Page 19 of Gonzo’s Grudge (Saint’s Outlaws MC: Dreadnought, NC #1)

I could have dodged. Given her a half-nice answer dressed up as a vow. Left enough air in it that I could squeeze out if I needed to. That’s a thing I’ve done, even when I meant well. But her faith in me was a blade at my throat and a hand at my back.

“With you,” I said, slow as a loaded phrase, “I don’t want anyone else.

I don’t want to want anyone else. I don’t—” I broke off, shook my head, found it.

“I look at you and the part of me that used to go hunting for distraction goes quiet. I can’t promise I won’t fuck up.

Men like me are built out of bad decisions and duct tape.

But if I do, it won’t be because you weren’t enough.

It’ll be because I let the old wiring spark.

And I’ll own it before you have to ask.”

She searched my face like she was checking for exits. Then she nodded, like she’d found the ones she could live with. “Then I choose you,” she remarked. “And I’ll keep choosing you until one of us decides we can’t.”

“That simple?” I asked, because I’ve seen what simple looks like after return fire.

She lifted one shoulder. “All the complicated parts are already here: outlaws, prison, judges, exes with keys. We might as well keep the rules simple.”

I breathed out and found my hands on her hips, pulling her into my space without thinking. She came easy. That’s how she moves with me—like she already decided and doesn’t need to rehearse.

“You hungry?” I asked, because feeding people is one of the few ways I know how to say the unsayable.

“A little,” she said. “Mostly for the part where you aren’t six feet away from me acting like you’re a storm I should batten down for.”

I grunted. “I am a storm.”

“Then come sit with me while it passes,” she invited.

We ate eggs and toast because that’s what you do when the world tries to knock your teeth out at breakfast. She talked about a paper due and I grumbled about wishing GJ was home and somewhere in it things felt casual again.

When the plates were in the sink, the house felt different. Not safe; that word doesn’t live in head-spaces like mine. But steadier. Stronger. Like the floor would hold if I set more weight on it.

“Walk,” I said. “Perimeter check to give window lock counts to Shanks.”

She didn’t ask why I was worried about windows. This was IvaLeigh, she trusted me even when she shouldn’t. She grabbed a hoodie and followed me out. I checked windows and latches, the shed lock, the gravel where footprints tell stories. Nothing new but the imprint of Cat’s boots and my own. Good.

We stood under the covered front porch and watched a stripe of cloud pick a fight with the morning. Her shoulder brushed my bicep. She fit there like that space belonged to her shape.

“She said I’ll never be faithful,” I said, half to the yard. “I was faithful when it mattered least. I was a bastard when it counted.”

“The past can’t be undone. But we can move forward attempting to do better, be better,” she whispered. “It counts just to try. Are you trying to be better, Gabriel?”

I looked down at her. “You say that like it’s all so easy.”

“It is,” she said. “If you make it so. You gotta forgive yourself for the past and promise yourself a better future.”

I didn’t have language for the way that landed. Mostly what I had was heat in my chest and a tightness in my throat men like me are taught to turn into fists. I turned it into a kiss instead.

It wasn’t the one that takes over—no teeth, no press against a wall. Just mouth to mouth, slow as a promise. She made a sound I felt all the way through my body and cupped the back of my neck, gentle like I was something worth touching carefully.

“Gabriel,” she whispered against my mouth. “I’m not going anywhere. Not unless you tell me to. I’m with you and that’s exactly where I want to be.”

“Yeah,” I managed, and tasted the word like I wanted to keep it. “Okay.”

We went back inside. I poured coffee—hers with too much sugar, mine black enough to strip paint. The chair was still wedged under the knob; it made me feel like I’d done something even though it wouldn’t slow a determined man more than a second.

Shanks texted:

Locksmith eta 40.

IvaLeigh watched me do all that without interrupting. Then she requested the one thing I had avoided talking about. “Tell me what’s next with GJ.”

I leaned back against the counter and let the club in. “Burn’s digging. We’ve got a thread on why he was set up. But I can’t rush it. One wrong move and I can’t get my son out of this.”

“Okay,” she muttered, studying me. “So we buy time. We keep him alive. We stack proof.” She counted on her fingers. “I can help—research, filing requests, sorting, whatever it takes.”

I shook my head before I could stop it. “No.”

She held my stare. “No?”

“Not yet,” I said. “The closer you get to this the more it may burn you. You already glow in rooms you shouldn’t be in. I’m not painting a target on your back because you can type faster than a prospect.”

She folded her arms. “I’m not glass.”

