Brittany
Last night felt like something out of a dream.
Not just the sex. Not just the way Oaks looked at me like he’d been starving and I was the only thing he trusted enough to bite.
It was the normal part that stuck.
After, we drifted back into camp. Like nothing in the world had changed. Like I hadn’t spent weeks being watched, whispered about, treated like a warning label in a town that loves to punish women for being visible.
Lottie and Holler were still up, a small fire burning low, cards slapped onto a folding table with the kind of lazy rhythm that makes you forget danger for a minute.
Holler told ridiculous stories about early days in the club, about busted runs and nights they hid bikes in barns, about Legend being young and mean and already acting like a president even when he didn’t have the title.
Lottie burned the first batch of marshmallows and blamed it on the men distracting her. She called the space between the two bikers which I was occupying, the taint, and it made Holler laugh so hard he nearly fell out of his chair.
Oaks sat beside me, not touching at first. He acted like he was letting the camp air cool him off, like his body wasn’t still wound tight from what we did.
Then his hand found my knee.
Just a casual press. A steadying weight. Like he was anchoring me.
Then it slid to my waist when I shifted, and his fingers flexed once like he couldn’t help it.
Then my hand found his under the table, and my fingers laced through his as though it were second nature.
He kissed my temple when he thought no one was looking.
Holler absolutely saw.
He just pretended he didn’t.
For a few hours, it didn’t feel like a scandal. It didn’t feel like a mistake. It felt like belonging. It felt like a small circle of friends. Normal.
That was the dangerous part.
This morning I wake up reaching for him.
And he’s gone.
The bed’s cold on his side, the sheet pulled tight like he never slept there, like last night didn’t happen, like we didn’t leave Holler and Lottie and recreate what happened earlier that day. Like I didn’t fall asleep with my cheek pressed to his chest and his hand resting on my back.
My stomach drops before my brain catches up.
I sit up fast, heart thudding too loud for how quiet the cabin is. Sunlight spills through the curtains in pale stripes. Birds chirp. Somewhere outside, a generator hums and a door creaks open and closes.
I peer out and the lake looks peaceful.
Nothing about it feels peaceful.
I pull on my shorts that I hung to dry, one of Oaks’ shirts, drag my hair into a messy knot and step outside barefoot.
Oaks’s across the clearing with the other officers, cut on, expression carved from stone. Legend’s speaking. Royal’s nearby, still as a shadow. Holler stands with them too, coffee in hand, eyes scanning the treeline like he’s listening to a different story.
Oaks ain’t looking my way.
Not once.
I wait for it anyway. A glance. A flicker. Something private in his face that tells me last night is still ours even if the camp is awake.
Nothing.
When church breaks and men scatter into teams, Oaks walks past me like I’m just another body at camp. No brush of fingers. No quiet word. No secret smile. No hand at my waist guiding me away from the shoreline like he did yesterday.
It’s like last night belonged to someone else.
Lottie watches the whole thing from beside me, her face too knowing, too gentle.
“You okay?” she asks quietly.
“I’m fine,” I say, and the lie comes out smooth because I’ve had practice.
She makes a small sound, half snort, half sigh, but she doesn’t push. Lottie’s the kind of woman who knows when a girl needs space to bleed in private.
I tell myself he is busy.
I tell myself the club comes first.
I tell myself grown men don’t wake up magically different, especially men with a patch and a marriage and a president watching them like a hawk.
But when he passes by again mid-morning and asks Rye about search grids without so much as acknowledging me, something sharp lodges in my ribs.
He got what he wanted.
That thought hits ugly and fast.
He wanted me. He took me. Now he is back to being Vice President, professional and untouchable. The humiliation burns hotter than Bethany ever did, because Bethany’s cruelty is obvious. Bethany’s hatred is loud.
This is quiet.
This feels like being erased.
By lunchtime, two club girls are whispering behind me near the dock. They ain’t even trying to hide it. Their voices float just loud enough to land.
“He don’t keep what he fucks.”
“Flavor of the week.”
I don’t turn around.
I pretend I didn’t hear.
It hurts worse that Oaks doesn’t correct them.
Because if he wanted to, he could. He could shut it down with one look. One word. One hand on my back in front of everybody that says, she ain’t yours to talk about.
He does nothing.
He walks by like I am air.
And I realize something awful.
Bethany screaming was easier than this.
This feels like the kind of punishment Hell is famous for. The kind that does not leave bruises you can point at.
In Hell, Kentucky, men don’t always ruin you with fists.
They ruin you by walking away.
And Oaks just did.
By afternoon, the lake doesn’t feel peaceful anymore. It feels split.
On one side, the men comb the shoreline and treeline in coordinated sweeps, radios crackling, boots cutting paths through brush. On the other, down near a shallow cove where the sand curves wide and flat, a handful of club girls have turned the search weekend into something else entirely.
Music thumps from a portable speaker. Beer cans sweat in the heat. Two of them stretch across folding lounge chairs like they are on spring break instead of standing twenty minutes away from a missing woman’s last known location.
I know what I expected when I first imagined a biker camp.
Tents. Roughing it. Something wild and stripped down.
Instead, the officers have cabins. The older couples too. Prospects are in tents closer to the woods, and the club girls float between everything like glitter in water, shiny and sharp and not always harmless.
Lottie is helping Sophie unpack something at one of the picnic tables.
Sophie looks composed the way rich girls always do, even at a lake, even in cut-offs and her Property of vest. Even while danger hums at the edges.
