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SIX

CAMbrIA

Sometimes only a woman can understand.

I have well and truly lost my mind. Why did I do this? I pace the small space of the trailer. It’s been three days and reality is setting in.

Drew is at work.

He left cash on the counter, keys to a truck, and another good morning note.

I grip my phone looking at the screen.

I don’t really have another choice. Everyone is a stranger here.

With trembling hands, I dial Dre’s number. Everyone either calls her Dre or Drea I have learned, but her actual name is Andrea. She really is Andrew’s twin. And they have a bunch of other siblings, two of which I haven’t even met yet.

It is a lot to take in, meeting Drew’s people. Between the club and around home, I can’t keep them all straight in my mind.

“Hey, Cam, you good girl?” Dre greets.

“Um,” I begin barely getting that single word out.

“Oh babe, I’ll be right there.”

Before I can even get out another sentence, the call ends. I didn’t mean for her to drop everything right this minute and come to me.

Nervously, I wonder if she’s going to call Drew. Deciding it’s best he hear it from me, I call him while I wait on her arrival.

“Hey,” he greets on the second ring, “you good?”

“Um,” I begin and I hear the phone shuffle.

“I can be there in ten,” he retorts and I let out a laugh.

“God no! Stay put. I called your sister. Before I could say anything more than um, she is headed over here. I didn’t know if she was going to call you and I was worried, you would get the wrong idea.”

“Are you leaving?”

“Yes,” I say and then realize that’s coming out wrong, “no, I mean no. Yes, I’m leaving, I need to go out and I was hoping to ask Dre to take me to a store, but I didn’t get that far talking before she left to come here. I didn’t want you worried, I was going home and I didn’t want her to call and you hear from her before me.” I’m rambling and I can’t seem to stop myself. “I need to go get some things from the store, I thought she could maybe take me so I didn’t have to bother you.”

“First, you never bother me. Second, I left the truck keys, babe.”

Embarrassment washes over me. I have to tell him. He needs to know. “Drew, I don’t know how to drive and I definitely don’t have a license.”

“Well, we will work on that next.” He says this casually like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “Until then, I’ll make sure one of my sisters is around if you need to go out while I’m at work. I’ll let Dre know if you need something more than the cash on the counter, text me and I’ll transfer money to her. I’ll leave my credit card with you tomorrow. I wasn’t thinkin’ about that.”

“Drew,” I whisper, “you’re making this way too easy.”

“Baby, you left all the hard stuff in Arkansas. No matter where this goes, only good for you comes next.”

I feel tears pooling in my eyes but I refuse to let them fall as a knock comes to the door. “Dre’s here,” I tell him. “I’ll see you later.”

“Lookin’ forward to it, Cambria,” he tells me softly.

“Thank you, Drew. Seriously, thank you.”

Ending the call, I open the door and Dre studies me.

“Alright, how can I help? Are we digging a hole to hide my brother’s body? You need an alibi?”

I bust out laughing. “No, I need a ride to the store.”

“Oh that’s easy, come on.”

No questions, no fussing, just a simple okay. I reach out and grab her arm as she turns to go back out the door. “Thank you, Dre for coming. Thank you for being willing to hide a body or be my alibi.”

She smiles brightly, “I love my brother, but penis heads sometimes aren’t smart. We girlies gotta stick together. I told you if you came here, I would have your back. I meant it. Now where do you want to go shopping? What do we need to get?”

“I need some toiletries.”

She blinks like it’s dawning on her. “My brother moved you in and left you to use his man smelling shit, didn’t he?”

I nod.

“Did he get the good toilet paper?” she asks moving past me and to the bathroom to investigate.

“No,” I explain before she makes it to the small room.

“I bet he didn’t get feminine products either.”

That’s when I blush. “Yeah, that’s the thing. I started my period, and well this whole thing with him is so new, I don’t know that I’m ready to have him tote me to the grocery store to get tampons or me try to send him to pick out pads.”

