10. Saint #2
This key opened a narrow brick house at the edge of town with a two-car garage and a sunlit upstairs room for my studio. Saint stood behind me on the front step, one hand at my waist.
“Open it.”
“You’re nervous.”
“I don’t get nervous.”
“You threatened the real estate agent.”
“He called the garage ‘cozy.’ It fits three bikes.”
“Two.”
“Three if you know what you’re doing.”
I unlocked the door.
The front room was empty except for two folding chairs and a bottle of whiskey on the floor. Afternoon light fell across old hardwood.
“You bought it.”
“We bought it.”
I turned. “I didn’t sign anything.”
Saint handed me a folder.
Both of our names were on the deed.
Not his legal name—he had instructed the lawyer to use it, then blacked it out on my copy as a joke and written SAINT above it because I’d teased him that I didn’t recognize the other man.
The gesture was ridiculous, specific, and entirely him.
He took me through the rooms as if he hadn’t already brought me to every viewing. The kitchen needed new cabinets. Saint had marked the wall he wanted to remove, but beside the pencil line he had written ASK AVERY FIRST in block letters.
I touched the words.
“Subtle reminder?”
“Rook gave me the marker.”
Upstairs, the smallest bedroom had been cleared for my studio. Two long desks ran beneath the windows. There were more electrical outlets than any normal person needed and blackout blinds for color work.
“What about your garage?”
“My garage?”
“Yeah. Is it perfect for what you need?”
“Let’s see.”
The garage held his bike, an empty space, and a workbench scarred from years at the compound. Above it, he had mounted the strip of ugly yellow wallpaper inside a narrow black frame.
I stopped.
“You really kept it.”
“Told you.”
“On some level, I thought you were just being cute.”
Below the frame was a photograph from the Christmas party. I wore the green dress. Saint stood behind me with one hand at my waist, both of us looking elsewhere because the camera had captured the second after the crowd cleared.
Evidence. Not of instant love or a perfect past. Evidence of all the moments we had failed to name and the future we had finally chosen.
“The wallpaper stays,” I said.
“Even if we paint?”
“Especially then.”
“You added me to the deed to this place before I paid my half.”
“You’ll pay it.”
“Oh, romance lives.”
“I’m not keeping you,” he joked.
Then the humor left his voice. He put the key in my palm and closed my fingers around it.
“This is yours because you chose it. If you decide you hate the floors, we rip them out. If you decide you need a locked office to keep my shit away from your work, we do that. If you decide you want to leave?—”
“I don’t.”
“You still get the door.”
There it was. The change.
Not Saint giving up his life for me. Saint making room inside it and trusting me to stay when I was free to go.
I pulled him down and kissed him.
His arms closed around me. The familiar leather of his cut pressed beneath my hands.
I had my own smaller cut now too, the property patch replaced with a custom piece that read SAINT’S—and beneath it, in tiny lettering I had designed myself, HE’S MINE TOO.
I had waited three months before asking the club’s seamstress to make it.
Saint never pressured me. When I finally showed him the sketch, he stared at the small front patch bearing the Wraith emblem and the custom back lettering.
“You sure?” he asked.
“Are you?”
“Been sure since before I had the right.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
He had laughed, then turned serious. “I want you in my world. I don’t need a piece of leather to keep you there.”
That was the answer I needed.
I chose the cut because it meant community, danger acknowledged rather than romanticized, and a man who had learned possession wasn’t the same as control.
Rook hated it.
Everyone else thought it was the funniest patch in club history.
“Bedroom,” Saint said.
“We don’t own a bed.”
“There’s a floor.”
“At your age?” I laughed as he lifted me.
He carried me upstairs to the empty main bedroom and set me down in the center of the sun-warmed floorboards.
No boots crossed the corridor.
No brother knocked on the door.
No compound wall waited to carry every sound to Rook.
Saint opened my jeans and looked up at me.
“I waited years to hear you without a room full of bikers on the other side.”
“That sounds like a challenge.”
His grin held all the sin his road name denied.
“It’s a promise.”
This one belonged to us, and neither of us intended to break it.
Downstairs, engines rolled into the drive. We both groaned at the same time before getting up and fastening our clothes again. Rook entered without knocking, carrying a box of mismatched mugs from my old house. Mace followed with the coffee machine. Riot brought nothing except opinions.
“The sofa won’t fit through that door,” he said.
“There is no sofa yet,” I reminded him.
“Then I’m already right.”
Havoc appeared behind him with a toolbox. Dare came last, balancing groceries and the dignity of a man who knew everyone had deliberately left him the bags.
The empty house filled with club noise.
Rook set down the box and looked at the deed folder on the counter. His gaze moved to Saint. Their friendship hadn’t repaired in one conversation. It came back through work: a ride taken together, a decision made without suspicion, and a punch neither mentioned again.
Rook nodded once. Saint returned it.
That was enough for today.
Mace opened the whiskey despite the morning hour. “To the house.”
“To walls thick enough for the rest of us to live in peace,” Rook said.
I lifted my glass. “You’re all welcome to leave.”
Nobody did.
That was the ordinary magic I hadn’t expected from an outlaw club. Once the violence ended and the weapons were put away, dangerous men argued over pizza, insulted each other’s furniture, and stayed to build a bed.
Saint stood behind me with his hand at my waist. This time, the touch held no secrecy.
I leaned back against Saint and listened to the Wraiths fill our home.
My brother had tried to keep me outside this world.
Saint had once believed loving me meant pulling me into it.
Both had been wrong.
I had walked in under my own power.
Hours later, after everyone left, he took my hand and led me toward our room. Sawdust clung to his black shirt. A faint smear of paint marked his wrist from the sample I had opened downstairs.
“You’ve got paint on you.”
“Your fault.”
“You chose the color.”
“You put it on the wall.”
“Six inches of it.”
“That’s how bad decisions start.”
At the bedroom door, I caught his cut and pulled him down.
“Some bad decisions work out.”
Saint kissed me, and when he carried me inside, he left the door open—because we could.
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