Chapter 37 Lucy
Lucy
I’d thought I understood what violent men looked like. My father’s cruelty had been cold, clinical. His enemies wore their brutality on their skin, tattoos like warnings.
But Jay? Watching him snap, watching him become something monstrous in defence of me, it was different.
Terrifying. He hadn’t hesitated. He hadn’t even thought.
He moved with the kind of precision that only came from a life built on violence.
For the first time since I knew him, I’d seen the Reaper behind the man.
My heart hadn’t slowed since. Not on the ride back, clinging to him as engines howled through the dark, his kutte whipping against my hands. He’d wrapped it around me as soon as we’d left the Fangs’ place.
By the time we pulled into the clubhouse lot, my muscles ached from clinging so tight. My boots wobbled when I climbed off the bike, but I straightened my spine before any of them could notice.
“Wait.” Jay’s voice was rough, tight with something I couldn’t read. For a second, I thought he was mad at me.
Then he pulled me against him, hard, his arms locking like steel bands around my waist. His chest rose and fell against mine, his breath hot with fury that he was trying and failing to swallow down.
“I’m okay,” I lied. My voice was steadier than my hands, which shook against the back of his top. “Come on. Let’s go inside.” I shrugged the Kutte off and handed it back to him, he opened his mouth but closed it again before he took it and guided me indoors.
The clubhouse was alive with low, restless energy, brothers patching wounds, wiping down guns, nursing whiskey in silence. But when Jay walked in with me at his side, the air shifted. Conversations slowed, and eyes shot our way.
Riot was the first to break it. “She alright?” His tone was clipped, already knowing the answer.
“She’s fine,” Jay snapped, daring anyone to push it further.
I wasn’t fine. My chest still ached from the hands that had dragged me from the motel, from the memory of steel toe boot against my ribs. If Jay hadn’t come, if Rox, Riot, all of them hadn’t...
I shoved the thought down hard, curling my fists tight enough that my nails bit skin.
Maria draped a warm blanket around my shoulders and pressed a glass into my hand but didn’t let go. Her dark eyes scanned me, steady and unflinching. “Drink,” she said softly. “Then breathe.”
I obeyed without thinking. The whiskey scorched down my throat, but the warmth of her hand was what steadied me. She studied me like a nurse, like a mother, like a woman who’d patched up more cuts and bruises than she could count.
When she finally turned to Jay, the shift in her tone was subtle but sharp. “Sit. Shirt off.”
He grumbled, but he obeyed. Maria pulled out a battered first aid kit, and as she cleaned the graze where the bullet had caught him, I froze at the sight of his blood and his hiss of pain. The sight of him bleeding made my hands shake even more.
It scared me worse than the gun that had almost killed him. Because for one terrible second, I thought I’d lost him too.
Finn came across slowly, looking to Jay before he approached me, and handed me another glass. “Drink.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, not looking at him, “but I need to get back to find a motel.”
Jay’s head turned sharply, and his stare pinned me in place. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Excuse me?”
He closed the space between us, the smell of smoke and leather clinging to him, the heat of his body radiating into mine. “It’s not safe. Word’s out you’re asking questions. They’ll come again.”
My throat closed. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.” Softer than I meant, barely audible under the hum of the room. But he heard. He always did.
His jaw flexed, his hand curling into a fist like he wanted to put it through a wall. “Then you stay here,” he said.
The room went dead silent. Brothers traded glances, some curious, some surprised.
“At the clubhouse?” I asked, half in disbelief.
His eyes locked on mine, cold and certain. “You think I’m letting you out of my sight after what happened? No one touches you under my roof. No one.”
A sharp laugh cracked the silence. Gabby leaned against the bar, red lips twisting. “Oh, this is rich. We running a shelter now, Reaper?”
Tension coiled like barbed wire. Jay didn’t even spare her a glance. “Shut it, Gabby.”
She smirked, stepping forward like she’d been waiting for this moment. “Careful, Reaper. Strays bite. Maybe she’s why you’re distracted. Maybe she likes the attention.” Her gaze slid over me, slow and poisonous.
My blood heated, fists clenching, but Jay moved first.
He was in Gabby’s space in a heartbeat, looming over her, his voice loud and lethal. “One more word about her, and you’ll be spitting blood and teeth on this floor.”
Gabby’s smirk cracked, only for an instant. Her eyes darted, calculating. Then she rolled her shoulders back, masking it with an eyeroll as she stepped away. But the damage was done, and the brothers saw it.
Jay turned back to me, the storm in his face softening for the first time all night. His voice dropped, meant only for me.
“You’re staying here,” he said again, quieter but unshakable. “That’s final.”