Oaks
Anarchy, California leaves a taste in your mouth that don’t wash out.
Salt air and gun oil. Politics and old blood that hasn’t dried yet.
Big Daddy’s compound still smells like money and death when I think about it, and the ride back to Kentucky felt longer than the miles justified.
National business always does. You sit in a room full of patched men pretending it’s about loyalty when it’s really about leverage, and when you walk out you carry more weight than you brought in.
By the time I pull into Hell, Kentucky, the sky is bruised purple and the Lockup’s exterior lights throw long shadows across the lot like fingers reaching. The bass inside is a distant thump, the heartbeat of this town, but I don’t go to the clubhouse first.
I go home.
The house Bethany picked is too clean, too sharp-edged.
It’s built like something out of a real estate catalog, all stone and iron fixtures and windows that look out over land she didn’t grow up on.
It never felt like mine. It felt like a transaction that somebody put furniture in to make it seem normal.
The bedroom door is half closed when I walk in. I don’t knock. I don’t need to.
Bethany’s laugh floats out first, low and pleased. A man’s voice answers her. Not one I recognize, which tells me she’s being sloppy.
I push the door open and lean against the frame.
She’s on the bed in black silk, hair loose over her shoulders. The man, some local contractor type from the look of him, freezes mid-motion like he just realized he walked into Sunday school with muddy boots and a guilty conscience.
Bethany doesn’t flinch. She rolls onto her back and looks at me like she’s been expecting it.
“You’re home early,” she says, not bothering to cover herself.
I take in the scene without feeling much of anything. Not jealousy. Not rage. Just a dull irritation that she didn’t even have the decency to lock the door, like the whole point is for me to find out.
“Finish up,” I tell the man calmly. “Then get out.”
He scrambles, pulling on jeans with shaking hands, eyes darting between us like he’s waiting for someone to start shooting. I don’t move. I don’t threaten him. That makes it worse.
For both or them.
Bethany sits up slow once he’s gone, crossing her legs like we’re about to have tea instead of this conversation.
“You don’t care,” she says, studying me like she’s looking for a bruise.
“No,” I answer honest.
A flicker passes over her face, anger or disappointment. With Bethany it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other starts.
“You used to pretend,” she says.
“I used to have patience.”
She laughs under her breath. “You still sleeping with anything that’ll climb on?”
“That your business?”
“It becomes my business when you get sloppy.”
I hold her gaze long enough that she looks away first, and that tells me she’s still trying to win something she can’t name.
“You could leave,” I tell her. “Ain’t nobody chaining you here.”
Her smile sharpens. “You know that ain’t true.”
And she’s right. Her daddy might be dead, but his land corridor still runs through our supply chain.
His freight contracts still touch national lines.
All her’s now. This marriage sealed a silence that keeps three patched members from doing federal time.
If she walks, that leverage walks with her, and the club bleeds for it.
“You wanted the ring,” I remind her.
“You wanted the deal,” she counters.
Neither of us is wrong. That’s the part that makes it rot.
I shower, change, and leave without another word, because if I stay I’ll say something I can’t take back, and Bethany collects words like ammo.
The Lockup is loud when I walk in. Words in Hell travels faster than I do. Men nod. A couple slap my shoulder. Whiskey pushes a glass into my hand without asking what I want, because he already knows I’m not here for taste.
Royal finds me near the back office. He doesn’t waste time.
“She had company,” he says.
“You got cameras in my house now?” I ask dryly.
“No,” he replies. “But Bethany ain’t subtle.”
I lean back in the chair across from his desk and stretch my legs out like we’re discussing weather instead of my marriage.
“She don’t embarrass you?” he asks.
“Nothing about this surprises me.”
Royal studies me in that quiet way he does, like he’s peeling layers back to see what’s under the cut and the reputation. “You still pretending Brittany don’t matter?” he asks.
My jaw tightens in spite of myself. “This ain’t about her.”
“It’s always about her lately.”
I don’t answer right away. Outside the office, somebody laughs too loud. The bass from the speakers rattles the doorframe. It’s the kind of sound that makes men think the world can’t touch them.
“Hell still quiet?” I ask instead.
