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SEVEN

DREW

When the lines blur things become clear somehow.

The lie is starting to feel real.

Cambria fits. Better than I ever expected. She walks the compound like she was born into it—head high, eyes sharp, mouth smarter than most of the patched men around here. They test her, sure. Subtle digs. Half-serious challenges. But she doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t cower.

And when she’s standing next to me?

No one says shit.

Still, I know the clock is ticking.

Fake marriages don’t last forever. Not in a world like this. Not when secrets rot from the inside out. But I’m not thinking about the future yet. Not when the present finally feels like something I built with my own damn hands.

The clubhouse is quiet when I walk in that morning. The last of the beer from Hawk’s party still clings to the floors, and Bug is scrubbing blood off the wall from a punch that went too far. I nod to him, and he nods back, eyes wide. The kid’s eager. Maybe too eager.

Toon’s waiting for me in the garage.

“Big run coming,” he says, tossing me a set of keys. “Rex wants you on point.”

My eyebrows lift. “Me? Not Axel?”

Toon shrugs. “Axel’s busy with the west line. You’re up.”

A strange feeling rushes through me—somewhere between pride and dread.

This is the moment I’ve been working for. Responsibility. Trust.

But it comes with eyes. Lots of them.

“Where we headed?”

“Memphis. Some new supplier wants to meet face-to-face. We run the shipment back. Easy in, easy out.”

“Right.”

Nothing’s ever easy.

I check the bikes, run through the plan twice, then once more for good measure. I can’t afford mistakes—not now. Not with the entire club watching how I carry this load.

Back at home, Cambria’s folding clothes when I walk in. She’s wearing one of my shirts again, sleeves rolled up, legs bare except for a pair of old socks. It’s too domestic. Too perfect.

It makes my chest ache and my cock harden.

“You’re going?” she asks without looking up.

“Memphis. Couple days, tops. Club business.”

She nods. “You need me to pack anything?”

That question. The casual way she says it, like we’ve been doing this for years—it nearly knocks me flat.

“No,” I say. “But come here.”

She walks over and slides into my arms like she was made to fit there.

And maybe she was.

“You gonna be okay here?” I ask.

“I’m not the one you need to worry about.” She kisses my jaw and steps back. “Bring you back home safe,” she says.

I will.

For her.

The run kicks off at dawn.

Three bikes. Two trucks. I’m leading the front with Toon riding to my right, and two patched brothers, Mack and Bishop, rolling tail in the rear behind the box trucks. The shipment’s split between the trucks—small crates, all marked with bullshit labels. No one’s saying exactly what’s inside, which tells me all I need to know.

Rex trusts me to deliver, but he’s not about to hand over all the cards. He didn’t say it was a nine-one-oh which is an off the books club run. Either way, I treat them all that way. As for him not telling me. Good. I don’t want to know. I just want the win. Truth is, Rex may not know if the transport came down from Tripp, the Haywood’s Landing President.

This is club life, don’t question, trust your brother, period.

The road stretches long and empty ahead of us. Miles of hot Carolina asphalt bleeding into Tennessee hills, the kind of ride that makes a man feel free and trapped all at once. There’s no traffic, no cops, no bullshit. Just us, the hum of engines, and the distant promise of Memphis on the horizon.

Toon pulls up alongside me at a rest stop outside of the state line. We park behind the gas station, where the scent of diesel and old coffee hangs in the air.

“You’re quiet,” he says, flicking his kickstand.

“Thinking.”

“Dangerous habit.”

I smirk. “You ever think this is it?”

“This run?”

“No. This life.”

Toon lights a smoke. “You regretting it?”

“Not yet.”

“But you’re wondering.

“Always.”

He hands me a bottle of water. “You’re just feeling the pressure. It’s normal. Comes with responsibility.”

“I didn’t think it’d feel like this.”

He nods. “Because it’s real now. You’re not just earning the patch—you’re wearing it. Means you don’t get to mess up.”

We ride another hundred miles in near silence. The sun beats down hard, the kind of heat that sticks to your bones. I keep my head on a swivel. Can’t afford surprises.

We meet the supplier just outside the Memphis city limits. Industrial zone. Empty warehouses and busted chain-link fences. The contact is a guy called Rizzo—short, twitchy, too many rings on his fingers for someone who claims to keep a low profile.

