28. Cassie
Cassie
Sunday dinner is not, I have learned, optional.
It's the one tradition this club guards more fiercely than almost anything else: more than Church, more than patch ceremonies, more even than the runs that take half the men away for days at a time.
Every Sunday, no matter what's happened that week, no matter who's fighting with who or which brother's nursing a grudge or a hangover, the whole club sits down together at sundown, and for a few hours nothing else is allowed to matter.
"You're on potatoes." Cam hands me a peeler the second I walk into the kitchen, no room for argument in it. "Everybody works Sunday dinner. Doesn't matter if you're the Prez's woman or the newest wife in the compound. Peel."
"Yes, ma'am." I take the peeler and the bag of potatoes and settle at the counter beside Lily-Rose, who's already elbow deep in green beans, humming something under her breath that I don't recognize.
The kitchen fills up slowly, women drifting in and out with dishes, kids underfoot getting shooed away from the stove every few minutes, Rosie directing the whole operation like a general who's run this exact battle a hundred times and never once lost patience with it.
Brick's set up on the porch with his cane and a beer he's absolutely still not supposed to have, holding court with a couple of the new young prospects who hang on his every word like scripture.
"He tells the same three stories every single Sunday." Ethan drops a kiss on my head, stealing a raw green bean off Lily-Rose's cutting board before she can swat him away. "Every week they act like they've never heard them."
"Maybe they haven't." I lean into him. "Maybe some things are worth hearing more than once."
By the time we sit, there's no table big enough for all of us, so three get pushed together end to end, mismatched chairs and benches dragged in from wherever they were sitting, and somehow everybody finds a seat anyway.
Knuckles at one end, carving a turkey like it personally wronged him.
Cash and Ramsay arguing over whose turn it is to say grace, neither of them actually religious, both of them milking the bit for laughs.
Shadow, silent as ever, but I notice he's the one who makes sure every kid at the table has a full plate before he touches his own.
"Grace." Prez raises his glass instead of bowing his head, and the whole table follows suit. "To another week nobody died, and to the people who make that worth celebrating every single time."
"To that." The table echoes it back, glasses raised, and I feel something settle deep in my chest that I don't think will ever stop feeling new.
Dinner runs loud and long, stories overlapping, somebody's kid getting scolded for feeding the dog under the table, Abby and Spook trading soft looks over the noise that says more than either of them would ever say out loud in front of this crowd.
Brick tells one of his three stories, the one about the time a rival club tried recruiting him away before he'd even patched in, and the prospects laugh in all the right places like it's brand new information.
"You settling in alright?" Rosie asks me quietly, under the cover of the bigger conversation happening around us. "It’s a real question, not the polite one."
"Better than alright." I watch Ethan across the table, laughing at something Cash said, easy and unguarded in a way I don't think I've ever seen a man be in my whole life before this club.
"I used to think family was something you survived.
I'm learning it can be something you actually get to enjoy instead. "
"That's the whole point of Sundays." She squeezes my hand once. "Reminding everybody what all the hard weeks are actually for."
After dinner the kids get chased off to bed, and the adults linger over coffee or the last of the wine, nobody in any hurry to end it.
I sit tucked into Ethan's side watching this whole loud, imperfect, chosen family wind down together.
I think that whatever else this life asks of us, whatever else it costs, Sundays like this one are the answer to every single doubt I ever carried in here with me.
"Same time next week?" Ethan murmurs against my temple as we finally head for bed, the compound gone quiet behind us.
"Every week," I say. "For the rest of our lives, if you'll have me."
"Already got you, wife." He kisses me slowly. "Every Sunday, and every day in between."