Page 32 of Fallen Dove (Fallen Lords MC 2nd Gen #1)

Adley

The Brewers game crowded every screen, the pool leagues were elbows-deep in smack talk, and the axe lanes thudded steady in the back like a heartbeat. It was busy, so Penny, Calla, Bay, and I split the floor four ways and called it good. The rest of the cousins had drifted in to hang out: Eden, Bell, and Clove were posted up at giant beer pong with red buckets and two-liters, tossing foam balls and talking trash like there was actual money on the line.

I was behind the bar for a lull with my hip pressed to the rail, and Mason was right there. He leaned back on his palms, ankles crossed, and that lazy half-grin he wore when the night finally found a rhythm. I slid between his knees and angled my shoulder into his chest. Thorn had the taps and the regulars handled without breaking a sweat.

“Penny keeps talking about the girls’ trip to Chicago,”

I said, just to see how much trouble I could stir before I had to run another round.

Mason grunted.

“What’s that grunt for?”

I asked, even though I already knew.

“I lost you to Chicago for fourteen years, Adley.”

He dropped his voice so only I could hear it.

“You think I’m excited you’re going back there?”

I looped my arms around his neck and tipped my chin up.

“Are you afraid I’m not coming back?”

His hands slid to my hips.

“I just got you, Adley.”

I knew exactly what he was saying.

“I promise I’ll only be gone two days. I’m the old lady of the group anyway.”

He kissed me soft.

“Then maybe you should just stay home and let the youngins have the fun.”

I smacked his shoulder with the back of my hand.

“I can still keep up with my cousins.”

“Yeah, but do you actually want to keep up with them?”

He tipped his head toward the floor.

“You leave me here all alone with Alice, Cora, Raven, and Mayra covering your tables, and I’m telling you now: Alice is likely to bring a cow to work, Raven and Cora will tell at least four customers to fuck off, and Mayra will spend the entire night trying to put out all the fires those three light.”

I laughed so loud Thorn glanced over and smirked.

“That’s… painfully accurate.”

“Adley!”

Penny’s voice carried over the clack of pool balls and the game on TV.

“Come here!”

I pressed a quick kiss to Mason’s mouth.

“Gotta go. Love you.”

As I grabbed my tray, he smacked my ass, quick, proprietary, playful, and I tossed him a look over my shoulder that promised I’d pay him back later.

The cousins were clustered near the giant beer pong. Eden lined up a shot and sank it clean. Bell whooped like she’d just won the lottery. Clove flapped her hands and did a little happy dance that made two guys at the end of the bar grin like idiots.

“What’s up?”

I asked, bracing the tray on my hip.

“Do you think we could sneak Eden into the bars in Chicago?”

Penny asked, dead serious, eyes sparkling with bad ideas.

I looked at Eden, eighteen going on nineteen with a baby face that gave her away from a mile out.

“Uh, maybe if it’s really smoky and the bouncer is blind.”

I paused.

“And deaf.”

They cracked up. Eden stuck her tongue out at me and then reached for a soda.

“Hey,”

someone said behind me.

I turned and found Star stepping up to the circle, a little windblown from coming in out of the night with a pool cue in one hand like she’d been born leaning on it. That bright, curious look she always had was softened by the way she looked at the cousins, as if she’d already been adopted and didn’t quite know how it happened.

“Hey!”

Penny beamed.

“You working tonight?”

Star rolled her eyes.

“Mac stuck me with cataloging B-roll. If I watch one more wide shot of the parking lot, I’m going to start narrating tumbleweeds.”

“Welcome to Weston,”

Calla snorted.

“Half our landmarks are parking lots and one Dairy Bar.”

They were already off and running, the Girl Gang 2.0 making space for Star like she’d been there all along.

“Be right back,”

I told them, because four guys had just taken one of my tables.

I plastered on a smile, grabbed four menus off the endcap, and headed over.

They turned as I slid the menus down, and my stomach did a slow, ugly roll.