She speaks quietly with Lottie, both of them glancing toward the water now and then like they’re trying not to.
I wander toward the dock because I need air. I need space from the fact that Oaks hasn’t looked at me all day.
That’s when I hear it.
“Speak of the floatel.”
I stop.
Three of them sit on a tailgate, bare legs, bikinis, sunglasses pushed into teased hair. They have that look. They’re painted up like Bethany. Women who know exactly what they are in this world and don’t apologize for it. Club bunnies if I’m polite. Whores, honestly.
One of them is a brunette with a snake tattoo curling up her thigh. She tilts her chin toward me.
“Well, look who washed up.”
Heat climbs my neck. I consider pretending I didn’t hear. I don’t move fast enough.
“Hey, floatel whore,” another one calls lazily. “You lose your life jacket?”
A whore calling me a whore hurts more than it should. It lands with the weight of Bethany’s voice. With the weight of every whisper back in Hell. With the weight of being watched through a wall and falling in the lake. It’s heavy because of what I finally gave to Oaks. And because he’s gone cold.
I stop walking. Turn slowly.
“I don’t know you,” I say evenly.
The brunette grins like I’m cute.
“You don’t need to,” she says. “We know you.”
She slides off the tailgate and saunters closer, beer can dangling from her fingers. Coconut oil and cheap lager hits me like a slap. She’s close enough to make this personal.
“New girls always think it’s different,” she continues. “They think they’re the exception.”
My stomach tightens.
“I’m not,” I start, but I don’t even know how to finish.
Not special. Not stupid. Not the kind of girl who catches feelings for a married man with a patch and a wife who bites.
Another one, a redhead with a nose ring and chipped black nail polish, laughs and leans back on her palms.
“Flavor of the week,” she says. “That’s how I started out too, honey.”
That one hits like a punch.
Because I saw the way Oaks looked at me last night. Because I felt the way he held me afterward like he couldn’t help it. Because this morning he walked past me like I was a stranger.
The words he spoke in the heat of passion ring in my head, “You’re mine tonight.”
Tonight.
I fucking qualifier.
The brunette steps even closer, softening her voice like she’s being kind.
“You think Beth ever cared before?” she asks. “Baby, she thanks us.”
The redhead snorts. “Sends gift baskets.”
They laugh, cruel and easy.
“She only lost her mind with you,” the brunette continues. “Wanna know why?”
I don’t dare answer.
She leans in, voice low, like she’s sharing a secret.
“Because for a second, she thought he cared.”
Silence stretches.
And there it is.
The knife.
“You ain’t special,” she finishes. “You just made her nervous.”
The others nod like that settles it. Like they have explained my whole existence in two sentences.
I force my shoulders back. I make my voice steady.
“Are you done?” I ask.
The redhead lifts her beer in a mock toast.
“Here’s to our new bunny.”
“Careful,” another adds, the platinum blonde with triple Ds, lazy and cruel. “You’re standing real close to water.”
My heart jumps before I can stop it. But I don’t give them the satisfaction of seeing it.
I turn and walk away slow, steady, like my chest ain’t been hollowed out. Like my throat ain’t tight.
I don’t look for him. I don’t scan the treeline for that tall shape, that cut, that posture that always looks like he’s ready to break someone in half.
But I feel it anyway.
He’s somewhere out there.
And he has not said a word.
I make it to the dock before my composure cracks.
The water stretches wide and blue, sun flashing off the surface. Boats idle farther out. Somewhere to my left, a prospect calls out grid coordinates like this is a spreadsheet and not a girl’s life.
I sit at the edge and let my feet dangle just above the water.
He don’t keep what he fucks.
I hate that it bothers me.
I hate that it sounds believable.
Because I know his reputation. Everyone does. Club girls rotate like seasons. Bethany never cared, not until me.
And now I don’t know if that was because I mattered.
Or because I was new.
Oaks said it himself. He planned to fuck me out of his system. Maybe it didn’t take long.
Maybe this morning is the truth.
Maybe last night was just adrenaline.
Maybe I was convenient.
That thought burns worse than the insults.
Footsteps crunch behind me.
I don’t turn around.
“You gonna jump in again?” a male voice asks lightly.
It’s one of the younger guys, a prospect named Whip. Barely out of his teens, trying too hard to look hardened. He’s probably my age.
“I’m good,” I say.
He nods and moves on.
Not him.
I shouldn’t want it to be Oaks.
But I do.
And that realization sits ugly in my throat.
Later, when the sun dips lower and the search teams regroup near the main fire pit, I finally see him again.
Oaks, Legend, and Royal are standing together, all arms folded and faces blank. He looks every inch the Vice President. Controlled. Focused. Untouchable.
He laughs at something Holler says. But it doesn’t reach his eyes.
He doesn’t look at me.
One of the club girls brushes past him on her way to the cooler, fingers trailing deliberately across his lower back like she’s testing a boundary.
He doesn’t react. Doesn’t encourage. But he doesn’t correct either.
Cold.
Like nothing happened.
Like I imagined it.
My stomach twists.
Maybe the bunnies are right.
Maybe I was just there.
A cabin. A lake. A girl in reach.
Maybe this is what he always does.
Maybe I was stupid enough to think I was different.
I fold my arms across my chest and look away before he can catch me staring, because if he sees pain on my face I don’t think I’ll survive it.
And somewhere across the clearing, Bethany watches all of it unfold.
She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t move.
But her eyes are bright.
Like she knows exactly what those girls just did.
Like she’s waiting to see who breaks first.
Me.
Or him.