We trade boxes, swap paperwork, pretend this is all legit.

But I clock the tension in Bishop’s shoulders. The way Mack keeps his hand near his vest.

Something’s off.

We roll out without incident, but the feeling follows me all the way to the hotel on the east side of town. Two rooms, two double beds, thin walls, and one vending machine that eats your dollar twice before it blinks out.

Toon sprawls across one bed and cracks open a beer. “You pacing all night, or you gonna sleep?”

“I’ll sleep when we’re home.”

He grunts. “Cambria get in your head?”

I shrug. “She’s there. But that ain’t what’s got me twisted.”

He nods toward the window. “You think Rizzo’s dirty?”

“I think we’re gonna find out.”

I text Rex a quick update, leave out the gut feelings, and tuck my phone under my pillow. Can’t shake it. The deal went too smooth. The handoff too clean.

I’ve been around long enough to know when silence means someone’s waiting for a bomb to drop.

Tomorrow, we ride hard and fast back to Catawba.

And if someone’s planning on following? They better be ready to bleed.

We’re barely two hours out of Memphis the next morning when the shit hits the fan.

Toon’s ahead of me by a hundred yards, the convoy stretched out over a flat stretch of highway with nothing but cornfields on either side. Mack radios in to say he’s pulling back to check a rattle in the rear axle, and Bishop’s voice crackles a second later to confirm he’s got eyes.

I don’t like the gaps forming.

I tap my throttle, move up beside Toon. “Something doesn’t feel right.” He glances at me, nods once, and picks up speed. That’s when I hear it—distant at first, then rising fast.

Engines.

Not ours.

I glance in the side mirror and catch the flash of headlights weaving between the trucks. Three sport bikes. No patches. No courtesy.

I tap my mic. “We got company.” Toon doesn’t answer, just veers toward the shoulder to give me room.

The lead rider pulls up next to our second truck, bangs on the side panel with something metal—probably a pipe—and shouts something we can’t hear over the roar of the engines.

That’s all I need.

I pull my Glock from the side holster and signal with two fingers—defensive formation. We’ve trained for this. But never for it to happen on my first damn run in charge.

One of the bikers cuts between us and kicks at the truck’s wheel well. Toon drops back behind him, pulls his piece, and fires once—clean, straight to the back tire. The bike wobbles, skids, and crashes hard into the gravel. The rider rolls, limp and visibly shaken.

I don’t wait to see if he gets up.

The other two scatter—one peels off into the ditch, the other veers across the opposite lane and disappears behind a hill. I track him with my eyes, but we don’t give chase. Not with the shipment in tow.

Mack comes roaring up a minute later, face pale. “What the hell was that?”

“Test,” I say, wiping sweat from my brow. “Someone wanted to see if we’d bleed.”

We stop at the next rest station. I call Rex and give him the full report. He doesn’t yell. Doesn’t panic. Just says, “Get it home. Then we talk.”

I hang up and catch Toon looking at me.

“What?”

He lights a smoke. “You just earned a little more than respect.”

I snort. “Earned a fucking headache.”

He nods. “Yeah. But also their attention.”

We make it back to Catawba before midnight, and I don’t even go to the clubhouse. I go straight to the trailer. She’s asleep when I open the door, curled on the edge of the bed like she doesn’t know if she belongs in the middle yet. I strip off the grime of the road and crawl in beside her. She stirs but doesn’t wake.

Just whispers, “You came back or am I dreaming?”

And I whisper back, “Always coming home to you, baby.”

Cambria’s back is warm against my chest. I pull the blanket higher around us, tucking it beneath her chin like she’s something precious that needs guarding. My fingers rest lightly on the dip of her waist, memorizing the shape of her.

She turns in my arms, slow and unhurried, like she knows I’ll always be here.

Our eyes meet in the hush of the room, dim but golden from the lamp on the nightstand. Her gaze flicks to my mouth, then back to my eyes, and I swear the whole world narrows to this—the air between us, electric and soft all at once.

“I can hear your heart,” she whispers.

“It’s loud,” I murmur, brushing her hair behind her ear. “You do that to me.”

