Brittany
Moving into a house that once belonged to another woman feels like stepping into a story you weren’t invited to, the kind where the furniture remembers the arguments and the walls hold old perfume in the paint no matter how many times you scrub them, because ghosts ain’t polite enough to leave just because you changed the sheets.
The first night I carry a box up the front steps, I almost turn around, not because the house is scary in the way people mean when they tell stories, but because it feels like a dare, like Hell itself is watching from the road with its arms crossed, waiting to see if I trip over my own nerves.
The place still smells faintly of Bethany’s old perfume under the cleaner Lottie insisted on using when we scrubbed it top to bottom, and even though the walls have been repainted and the bedroom furniture replaced and the closet emptied of silk and sharp heels and polished versions of a life that never fit him anyway, I can still feel her in the corners, in the quiet, in the way the air seems to pause as if it’s expecting her to come down the hall and make this ugly.
Oaks takes the box from my hands without asking, because he always does that, steps in like I’m fragile even when I’ve proved I’m not, and sometimes it makes me want to bite him and sometimes it makes me want to lean into him until my bones stop buzzing.
“You don’t have to look like you’re walking to the gallows,” he mutters as he sets the box down by the door.
“I ain’t,” I say, even though my stomach is tight. “I’m just thinking.”
“Dangerous habit,” he replies, and it’s dry enough to make me roll my eyes, but it cracks the tension anyway, which is what he meant to do. Oaks handles feelings the way he handles fights, by moving in a way that keeps you from getting cornered.
He’s been saying the house feels different now, less like a cage and more like something waiting to be rewritten.
Lottie’s curtains hang in the front windows, soft and practical, and there’s a new rug in the living room that doesn’t look like it wants to trip you out of spite.
The kitchen has been scrubbed so hard it practically squeaks, and yet I still catch myself looking at the counter like I might see blood there, like Bethany might be hiding under the shine.
I wander into the bedroom slowly, my steps careful like I’m crossing an invisible line. The bed is new, dark wood, heavy frame, the kind that doesn’t creak when you move on it.
Sunlight filters through curtains onto bedsheets we picked together, soft instead of sharp, and for a second I can almost pretend this is normal, like I’m just a woman moving in with a man who wants her, not the girl who stabbed a club vice president’s wife and then walked into her house, anyway.
Oaks leans against the doorframe, watching me take it in, and his expression is controlled the way it always is in daylight, but his eyes track me like they’re listening.
“You sure?” he asks.
It’s the same question he asked when he handed me the cut, and it hits the same way, not demanding, not possessive, just checking, like he’s making sure I’m choosing this with my eyes open.
I nod. “Yeah.”
He steps into the room then, boots quiet on the floor, and reaches for me like he’s done it a thousand times already. His hands settle on my hips, thumbs pressing into the small of my back, and the contact steadies something in me that the town can’t reach.
“This ain’t her house,” he says low. “It’s mine. And now it’s yours too.”
Something in my chest loosens at that, because it’s so simple and so firm that it makes all the what-ifs in my head go quiet for a breath. I look down at my empty hand. I don’t think he’ll propose until my name is officially cleared of any wrongdoing in Bethany’s death.
“I don’t want to replace her,” I admit, and the honesty surprises me, because I’ve been pretending so hard to be unbothered that it’s almost become a habit.
“You ain’t replacing nobody,” he says.
The way he says it, without venom, without drama, feels final, like he’s closed a door that’s been banging in my mind.
I slide my hands up his chest and feel the warmth of him under my palms, the steady rise and fall of his breathing, the solid reality of him, and my body responds before my brain can argue, because my body has never been good at pretending it doesn’t want what it wants.
He dips his head and kisses me slow, not like the desperate lake night, not like the frantic cabin with the door locked and the curtains drawn, but like he has all the time in the world and he intends to use it.
The kiss ain’t about hunger, not at first. It’s about certainty, about the way he anchors me in his space and doesn’t apologize for it.
