood on his boots, in how Whisper was paying attention to my breathing.