She leans in and kisses me, slow and full and deep. Not like a first kiss—more like a question she already knows the answer to. Her lips move against mine like she’s waited years for this moment and doesn’t want to rush a single second of it.

My hand cups the side of her face, thumb tracing her cheekbone. She exhales into me, her fingers tangling in the back of my shirt, tugging me closer until there’s no space left between us. My leg hooks around hers instinctively, anchoring her to me like I’m scared she’ll disappear.

The kiss deepens—messy now, hungry in the way of people who have too many feelings and no idea how to say them. Her hand slips under my shirt, splayed across my ribs, skin to skin. I breathe her name like a prayer.

“Cambria…”

She presses her forehead to mine. “You feel like home.”

I don’t know how to say what that does to me. So I just kiss her again. Kiss her like she’s already mine, like I’ve been carrying this ache for her in my chest forever and finally, finally get to let it out. My hands map the curve of her spine, the slope of her back, every inch sacred.

She kisses me with passion as our bodies rock against one another and my hands roam. She’s in my sweatshirt and her panties. I find the edge and cup her ass giving it a squeeze as she presses in closer to me. Hitching her leg around my waist, I tease the inside of her things with my fingers as we continue to kiss. She rocks to me and I let my fingers slide between her pussy lips.

In moments, she is pressing into my digits in a rhythm, saturating my fingers in her desire before her body tenses, locks up, and then she shatters, breaking our kiss to cry out my name as she comes.

It is beautiful.

Her breath hitches as I press a kiss to the corner of her mouth, then her jaw, then the hollow of her throat. She’s trembling, and not from fear. I hold her tighter, like I can calm the storm I put there.

We stay like that, tangled and quiet, her breath against my collarbone, my heart still racing beneath her palm. Nothing has ever felt more real than this.

We don’t go further. We don’t need to.

The next morning, I’m called to sermon. That’s what we call our closed-door meetings—brothers only, no bullshit, no guests. It’s where decisions get made, problems get solved, and punishments get handed out. It’s also where legacies rise or fall.

I walk in and take my seat on the right-hand side of the long table. Axel is already there, arms crossed, his jaw set like he slept in concrete. Rex sits at the head, calm as always, fingers steepled in front of him. The rest of the table fills in. Toon gives me a nod. Bishop keeps his eyes on the floor.

Rex gets straight to it.

“You got hit.”

I nod. “Three riders. No colors. No callouts. They came for the trailer.”

Axel snorts. “And you let ‘em get close enough to bang on the damn thing?”

I don’t rise to it. “I ended it. One down, two fled. No damage to the shipment. No loss of life on our side.”

“You sure it wasn’t a setup?” Mack asks.

“Could’ve been. Rizzo was clean on paper, but the vibe was off.”

Rex leans forward. “We pulled background on the contacts this morning. Rizzo used to run with a smaller outfit—Steel Vultures. Folded three years ago. Most of them ended up under the banner of the Saints.”

I feel my jaw tighten. “So we’re in bed with a ghost crew.”

“Not anymore,” Rex says. “We’re cutting ties. Good call bringing it home fast. That run could’ve gone sideways. You held it.”

My doubts and insecurities don’t allow me to accept his compliment.

Rex gives me a look reading me—short, firm, but something like pride hidden in the crease of his eyes. “You earned a seat at the table.”

The words hit harder than I expect.

A seat. Not a test. Not a favor. A real fucking seat.

After church, I step outside and light a smoke with shaking fingers.

Toon joins me a second later, slaps the back of my head just hard enough to sting. “You finally getting your shit together,” he says as I smirk. “About damn time.”

We share a grin.

But all I want to do is see her. Taste her once again.

When I get back to the trailer, Cambria’s barefoot in the grass, talking to Laura, Hawk’s ol’ lady, over coffee like she’s been doing it for years. She’s laughing—head back, mouth wide, that sound filling the air like a song I didn’t know I missed.

She sees me, and her smile changes—softer, private.

She walks up and presses a hand to my chest.

“You okay?” she asks, leaning in close.

I’m more than okay. I kiss her—full, slow, claiming. For the first time, I don’t care who’s watching, judging.

This lie?

It’s starting to feel a lot like the truth.

And I’m not sure I want to go back. I think I want to take her away and elope. No one has ever gotten me feeling these feelings and being accepted.