3. Cassie
Cassie
Waking up next to Ethan is one of my favorite things in the world, and that scares me more than it should.
He thinks he knows me. He doesn't. Not really. Not the parts that matter.
I'm on the run.
I'm hiding from my family, and every soft thing he says to me in the dark is a debt I'm going to have to pay back eventually, with interest, in the form of a truth he isn't ready for.
I know he could protect me. I've never seen anything like the Black Saints MC, they’re a wall of men who'd burn the world down for their own without blinking.
But protection like that comes with a price, and the price is telling him who I really am, and I'm not ready to watch his face change when I do.
"Morning, babe." Ethan rolls over and looks at me like I'm something he still can't quite believe is real. "I love having you in my bed."
He kisses me slowly, not rushed, and for a second, I let myself just be a woman waking up next to a man who wants her, nothing more complicated than that.
"Me too. We should do this more often."
"I'd like that." He brushes my hair back from my face. "You could move in here, you know. If you wanted."
"It's a bit soon for that." It comes out gentler than I mean it to, because the truth is it isn't soon at all.
It's too late. I let this happen months ago when I should have kept driving.
He thinks he's the one who needs to do the protecting.
He has no idea that when my family finds me, and they will, there's going to be a war on his doorstep, and I brought it there.
"Okay. Offer stands. Stay a few nights, see how it feels." He says it easy, like there's no wrong answer, and that's the thing about Ethan that undoes me every time. He never pushes. He just leaves the door open and lets me decide when to walk through it.
"I'd like that."
He pulls me into his chest, and we drift back off tangled together, and for a little while I let myself believe I'm just a woman who found somebody good.
We shower and head down to the kitchen, where the clubhouse is already loud with the business of the morning after a party.
There are brothers nursing coffee next to old ladies who look far too awake for the hour.
Ethan grabs me a cup and steers us toward two open seats.
Across the room, Shadow's sitting alone with his own coffee, not talking to anybody, and I catch him looking at me for half a second too long before he goes back to whatever he's turning over in his head.
I tell myself it's nothing. I've spent two years telling myself things are nothing.
"Morning," the woman beside me says. Meg. I remember her from last night.
"Morning. It was a great night, thank you for making me feel so welcome."
"Of course. Ethan looked about ready to burst the whole time you were here." Meg studies me, friendly but with a sharpness underneath it. She looks like she misses nothing. "Where are you from?"
I feel the old reflex kick in, the one that catalogues exits before it answers questions. "Um."
"You don't have to say." Meg glances at the other women at the table as if she's including them in the answer before I've even given it.
"We've all got things we don't talk about right away.
Everybody at this table's got a past. You'll tell us when you trust us, or you won't, but either way nobody's going to hold it against you. "
"I just don't like talking about my family. You'd understand, if you knew them." I try to make it sound light. "Maybe once I know you all better, I might open up more."
"That's more than fair." Meg looks at Ethan, who's watching me like he's trying to memorize the moment. "Sorry, love, I'm stealing her. Go enjoy your coffee somewhere that isn't hovering."
She loops her arm through mine and walks me over to the table where the old ladies hold court, and one by one they tell me who they are and who they belong to.
Rosie's warm and a little wicked, teasing Meg about something that happened at the party that makes Meg go red.
Cam's sharper, watching the room even while she's talking to me, the way I imagine a woman watching a room when she's run a bar full of dangerous men long enough to know trouble before it announces itself.
I like her instantly, in the wary way I like anyone who reminds me of myself.
"I'm surprised so many of the brothers have old ladies," I say. "You don't hear about that much in a club like this. Congratulations, all of you. Feels like something a lot of women only dream about."
"It's not luck," Cam says, not unkindly.
"These men don't hand out an old lady patch because they like your face.
You earn it. They earn it back. It's not a fairy tale, it's a choice everybody keeps making, every day.
" She says it like she knows exactly what it cost her, and I file that away too, the way I file away everything.
I could get used to this table. That's the dangerous part. I could sit here every week and let these women become the closest thing I've had to friends in two years, if I let myself. If I stopped counting the days until my past finds the highway that leads here.
When I've finished eating, Ethan comes to find me. "Hey, babe. You need to get home?"
I check the time, more out of habit than anything. "Yeah, I've got some things to sort out."
"Stealing her from us already, Ethan?" Rosie calls.