She laughs, “well, good thing for you, he’s actually practiced in it.”

My mouth drops open in surprise.

“Oh yeah, my mother raised her boys to understand. With us being twins, she made Drew go buy stuff for me every cycle once he could drive. Before that it was on our older brother Axel to take care of. And our younger sisters too. Drew always gets chocolate on day one. Carbs on day three. Alex and Te, they weren’t good with the snacks. Drew is the best. And because there is me, Abby, and Cadie, he would literally buy a box of every size pad and tampon available once all three of us were menstrating because we would sync up.”

Wow.

My mother never even talked to me about my period. I learned about it in the girls bathroom in middle school.

“You didn’t call him,” I state the obvious.

“Cambria, my brother is my brother. I’m going to love him to the ends of the Earth. I won’t ever betray him. But you are new to all this. I’m not gonna make waves for you or him. That’s not my role. As his sister, I want him to be happy and you have given life to my brother in a way I’ve never seen before, even in a matter of days. I wanna see where this goes for both of you.”

I nod taking in her words and giving a smile.

“Now, let’s get some girl products, some snacks, and a heating pad.” Then she leads the way to her car and off the store.

A week passes before I realize how much I’ve changed.

Not on the outside—I still wear Little Foot’s clothes more than my own, still pull my sleeves down over my wrists out of habit—but inside? I’m not the girl I was at that motel. I wake up earlier now. Make coffee before he’s even dressed. I help clean up around the clubhouse, learning which shelves the patches like their whiskey on and which knives never get loaned out. I learn to listen more than I speak, and when I do speak, I watch every word.

There are rules here. Unspoken ones.

But I’m learning. Tessie, she’s Drew’s mom helps explain things. She doesn’t say much, but when she does, it matters. She teaches me how to read the room and know when it’s a brother’s only moment so I can exit swiftly without embarrassing Little Foot. She’s also taught me Drew is mine, but Little Foot belongs to the Hellions. To survive as an ol’ lady I need to understand this.

Her words change something inside me. The softness fades.

It has to.

And then one night, everything changes.

We’re at the clubhouse late. A birthday party for one of the brothers—Hawk, I think. The music’s louder than usual. Shots are flowing. Girls are dancing. A fight breaks out near the pool table, but it dies fast, fists cooled by respect and too much beer.

I’m in the corner when Axel approaches. Little Foot’s older brother.

The one who voted no. Yes, Drew has shared his past with me. How much earning his place means and why. An anger builds inside me to the man I don’t even know. The one who almost kept him from ever getting patched.

He’s taller than I expected. Broader. And there’s something in his eyes that makes my skin prickle.

“You’re the wife,” he says.

I nod, trying not to let my voice shake. “Cambria.”

He looks me up and down. “You know this ain’t a game, right?”

“I’m not playing a game.”

“You better not be. Because if you break his focus? If you drag him back down?”

His eyes lock with mine, cold and hard. “I’ll end it.”

I don’t flinch. I take a step forward. “You can try.”

His expression doesn’t change, but I see it in his eyes. A flicker of respect, maybe even appreciation.

Taking the win, I walk away without looking back.

Little Foot finds me on the back steps ten minutes later. “You okay?”

“Your brother’s intense.”

He snorts. “He threaten you?”

I nod. “A little.” He drapes his arm over my shoulders pulling me close. “He likes to try to rattle people. See if he can shake them.”

“Not shaken.” I smile.

“What’d you say?”

“I told him to try me.”

Little Foot grins. “That’s my girl.” And for the first time, I believe it. Not because I said the right thing. But because I said it like I meant it. Because I did. Because I feel it. I feel like I belong to him.

To this world?

It’s mine now. He’s mine.

And I’m not giving it up without a fight.

The next morning, I wake up before dawn.

The air in the trailer is still and warm, the soft hum of the fridge the only sound. Little Foot is asleep, one arm tossed over his face, lips slightly parted. He looks younger when he sleeps. Softer. Like the weight of the club, his name, his bloodline—all of it disappears in the quiet hours before the world wakes up.