His hands move over me carefully. When he lifts me onto the edge of the bed it ain’t the desperate kind of need that makes your heart race. It’s the steady kind that makes you feel claimed without being owned, held without being trapped.
“This look right on you?” he murmurs against my mouth, slipping an engagement ring onto my finger.
I catch the faintest flicker of humor in his eyes when I snort like I’m not blushing.
“It’s perfect,” I murmur back.
He makes a low sound that might’ve been a laugh if it didn’t come out like a growl.
“My ol’ lady,” he says, and his hands tighten at my hips, just enough to remind me there’s steel under the gentleness.
Then there’s the slow unraveling of tension we’ve carried for months, but it ain’t about proving anything to anyone.
It ain’t about drowning out guilt with sex.
It’s about building, about rewriting what belongs to us instead of to the past. I feel the difference in my bones when he kisses down my throat and whispers my name like it’s something he’s finally allowed to keep.
“Mine,” he whispers.
The house doesn’t feel haunted when he pulls me down into the mattress and I lace my fingers behind his neck.
Or when my body relaxes into his like it knows him.
Or when he moves his cock into me with a kind of deliberate care that says he ain’t taking, he’s choosing, again and again as he thrusts.
At long last, after the lake, after the blood, after the courthouse steps, I stop holding my breath.
I let go.
Later, tangled in sheets, I rest my head against his chest and listen to his heartbeat.
Outside, a motorcycle roars somewhere down the road, because the town never really sleeps, and neither do rumors.
A week later, I’m back at Slice of Paradise, because I refuse to let Hell shrink my world down to a basement room and a headline.
The first time I walk in wearing the cut over a simple tee and jeans, the bell above the door jingles like it always has, coffee smells the same, the booths still stick, and the pie case still fogs up when the kitchen gets too hot.
The place looks exactly like it did when I was just a girl trying to make money and avoid getting swallowed by everybody else’s opinions, and that’s the point. I want normal, even if it’s ugly.
Conversations pause for half a breath.
Then they continue.
I slide into my usual booth and open my menu even though I know it by heart, because the ritual matters more than the options. Two women at the counter lean close, and I brace myself out of habit, ready for the sting.
“That’s her,” one whispers.
Another voice responds, softer but not cruel. “That’s Oaks’ woman.”
Not pity. Not accusation. Just fact, delivered like it’s settled, like it’s no longer up for debate, and my pulse slows instead of spikes because recognition feels different than judgment, even in a town that loves to confuse the two.
The waitress sets coffee in front of me without hesitation, no side-eye, no tightening in her shoulders.
“On the house,” she says quietly.
I nod, unsure what to do with that kind of kindness when I’m still learning how to live inside my own skin again.
The door opens, and I don’t have to look to know it’s him. When Oaks walks in, the vibe shifts, and it ain’t just because some people are still scared of him. It's more like everyone unconsciously adjusts themselves, as if they're checking their reflection to see where they stand.
He scans the room once, finds me, and his expression softens in a way he used to keep locked behind duty.
He doesn’t make a show of it, doesn’t glare at anybody, doesn’t posture, because he doesn’t have to.
He walks over, leans down, and presses a kiss to my forehead like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like he’s done it a hundred times and intends to do it a hundred more.
“How’s the pie today?” he asks.
“Burned,” I reply.
“Good,” he says, deadpan, and it makes me smile despite myself.
He slides into the booth across from me like we’ve been doing this our whole lives, like this is settled.
At the counter, someone mentions the lake again, mentions how quiet it’s been lately, mentions the old stories of something big under the surface, because Hell can’t let a mystery die without feeding it.
The monster rumors haven’t stopped. Pearly Gates still has sins to answer for.
The club still operates in gray spaces most people pretend not to see.
But when Oaks reaches across the table and takes my hand, and his thumb brushes over the ring he placed there, the promise, there ain’t a thing uncertain about it.
No hiding. No shame. No fracture.
There's no need for a show. There's no need for apologies.
We’re solid.
And in Hell, Kentucky, that’s the closest thing to peace I may ever get.