“I know,” I replied, gentle as I could make a word like that. “That’s what scares me.”

Her jaw worked, stubborn and beautiful. Then she sighed. “Compromise.”

“Name it.”

“You tell me what I can research,” she began. “I won’t ask for files. I won’t stick my nose in meetings. But give me the language. So when someone else pops up with a key, I don’t stare at you like I’m lost because I didn’t know your son had a room here and that you two were as close as you are..”

I almost smiled. “Deal.”

The locksmith came. Shanks came with him, leaning in the doorway with a go-bag and a smirk that died when he saw the chair under the knob. “Ex?”

“Yeah.”

He jerked his chin. “You want a code lock?”

“Key and code,” I said. “Two bolts. Window latches. Shed’s got a new padlock.”

He tossed me a small metal tag. “Fresh keys. Three. I keep one in the safe in case you do something stupid like lose it in a bar fight. Don’t do that.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” I laughed because he had.

His eyes slid to IvaLeigh, then to me again. He saw more than he said. “You good?”

“Work the list,” I commanded without sharing anything else.

“On it,” he said, and vanished with the locksmith’s curse following him down the steps.

When the new locks at home, I could exhale. I set keys on the hook and turned to find IvaLeigh at the sink washing two plates that didn’t need it. Busy hands. Busy head.

“She said I’ll never be faithful,” I repeated again because sometimes you have to say the thing twice to sand off its edge.

She set the plate down, dried her hands, and walked over until her toes touched mine. “You already answered that,” she continued. “Now answer this: are you going to let what she said make you keep me at arm’s length, or are you going to let it make you hold on tighter?”

I thought about the study at her parents’ house and the way a man can make threats sound like manners.

I thought about GJ’s face through bus glass and Pop’s gavel and Hampton’s smirk and Walsh’s smile and the set of a woman’s mouth when she’s been left alone with rooms too big and promises too small.

“I’ll hold on,” I vowed. “If you promise to tell me when I squeeze too hard.”

She grinned. “I’ll bite your hand.”

“Fair.”

We spent the rest of the morning doing nothing in a way that felt like everything.

I changed the bulb over the porch and she read me a paragraph from her paper, stopping to argue with herself halfway through.

I told her she thinks like a lawyer and she said that was an insult.

I laughed. The sound felt like a new thing that had been in me a long time and forgotten how to get out.

By noon, I had to go. Church wasn’t called, but there’s always something—the kind of errands you do when your life is built of engines and loyalty and the need to be seen by men who measure you in how steady you keep your word.

I strapped on my holster and picked up my keys. She packed her bag, slid into her jacket, then stepped into me like she cherished being in my space. Hands flat on my chest. Eyes on mine. “I choose you,” she stated again, not for drama, for record-keeping.

“I heard you,” I replied. Then because she deserved more than the grunt of a man who doesn’t know how to give words without feeling like he’s throwing knives, I added, “I choose you back.”

She kissed me like she was stamping that into something official. I wasn’t sure how to take that. Every passing moment with her I was only digging my grave deeper in shame and guilt.

We walked out to my bike. Her helmet went on—chin strap tug, click. Mine after. I swung my leg over and she climbed on behind, knees bracketing my hips, arms sliding around me like they live there now.

The engine caught and the road pulled us forward.

I checked the mirrors the whole first mile out of habit, half expecting Cat’s car to tail, half expecting a cruiser to pull out from behind a side road with a ticket that was really a message.

Nothing. Just sky and asphalt and a woman against my back who had heard the worst parts of me and hadn’t moved an inch.

At a light, I felt her mouth close to my ear through the helmet. “Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“She said you’ll ruin me.”

The light turned green. I rolled us through it. “I might, but I don’t want to,” I told her honestly. I didn’t know if it was a promise or a prayer, but I meant it like both.

“Good,” she responded, settling in. “Because I plan on ruining you first.”

I barked a laugh that turned a head in the next lane. “Too late,” I told her, and let the throttle out.

We moved like a single decision down the highway, wind in our teeth, trouble on our flank, and something new under my ribs that looked enough like faith I didn’t try to shake it.

Cat was wrong about one thing and right about another. I had been playing house. But the thing about houses? You can reinforce them. You can add locks and braces and a beam where the roof sags. You can decide that what’s under that roof is worth the fight it brings to your door.

I was an outlaw. I was also a man who had a son in a cage and a woman on his back who believed I could pick the lock on two impossible doors at once.

So I did what I know.

I rode. I planned. I held on.

And when the storm came, because it always does, I knew exactly who I was going to be standing next to when it broke.