It was them. Four of the guys from last week. Loud, sloppy, harmless enough in that way a bar can absorb. And their friend. The one who’d been kicked out. The one who’d put his hands on me like he owned a piece.

Oh, boy.

“Evening, gentlemen,”

I said like my nerves weren’t pinpricks just under my skin.

“What can I get you to drink?”

Three of them ordered without fuss, beers and a round of wings, extra napkins, all of it routine. I wrote fast, nodding, not giving them much room to get a foothold. Then I turned to him.

Up close, he was all hard edges and mean eyes, sour twist to his mouth that said he hadn’t come back to make peace.

“I’ll take your phone number,”

he said, sitting back like he’d scored a punchline.

I laughed, airy and practiced.

“Uh, I don’t think my boyfriend would be too fond of that.”

I held my pen at the ready.

“How about a beer?”

His gaze swept me, slow and ugly.

“Yeah? Boyfriend work here?”

“Beer?”

I repeated, not biting.

Something mean snapped in his face. The agitation came quick, like it had been coiled and waiting. His knee bumped the table.

“You think you’re cute, huh?”

Before I could figure whether this was about to go sideways or whether I could steer it back, a voice chimed in at my elbow, light and crisp.

“Hey,”

Star said, and tipped the pool cue against her shoulder.

“You guys up for a game of pool?”

The three not-creeps glanced between each other like she’d offered them a golden ticket. But the one across from me didn’t even bother to hide his disdain. He leaned forward, eyes slipping past me like oil.

“Not right now, sweet tits,”

he said to Star.

My mouth dropped open. Star didn’t miss a beat. She smiled like a shark.

I’d started to turn, half step back to the bar to put in the order, ready to leave the mess behind, and that’s when his hand came out fast. He grabbed a handful of my ass like he was plucking fruit.

“Get back here, slut.”

I didn’t think. My body jolted, and a thousand nights in Chicago flashed hot in my muscles. But I didn’t move because Star moved first.

The next seconds blurred and sharpened at the same time, hyper-real: Star pivoted on the ball of her foot, the pool cue flashing down and around in a clean, practiced arc that smacked the guy’s wrist hard enough to make him yelp and release me. She slid her grip halfway down the cue and snapped it across the edge of the table. The wood cracked with a splintering sound and then she swept his ankles with a ruthless, precise strike that dumped him on his back like a sack of sand.

He hit the floor with a sick thud. Star planted one knee on his chest, and the broken half of the cue pinned across his collarbone, just under his throat. Her eyes were flat and cool.

His friends lurched, all elbows and panic.

“Don’t,”

Star said without raising her voice.

They didn’t listen.

Three steps slammed toward us, and then there was motion in the corner of my eye. A tidal shove of denim and leather and certainty.

Mason’s hand grabbed my waist, yanked me behind him so fast my pen and notepad flew from my hand and pinged off the bench. Arlo came in low from the left, Oliver from the right, how Oliver materialized that fast I didn’t know, and Thorn, sweet, easy Thorn, vaulted the end of the bar like he’d been training for it.

“On your feet,”

Arlo barked at the two who’d gotten brave enough to reach for Star who were now on their asses.

“You touch her, you touch me,”

Cole added, and the sudden, sharp way he said it made both guys freeze. I’d never heard Nickel’s son sound like that. Cold as steel.

The room fell hushed and heavy and weird. People hadn’t quite registered what they’d seen, just the aftermath: a girl in a jean jacket kneeling on a guy’s sternum with half a pool cue pressed to his throat and four Fallen Lords closing a circle like the floor itself had shifted.

Mason’s body was a wall in front of me, one hand still on my hip, the other out like a barricade.

“You okay?”

he asked over his shoulder, and there was a growl coiled in it I hadn’t heard since he threw the last guy out.

“I’m okay,”

I said and put a hand on his back to ground.

“Thank God Star was there.”

The guy on the floor tried to twist and buck, but Star had leverage and the kind of training that turned movement into a mistake.

