Chapter 14
Rook
The crack of gunfire echoed across the open field, sharp and clean, the kind of sound that settled something in Rook’s chest instead of rattling it. He adjusted his stance, exhaled slowly, and squeezed the trigger again. The target jerked back, another tight grouping dead center.
“Show-off,” Havoc muttered from a few yards over.
Rook didn’t bother looking his way. “Hit the damn target, and you won’t have to complain about mine.”
Havoc fired again — fast, sloppy, intentionally reckless. “Speed shooting,” he said. “It’s a thing.”
Fish snorted without looking up from his own rifle. “Not when you miss.”
“I didn’t miss,” Havoc argued. “I just wasn’t aiming.”
Grim’s mouth twitched. “You’re abusing the equipment.”
Havoc flipped them all off. “My sights are off.”
“Your eyes are off,” Ledger said, dry as dust.
Fish fired a single round, clean, controlled, effortless. The bullet punched dead center, splitting Rook’s grouping. He didn’t comment. He didn’t need to. The man’s silence said everything.
Havoc let out a low whistle. “Still got it, Fish.”
Fish didn’t look up. “Didn’t lose it.”
Grim smirked. “None of us did.”
Ledger adjusted his stance, sighting down the barrel. “Some of us were never issued anything worth a damn to begin with.”
Havoc scoffed. “Here we go. Army jokes.”
“They aren’t jokes if they’re true,” Grim said.
Rook shook his head, but the corner of his mouth twitched. The rhythm was familiar. The digs. The quiet pride under all of it. Years of training, deployments, and bad chow lines had carved the same edges into all of them, even if they’d served in different branches or different wars.
Havoc shook his head as Fish chambered another round. “Rangers always gotta show off.”
Fish didn’t look up. “Not my fault you were Army support.”
Havoc snorted. “Support kept your ass alive. Half your gear would’ve died in the desert without me.”
Grim lined up his next shot. “Both of you shut it. Infantry carried this whole damn country.”
Rook huffed a quiet breath. “Air Force carried all of you.”
Ledger finally spoke, calm and dry. “Some of us carried you from ten thousand miles away.”
Havoc barked a laugh. “Yeah, yeah. Drone boy saving the world from an air-conditioned trailer.”
Ledger didn’t rise to it. “Still hit more targets than you.”
Grim grunted. “He’s got you there.”
Fish’s mouth twitched like he was fighting a smile. “Doesn’t matter the branch. We all ended up in the same dirt.”
His hands stilled for a moment. The burn scars along his jaw caught the light. “Some of us left more of ourselves there than others.”
No one argued with that. The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable. It was the kind that came from men who had seen the same darkness and made it home anyway.
Rook reloaded, the motion automatic. Muscle memory. Years of training that never left him, no matter how much he tried to bury the parts of himself that came with it.
Ledger stepped up beside him, firing off a round that landed just outside the center ring. “You good?” he asked without looking over.
“Fine.”
Ledger didn’t buy it. Rook could feel the weight of his stare even with his eyes on the target. “You’ve been quiet.”
“I’m always quiet.”
“Quieter,” Ledger corrected.
Rook didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Ledger knew better than to push.
He hadn’t slept. Not really. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her standing in that doorway — paint on her wrist, flour on her cheek, looking at him like she wasn’t sure whether to step toward him or step back.
Something about it had settled under his skin, quiet and unwelcome, the kind of feeling he couldn’t shake even when he tried.
He knew what it was. He just didn’t know what the hell to do with it.
Stone’s voice cut through the noise. “Wrap it up. We’re heading into town.”
The guys holstered their weapons, gathering brass and packing up gear. Rook moved through the motions automatically, but his mind wasn’t on the range anymore.
Town. Food. The diner.
He didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to risk seeing her again just yet. Didn’t want to feel that hit in his chest he’d felt last night.
But staying behind would raise questions he wasn’t ready to answer.
He swung a leg over his bike, the engine rumbling beneath him. The others fell into formation around him, the familiar hum of the club settling into his bones.
They rode.
Wind in his face. Road under his tires. The steady presence of the men he trusted at his back.
It should’ve cleared his head. It didn’t.
Every mile closer to town tightened something in him. Every turn made his jaw clench harder. Every stoplight made his pulse tick up a little more.
He didn’t want to see her.
He didn’t want to not see her.
By the time they pulled into the diner lot, Rook’s nerves were stretched thin. He killed the engine, boots hitting the pavement as the others dismounted around him.
Stone said something to Grim. Havoc laughed. Ledger stretched his shoulders.
Rook didn’t hear any of it.
His eyes were already scanning the street, taking in corners, windows, rooftops, shadows.
Habit. Instinct. Training.
He didn’t question it.
And then he saw her.
Avery.
Walking down the sidewalk, tote bag on her shoulder, hair pulled back, expression tight like she was trying to outrun something she didn’t want to name.
The hit in his chest was immediate. Sharp. Quiet. Too familiar.
He’d spent years training himself not to react to anything. She was the exception he hadn’t planned for.
He locked it down before anyone noticed.
She slowed when she saw the group. Her gaze flicked over the men, over the cuts, over the bikes — and then landed on him.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Rook didn’t let anything show. Not the way his pulse kicked. Not the way his stomach dropped. Not the way something old and fragile and still alive twisted inside him.
He just held her gaze.
Grim clapped him on the shoulder, breaking the moment. “Food?”
Rook nodded once, forcing his attention back to the club, back to the world he understood, back to the life he’d built without her.
But as they headed toward the diner, he felt her presence behind him like a shadow he couldn’t shake.
He didn’t turn around. He didn’t have to. He already knew she was still standing there.