Chapter 14 #2
Phantom pulls him in. One arm around the back of his neck. Hard. The type of hug I wouldn't expect from this MC Prez.
Marlena crosses the gravel toward me.
Cal is on her hip and tears are running down her face that aren't sad or happy, and are some third thing only women who have lived hard have a name for.
She comes up the porch steps and sets Cal down on his feet beside her and takes my face in both hands.
Her grip holds firm. Her eyes go to the place at my throat where the chain used to be. They stay there a second longer than Mama Lou's did. Then they come back to my eyes.
"Hadley."
"Marlena."
"You took care of Rogue, baby."
"He took care of me too."
"Mm." She doesn't blink. Her thumbs are warm against my cheekbones. "I can see that, sweetheart. I can see it all over you."
The tears come up fast. I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep them back.
She pulls me into her chest with Cal between us. Texas-mother style, fast and fierce.
When she pulls back, she keeps a hand on my shoulder. Her eyes flick across the gravel toward Rogue and Phantom, who are walking toward the bunkhouse together with their heads bent in conversation.
She turns back to me. Her voice goes quiet, just loud enough for me to hear over Cal's babbling. "That man of yours has been quiet today, hasn't he?"
My pulse jumps. "How'd you know?"
She smiles. "I've been around men like him my whole life, baby. He's fixin' to do somethin'."
I don't speak.
She squeezes my shoulder once. "You ready for it?"
The words come out of me before I can decide whether to let them. "I'm ready for anything with him."
Marlena laughs—soft, deep, the laugh of a woman who has been waiting to hear that exact sentence from me. She picks Cal back up off the porch boards. "Then today's gonna be a good day, sweetheart. Whatever else is comin' tomorrow, today's gonna be a good day for you."
She walks off the porch toward the main house.
I stand at the railing with my hand on the wood and my pulse going at the side of my throat.
* * *
Phantom's brothers come in just before the sun starts to drop, each with two of their patched members.
The sound of bikes comes through the cottonwoods at the edge of the property first. Then more bikes. Then more.
Eight riders pull through the front gate. Banshee waves them through without dismounting from his lean on his own bike. The bikes fill the gravel turnaround.
Holt and his boys come from Abilene—three bikes. Roan's from Lubbock—another three bikes.
The brothers I've never met dismount and pull off their helmets and the gravel turnaround fills up with men.
Holt and Roan walk straight to Phantom, who has come down off the bunkhouse porch.
Three Lyle brothers in the gravel. Three men with the same jaw.
They both go up to greet Phantom, and then they walk to Rogue. Holt claps him on the shoulder and Roan does the same. I'm too far away to hear what they say. But Rogue's shoulders settle in a way I haven't seen all week.
*Family.*
Marlena comes to stand next to me on the porch. Cal has fallen asleep against her shoulder. She watches the men in the gravel. "That's the family, baby. You're lookin' at it."
* * *
The light is going long across the gravel when I walk back to Rogue's cabin to grab a sweater I left on the back of his couch.
I let myself in through the front door quietly. The cabin is empty in the front room. The cypress desk has two coffee cups on it and a yellow legal pad and Rogue's reading glasses, which he never wears unless he's looking at something close up.
I walk down the short hall toward his bedroom and stop in the doorway.
He's sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to me.
Something small is in his hand. His shoulders are curved around it the way a man's shoulders curve around a thing he is holding carefully.
His thumb moves once across whatever is in his hand.
He doesn't see me.
I don't breathe.
I step back into the hall without a sound, walk back to the front room, and let myself out through the front door without grabbing the sweater.
I cross the gravel back to the bunkhouse with my heart going harder than it has all day.
The brothers don't ask why I'm back. Bex comes through with a stack of clean towels and doesn't read my face. The kitchen swallows me back up.
I get back to my work in the kitchen and my hands move without me telling them to and the biscuits I make come out slightly uneven and I don't care.
* * *
Supper is sixteen men eating in shifts. The Lyle brothers integrate. Phantom is at the head of the table for the first time in five days. Marlena is at his side. Cal is in a new high chair I haven't seen before but that has apparently been waiting in the bunkhouse pantry for him.
Nash sits next to Roan. Roan is teaching him something with his hands about how to throw a rope.
Nash is in love with Roan by the end of supper.
After dinner, the men disperse to tactical work and perimeter checks and sleep shifts. Phantom and Marlena take the main house. Holt and Roan take rooms there with them.
I take Nash back to Rogue's cabin. I get him in pajamas, brush his teeth, and tuck him into the spare room with Diesel at the foot of the bed.
He's asleep before I finish the song.
I close his door and walk down the short hall toward Rogue's bedroom because I'm going to brush my own teeth.
A glance into the bedroom on my way past. The drawer of his nightstand is half-open.
Not all the way. Half-open.
My feet stop in the doorway. The drawer doesn't move, and I don't approach it.
One second longer than I should—and then I keep walking down the hall to the bathroom.
I brush my teeth.
The woman in the small mirror above the sink looks like a woman who has been *ready* for something her whole life and didn't know what. Bare throat. Hair down.
Back in the hall, I walk past the bedroom doorway again.
The drawer is still half-open. My eyes stay on the floor as I pass it.
The front room is dark when I get to it. Diesel is on the rug. I curl up next to him for a few minutes before bed.
His old breathing settles me the way it's started to over these last few days.
Rogue comes in late. His boots cross the porch boards, the bolt turns, the screen door closes soft.
He doesn't turn the light on. I'm in his bed in his t-shirt with my head against the pillow.
He undresses in the dark, slides in next to me and his hand goes to my hip.
His mouth presses against the top of my head. "You still awake, baby?"
"Yeah."
"Sleep, baby. Tomorrow's gonna be a long day."
I close my eyes.
The hum of the cabin settles around us. Diesel's breathing through the wall. Nash's small sleep-noises from the spare room.
Rogue's hand is warm on my hip.
There's a ring in his nightstand drawer.
The shape of it is already in my hands from the way he was holding it.
And tomorrow, whatever else is coming—the firm, the fight, the men on the gates—there is also going to be a question from a man I love.
I already know what my answer is.