Page 15 of Gonzo’s Grudge (Saint’s Outlaws MC: Dreadnought, NC #1)

Gonzo

T wo weeks.

Two weeks of her in my bed every night. Two weeks of her skin against mine, soft where the world was rough. Two weeks of waking up with her tangled in my arms like she’d been born to fit there.

And I still couldn’t believe it.

I’d had women before. Easy, quick, forgettable. The kind who came with the party and left with the dawn. But this whatever it was, well it wasn’t that. Not even close.

I’d lie there in the dark, the weight of her pressed against me, her breath against my chest, and I’d feel something I hadn’t ever had before. Something dangerous. Something I didn’t deserve.

I told myself it was guilt. And it should consume me.

Guilt because I knew this wouldn’t last. Guilt because I knew one day she’d see what I really was—the monster under the cut—and she’d run screaming.

Guilt because my son was rotting in Avery Mitchell, and here I was finding comfort in the arms of the enemy.

But every time she looked at me, I forgot all the reasons I should keep my distance.

She was the one who brought it up. We were sprawled on the couch in my cabin, her legs across my lap, a blanket tangled around us. She was working on a paper, her laptop balanced on her knees, while I nursed a beer and pretended not to watch her bite her lip when she was concentrating.

“Gabriel?” she asked without looking up.

“Yeah, baby?”

“My parents want to have you over for dinner.”

The words hit harder than they should’ve. I stared at her. “Your parents?”

She glanced up, nervous now. “Yeah. My mom’s been asking who I’m seeing. I didn’t tell her everything—I just said there was someone. And she said she wants to meet you. Both of them do.”

I set the bottle down slow. “IvaLeigh…”

“I know,” she rushed. “I know it’s a lot. And if you don’t want to, I’ll tell them you’re busy. But I want them to meet you.”

I should’ve said no. I should’ve told her I wasn’t the kind of man you brought home to mom and dad, that we didn’t have a future where she was going to want them to know me.

But the look in her eyes—the hope there—made the word stick in my throat.

“All right,” I conceded finally. “Dinner.” While this wasn’t how I wanted to show my hand just yet, I figured the opportunity presented itself so I would take it and see if I had any pull over the judge already.

Her parents’ house was everything my cabin wasn’t. White siding, green shutters, flower boxes under the windows. It looked like the kind of place where nothing bad ever happened.

She fussed over me before we walked in, smoothing my shirt, straightening my cut. “You don’t have to look so scary,” she teased.

I arched a brow. “You want me to put on a tie?”

She laughed. “God, no.”

Inside, the air smelled like roast chicken and lemon cleaner. Her mother was warm, smiling, ushering me into the kitchen, pressing a drink into my hand before I could say no. Her father… was another story.

He shook my hand with a grip that tried too hard. His eyes were cool, measuring, like he was trying to peel me open and see what kind of man his daughter had dragged home.

We sat at the table. It was a dreamscape all its own.

The table looked like a magazine spread—linen runner, real silver, a bowl of green beans that still steamed, roast chicken set dead center like a prize.

Her mom moved like she’d rehearsed the choreography: carve, pass, dab, smile.

Her dad didn’t move much at all. He watched.

I took the chair IvaLeigh angled me toward. She sat next to me, knee knocking mine under the table, a small anchor I didn’t deserve.

“Dark or white meat?” her mom asked, carving knife flashing.

“Dark’s fine,” I said.

“Mashed?” She was already spooning them before I answered. “Gravy?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The first bite tasted like Sundays I didn’t get as a kid—salt, butter, something green from a garden I’d never have time to tend. I set my fork down soft. “It’s good.”

Her mom’s smile warmed another ten degrees. “Thank you.”

Her father finally spoke. “So.” He didn’t ask a question. He announced a subject. “You ride.” His gaze slid to the window where the Harley sat in their drive like a wolf lying down in a pasture watching its prey. “And you work with that club in Dreadnought?”

I met his eyes. Didn’t give him an inch of blink. “I do.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” He forked white meat without looking, neat as a clock. “For a living.”

“Logistics,” I explained, giving him the truth. “We take care of our own. We move what needs moving.”

“Sounds vague,” he retorted.

“Sounds accurate,” I shot back.

Under the table, I felt IvaLeigh’s knee press a little harder into my leg. Her voice lifted—light, almost chatty. “Daddy, Gabriel fixes things. He cooks, too. He made this chicken last week that tasted like?—”

“Chicken,” Connor cut her off, with a thin smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Is that right?”