I slide out of bed carefully and step outside barefoot. The grass is wet with dew. The sky is still dark, but the edge of it is starting to bleed color—deep purples and pinks fading into the soft orange of another day.

I sit on the back steps with a cup of coffee, knees drawn to my chest. I’m beginning to like the stuff, especially strong.

This is the kind of peace I used to think was only for other people. The kind with silence and coffee and sunrises that don’t come with a hangover. The kind where no one is waiting to hurt you when you go back inside.

I sip slowly and let myself believe—for just a moment—that this life is mine now. That I can hold onto it.

Drew comes out and joins me. “Whatcha thinkin’, babe?”

“Do you think I’ll ever be accepted as your wife?”

“This life doesn’t hand out acceptance. You take it. You live it until they have no choice but to respect you.”

I nod. “That’s the plan.”

“You’re gonna be okay, Cambria,” he says. “Just keep your head up and your mouth sharp.”

I smile. “I think I can do that.”

He pulls me into a hug, warm and familiar.

“Good,” he says against my temple. “’Cause today we go into town together.”

I blink. “Why?” A little nervous to let the outside world invade the security I have found here.

“You’re my wife,” he says with a grin. “Time to start meeting the rest of the world.”

I laugh before I can stop myself—half at the insanity of all of this, half at the way it warms something deep in my chest. His voice is rough with sleep, still thick from the night. Like it hasn’t shaken off the dreams yet.

We’re sitting on the back steps, the sky barely awake. Pale gold bleeding into soft blue, the kind of morning that feels like a secret. The world is still holding its breath, and for once, I don’t mind being awake for it.

“You know, I’m not your wife,” I murmur, pulling my knees up to my chest, chin resting on them. “Yet.”

He shrugs, leaning back on his hands, stretching long and slow like a cat. “Technicalities.”

Little Foot looks at me like I already belong to him—like the fact hasn’t caught up to me yet, but he’s willing to wait. Or maybe not even wait. Just be next to me. With me. In whatever this is turning into.

There’s a coffee mug between us. Mine, half-drunk and not quite sweet enough. He doesn’t even like coffee, but he keeps it stocked for me, and I won’t dare tell him it’s not my favorite thing. It means so much that he even has this level of consideration for me. That’s the kind of thing he does. Quiet care. No performance. No angles.

The air smells like dew and pine, and something about the light, the way it hits his jaw, makes everything feel deeper.

He watches me, and I feel it like a touch—warm, wondering, a little amused. “You’re thinking too much.”

“I’m not,” I lie, softly.

“You are. You get that crease between your eyebrows when you’re trying not to.”

I smooth it away without thinking. “Maybe I just don’t know how to sit still in something good.”

Little Foot turns to face me fully now, his eyes serious under the playfulness. “You don’t have to know how. Just stay in it with me. That’s enough.”

My heart trips over itself. Stupid, soft thing.

I nod. It’s barely more than a breath, but he sees it. He feels it.

And then he leans in.

No warning. No dramatic music cue. Just the two of us and the early morning and the quiet press of his mouth against mine.

It’s slow. Gentle. Not asking for anything more than the moment. His lips are warm, his hand grazing my jaw like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he holds on too tight.

I don’t disappear. I lean in. I kiss him back.

The world doesn’t stop turning, but it feels like it does. Just for a second. Just for us.

When we pull apart, he doesn’t say anything. He just brushes his thumb along my cheek, barely there, and gives me that smile—the one that says he’s already sure of me. Of this.

“I don’t know what this means yet,” I whisper, because I have to say it. “But I want to find out.”

Little Foot nods once. “Together.”

And just like that, the morning feels a little warmer.

The fake marriage. The real chemistry. And now... the beginning of the lie that’s about to take on a life of its own.

Ready or not, I’m all in.

And I’m not looking back.