"Damn right I am." He grins and winks at the table. "I need some time with her that doesn't involve sharing."
The old ladies shout goodbyes as we head out, and I feel something warm settle in my chest that I don't have a name for and don't entirely trust.
The ride out to my place takes us past the waterfall, and Ethan slows without me asking, like he already knows this is my favorite stretch of road.
We climb off and walk down to the water, and he sits on the flat rock we always end up on, pulling me down onto his lap so I'm straddling him, facing him, his hands settling on my hips like they belong there.
"How'd you find it last night? You seemed to get along with the old ladies."
"They were lovely. I thought it'd be awkward. Nobody knew me, but they just opened right up." I push his hair back off his forehead. "Did I do okay?"
"You did more than okay. Watching you in there, you looked like you were born for it. I was so damn proud to call you mine." He kisses me slowly, there’s no rush behind it, and I feel it everywhere.
"I liked watching you with your brothers too. You come alive in there. You love this world."
"I do. It's been the only thing I've wanted for years."
"Do you ever think about leaving? You call them family, but is there anything that could pull you away from them?" I ask it carefully, like I'm testing the edge of something sharp.
"Nothing." His hands tighten on my waist. "Why? You planning on running off on me?"
"No. Not yet, anyway." I smile so he doesn't hear the truth sitting under the joke. "I might be persuaded to stay, if I found the right reason." I take his face in my hands. "Might have already found him."
He kisses me again, deeper this time, and I chase it with my tongue until I can feel exactly how hard he is underneath me. "You think anybody's coming down this trail anytime soon?" I ask against his mouth.
His eyes turn dark and hungry. "Guess we'll find out."
He works my jeans down until they are pooled on the floor beside me. He does the same with his own, and when he guides himself into me I'm already soaked from nothing but his mouth on mine. He fills me slowly and full, and I throw my head back at the stretch of it.
"Fuck, Ethan, that's good."
"You feel unreal wrapped around me, babe." His voice goes rough. "Move for me."
I lift and drop, finding the rhythm, his hands guiding my hips when my thighs start to burn. I hear something in the trees, boots on gravel, and freeze halfway down. "Ethan, someone's coming."
"Then we'd better not get caught." He doesn't let me up, just pushes me down onto him harder, and I feel him swell even bigger inside me at the risk of it, and God help me, I feel my own body answer the same way, tightening around him instead of pulling back.
He drives up into me hard and deep, and I ride it out with my hand pressed over my own mouth to keep from screaming, and we come together right as the footsteps get close enough to hear boots crunching the last few feet of trail.
I'm off him and yanking my jeans up in seconds.
His jeans are going up just as fast, and we're both sitting innocently on the rock, our chests heaving, when Knuckles rounds the bend, his thumbs hooked in his belt.
He stops. Looks at us. Looks at the state of Ethan's collar, the flush still climbing my neck. "Y'all good?"
"We're good," Ethan manages, his voice not quite steady.
"Don't need the details." Knuckles doesn't even slow down, just keeps walking his line like he does this every morning. "Clear this trail before dark. Prez wants eyes on the tree line till further notice."
"Copy that." Ethan watches him disappear around the next bend before he starts laughing, it’s low and helpless, and I fall into him laughing too, my heart still slamming against my ribs.
"He does that every morning?" I ask once I catch my breath.
"Every morning. Nothing gets past this club, Cass.
Not a stray dog, not a car we don't recognize, not a damn thing.
" He says it like it's a comfort, meant to be a comfort, and it hits me somewhere colder than he intends.
Nothing gets past this club. I wonder how long that stays true once my name is the thing coming down the road.
We ride back to my place a while later, and Ethan walks the whole house before he lets me relax, checking the windows, the back door, the shadows behind the curtains, the same as he does every time.
It’s like it's second nature to him instead of something he's chosen.
It used to make me laugh. Today it makes my chest go tight, because I know exactly what he's checking for, even if he doesn't.
He stays for pizza, easy and warm, and leaves when I climb into bed, kissing my forehead like I'm something precious instead of something borrowed on time.
I've fallen for him harder than I meant to let myself fall for anyone again. But I lie awake a long time after his taillight disappears down the road, thinking about Knuckles walking that tree line every single morning, and wondering how much longer I get to pretend that's enough to keep me safe.