Her mom swooped in with a basket of bread. “Rolls?” She put one on my plate without waiting. “We grew up with biscuits. He eats rolls. I try to keep everyone happy.” She laughed at herself, a bright thing set in the middle of a minefield. “Marriage. Compromise is everything.”

He dabbed his mouth with his napkin, slow and precise. “How old are you, Gabriel, is it?”

I smirked trying to pull back my amusement. Why the man wouldn’t be a man and lay shit out was beyond me, but I was fine playing this game. “Old enough to know better, but still living life on my terms.”

“Mmm.” His eyes did a quiet calculation. “And our daughter is considerably younger.”

“Daddy,” she aimed to interject, but he didn’t look over.

“Yes, sir,” I replied. I didn’t apologize for the numbers. “She’s a grown woman, and I treat her that way.”

“And how is that?” He poured water like he was measuring fuel for a controlled burn. “What does treating her ‘that way’ entail?”

“Like an adult. I give her respect,” I said, and let the word sit. “Safety.”

“Safety,” he repeated, tasting it like it might be poison. “From whom?”

“Anyone who’d hurt her,” I warned, letting him know with my stare that meant him too.

He held my gaze one beat longer than was polite. Then he cut his chicken into perfect squares, four by four.

“I hear motorcycles are dangerous,” her mom said softly, like she was tossing a blanket over a fight. “My brother broke his wrist when he was twenty-one. Do you two wear helmets?”

“Always,” I responded, truly wondering how this kind woman ended up with a snake for a husband.

“Gabriel makes me,” IvaLeigh added, small smile aimed at me like a secret.

“Hmm.” He lifted his glass. “Makes you.”

I could feel him reaching for anything. Poke the beast, test the waters, see which one moved the machine. Men like him ran houses like rulebooks—silent pages everyone learned to turn without touching. Men like me fucked the rules.

“What are your plans?” he asked next, still not looking at her, but directing this question to her. “With school? With life?”

She took a breath. “Grad school. Maybe. Or a year off. I don’t know yet, Daddy.”

“You should know,” he said, not unkind, which somehow made it worse. “You don’t drift into a future.”

“I’m not drifting.” She sharpened her tone, heat under the words now. “I’m deciding.”

“Are you?” He sliced another tidy square. “Or are you being distracted?”

“Enough,” her mom said gently, setting the salt down like a referee lays hands on two boxers. “Let’s let her be twenty-two for a minute.”

He smiled at his wife. It was the kind of smile you learn to fear if you live under it long enough. “Twenties turn into thirties when you’re not looking.”

“Then maybe look at me when you say that,” IvaLeigh challenged, voice steadying. It hit me how she’d learned to hold herself at this table—polite, pretty, pressed—and how she was unlearning it one sentence at a time. “I’m not a project. And I’m present.”

His eyes cut to her. The air in the room changed temperature.

I set my fork down so quiet it didn’t make a sound. “Sir,” I said before the next bad sentence could find his mouth. “I know what you think I am.”

“Do you?” He leaned back just enough for his chair to complain. “Enlighten me.”

“Trouble,” I said. “Leather, smoke, scars. A man who makes messes.”

“And?” He was almost amused.

“And you’re not wrong.” I took a sip of water relaxing into the chair.

“But regardless of your judgments, I keep what’s mine safe.

If she’s with me, she’s safer than she is walking across that campus with boys who don’t know what their hands are for.

It’s she’s with me, she’s safer than she is behind the gates of your community.

There is no place safer than under the protection of my club. ”

He studied me like I was a suspect he didn’t know he’d already indicted. “You keep saying ‘safe.’ You think that word absolves you of being responsible to do what is right.”

“No,” I said. “It obligates me and binds me to taking care of her both physically and emotionally. And who defines what is right? You and your law book that you twist to work your personal agenda? Or me a man who lays shit out in front of a grown woman and gives her more than one opportunity to walk away? I’ll take someone who gives me an out over someone who twists words to their favor any day. ”

A silence fell that wasn’t empty—more like a gas filling a room invisible, but deadly.

Her mom cleared her throat and reached for the gravy boat, bumping her glass in the process.

Water jumped, spotted the runner. “Oh! Look at me.” She laughed at herself again, smaller this time.

She dabbed at the spill with a cloth she must’ve left there for just this contingency.

“Tell us about your family, Gabriel. Do you have kids of your own? What about your family? Your mom?”

“She did what she could,” I stated casually. It was both more and less than the truth. I wasn’t going to give more than I had to away.

“And your father?”

“Didn’t participate,” I deadpanned.