“Hell no,” Royal says. “Legend’s tightening routes. He’s heartbroken over Sophie. She’s gone missing. Pearly Gates sniffing around. It’s gonna be all out war with them if he finds they’re involved. We don’t need a domestic mess stacked on top of that.”
“I ain’t bringing one.”
“You think Bethany won’t?”
That hangs between us, sharp as wire.
“She already wants blood,” Royal continues. “Yours or the girl’s.”
I push to my feet. “Then let her think what she wants.”
Royal’s eyes narrow. “You playing that game on purpose?”
“If it keeps Brittany off their radar, yeah.”
He exhales through his nose. “You can’t protect someone by making them look guilty.”
“Watch me,” I say, because I’ve made worse plans with less time.
I start working out at Iron Forge instead of the Lockup gym.
The first night I walk in, the girl at the front desk nearly drops her pen when she sees the cut on my shoulder.
“Didn’t know you worked out here,” she says, eyes bright like she just found a new hobby.
“I don’t,” I reply, scanning the room without turning my head too obvious.
And there she is.
Brittany. On a treadmill near the back, earbuds in, ponytail swinging with each step. She looks thinner. Tighter around the edges. Like she’s bracing for something she hasn’t told anyone about. Like she’s trying to outrun it in place.
I force myself not to stare.
Instead, I lean an elbow on the counter and give the desk girl a lazy half smile. “Guess I needed a change of scenery.”
She laughs, twirling her hair, eating it up exactly the way I need her to. From the corner of my eye I see Brittany glance over once. Her gaze flicks from me to the girl at the desk and then away just as fast.
Good. Let her think I’m here for something meaningless.
I make a show of flirting, of leaning too close, of asking the desk girl about her class schedule and acting like I give a shit.
I don’t look back at Brittany again, even when I feel her presence shift off the treadmill.
When she moves to the weight machines, I adjust my routine without making it obvious.
When she heads to the locker room, I stay put.
I leave before she does.
I park two blocks down from her house and sit with the engine off until I see her porch light flick on. Only then do I ride back to the clubhouse.
It becomes a pattern. Gas station. Gym. Diner at off-hours. I never approach her. I never speak. But I know who sits near her. I know which trucks linger too long in parking lots. I know that Elijah’s clean-cut politeness don’t stop him from scanning exits when he thinks no one’s watching.
The club notices.
Bethany notices more.
One night at the Lockup, she corners me near the bar again, fingers sliding along my vest like she’s claiming something.
“You’re obvious,” she murmurs.
“About what?”
“That girl.”
I sip my drink slow. “Which one?”
Her nails dig into my shoulder just enough to hurt. “You think I don’t see it? You working out where she works out. Showing up places she just happens to be.”
I shrug. “Let ’em think it.”
Her eyes flash. “You’re not even fucking her.”
“No.”
That infuriates her more than if I were.
“Then why?” she demands.
“Because I can.”
She studies me a long moment, like she’s trying to decide whether I’m lying or just stupid. “You’re going to get her killed,” she says softly.
“No,” I answer. “I’m going to make them focus on me.”
And that’s the truth.
If Bethany wants to rage, let her rage at me. If Pearly Gates wants to test boundaries, let them test mine. If Hell wants a scandal, I’ll give it one that keeps Brittany’s door unopened at night.
Later, in the quiet of the office, Royal looks at me over a stack of run manifests tied to everything spiraling lately. Depraved Sinners MC tension. Freight shifts. Whispers about Pearly Gates. The kind of pressure that pops seams if you pretend it ain’t there.
“You can’t keep splitting yourself like this,” he says.
“I ain’t splitting,” I reply.
“You are,” he counters. “The club in public, guard dog in private, and neither side gets what they think they do.”
Maybe he’s right.
But every time I see Brittany laugh with Elijah like the world ain’t circling her, something in my chest tightens in a way I don’t recognize. I don’t approach her. I don’t claim her. I don’t cross the line.
I just make damn sure no one else does either.
And if the club thinks I’m seeing her, if Bethany sharpens her knives over rumors, if Hell decides I’m sloppy, let ’em.
Better they aim at me.
Because the second someone reaches for Brittany for real, this stops being politics.
And I don’t play politics when it turns personal.