“Stay. Down,”

she said, pressing the cue a whisper harder. A promise without making a mess.

“Up,”

Cole ordered, nodding at Arlo and Oliver.

Arlo reached down, grabbed the guy’s forearm, and hauled him upright like he weighed nothing. Oliver stepped in, palms forward, crowd-control calm that said we can do this easy or we can do it loud. Thorn was already directing traffic with two fingers, his bartender voice gone iron.

“Out,”

Mason said to the whole table.

“All four of you. You don’t come back.”

The three friends started sputtering excuses. They split between apologizing and defending the indefensible. The one Star had pinned didn’t even try. He just glared at her, as she got off of him, and Cole hauled him to his feet.

Arlo and Oliver herded them, bodies angled so there were no good choices but the door. Cole stepped at Star’s side, hand out. She rose in one smooth motion, and then wiped her hands on her jeans like she could shake off the contact of the last thirty seconds. Her face didn’t show it, but I caught the tiny tremor in her fingers before she tucked them into her pockets.

The whole bar was quiet.

“Shots on the house!”

Eden yelled, both arms thrown up like she was starting a parade.

The room exploded in cheers. Mason turned with an incredulous look toward her.

“Did the eighteen-year-old just offer free shots?”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Um. Yeah. I mean, it kind of makes sense. Her mom is Alice.”

Mason shook his head and pulled me fully into his arms. His eyes scanned my face like he could inventory every nerve and find whatever was frayed.

“Are you okay?”

he asked again, softer now.

“I saw that guy talking to you, but I didn’t get over here fast enough.”

I slid my palm to his cheek, and my thumb brushed the corner of his mouth.

“I’m okay. Really. Star got there before I even had time to think.”

We both looked at her then. She’d handed the busted cue to Cole like it was a trophy she didn’t want. Cole took it slowly as his eyes never left her face. Something like shock and something like respect fought for space in his expression.

“That was incredible,” I said.

Star shrugged, suddenly sheepish now that the adrenaline was ebbing.

“You can thank my mom. She insisted before I went off to college that I needed to become a black belt.”

Mason slid his hand down my arm and laced our fingers.

“Let’s remember that when our kids go off to college,”

he said, casual as anything, like he hadn’t just dropped a future in the middle of the floor.

“Our kids?”

I laughed, heart skipping once.

“I’m not even pregnant.”

His eyes shimmered, yeah, shimmered, like the idea alone set off sparks. “Not yet.”

Heat kicked low in my belly. I would have kissed him stupid right there if we hadn’t had a bar to get back under control. Thorn was already moving down the rail, lining up small glasses, with the good tequila in his hand like a sword. Penny and Bay were spinning through the room, taking orders and dodging hugs from women who wanted to retell the last five minutes like they’d been the ones holding the cue.

Cole cleared his throat, still holding the splintered wood like it might give him answers.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

he asked Star, voice steady but curious.

Star tilted her head.

“Depends. Are you going to try to grab my ass if I say no?”

Cole’s mouth twitched.

“Hard pass.”

A small smile carved into her cheek.

“Then I guess I’ll let you buy me one.”

They drifted toward the bar, side by side.

Mason tugged me close again. The chaos around us dimmed to something warm.

“You don’t seem too scared about kids,”

he murmured.

I tipped back to look at him.

“I’ve been waiting fourteen years for this,”

I said, simple and clean.

“I’m not flying away anymore, Mason. I’m here to stay.”

His mouth curved, relief and want and home all wrapped up in it. He cupped my jaw and kissed me, not for scandal, not to stake a claim just because he could. Because finally, finally, there wasn’t a single person in the room who didn’t know.

He pulled back with his eyes on mine.

“About fucking time my little dove came home,” he said.

I laughed, and somewhere behind us Eden whooped, Bell clapped, Thorn banged a metal spoon against a bottle like a bell, and the Social Club did what it always did when something good happened. They lifted their glasses and roared approval.

After fourteen years Mason and I were right where we were meant to be.

Together.