Page 28 of Gonzo’s Grudge (Saint’s Outlaws MC: Dreadnought, NC #1)

Gonzo

T he clubhouse was loud. Too damn loud.

Music pounded through the walls, laughter bouncing off the rafters. Women draped themselves across laps, bottles cracked open like the world wasn’t burning outside. Normally, I’d take comfort in it. Noise meant life. Brotherhood meant survival.

Tonight, it all felt hollow.

I sat at the end of the bar, nursing the same bottle I’d cracked an hour ago. Sober by choice. My mind had enough poison without adding whiskey.

Every time I blinked, I saw her. IvaLeigh.

The way she’d looked at me that night on the porch, fire in her eyes even when the ground had been ripped out from under her. The way her voice had steadied when she told me she wanted truth, even if it made her hate me for a minute.

I’d given her space. She deserved that much. But the silence gnawed at me, chewed me down to bone. She hadn’t called. As much as I wished she would, there wasn’t a single text or communication from her.

A hand slid over my thigh.

Shay.

Her hair spilled down her back, lips painted, eyes heavy with invitation. She leaned in close, her perfume too much, her voice a purr. “C’mon, Gonzo. Been a long time since you let yourself have fun.”

Once upon a time, I’d have let it happen. Shay was easy. No strings, no expectations, no promises. Just a body against mine, heat in the dark.

But when her hand slid higher, I grabbed her wrist and set it back on the bar.

“Not tonight.”

Her brows shot up. “You serious?”

“Dead serious.”

She scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Guess the rumors are true. Little college girl ruined you.”

I didn’t bite. Didn’t give her the satisfaction of a reaction. I just pushed the bottle away and stood.

That’s when GJ caught me.

He was leaning against the pool table, cue in one hand, beer in the other. He’d been watching. Kid always had eyes sharp as knives. He set the beer down and walked over.

“What’s up, old man?” he asked, smirk tugging at his mouth.

I gave him a look. “You know damn well.”

“Yeah,” he said easily, like the whole world hadn’t chewed him up and spit him out already. “She matters.”

I swallowed. “More than I planned.”

He grinned, teeth flashing in the dim light. “Ain’t life funny like that? All the women in this world, and the one who gets under your skin is the one you can’t have easy.”

I huffed out something between a laugh and a groan. “Smartass.”

“Runs in the family,” he said, bumping my shoulder. Then, quieter: “Don’t run from it, Dad. Not this time.”

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

He let it go, wandered back to his game, leaving me standing there with the weight of his words pressing heavier than the leather on my back.

I lasted another half hour. Didn’t touch another drink. Didn’t touch another woman. Didn’t touch the laughter or the chaos.

When I finally swung a leg over the Harley, the night air hit me like a reprieve. Cool. Clean. Honest.

I rode home.

The cabin was too quiet. Too still. The walls pressed in on me, the silence loud as a scream. I paced. Sat. Stared at the same walls until I wanted to break them. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.

I kicked the bike alive and pointed it toward her.

The iron gate loomed in front of me, stone pillars on either side like sentries. I killed the engine and sat there in the dark, headlights cutting a path up the drive.

I shouldn’t be here. I knew that. But knowing and stopping are two different things.

I put in the code part of me wondering if she had it changed to keep me out. To my surprise, the gate buzzed and swung open.

I rolled through, gravel crunching under the tires, the house rising like a ghost in the moonlight. I parked but didn’t dismount, just sat there with the engine ticking as it cooled.

I didn’t have to wait long.

The porch light clicked on. The door opened. And there she was.

Barefoot, hair loose, wrapped in a soft sweater that looked like it belonged to someone else. She stepped into the night, blinking at me.

The sound of the bike had pulled her out, and for once, I was grateful for the noise I carried.

I lifted my chin. “Ride with me.”

For a heartbeat, I thought she’d turn back inside.

Instead, she came down the steps, slow but sure. She climbed on behind me after taking the helmet I offered, arms wrapping around my waist like they’d never forgotten the shape of me.

The engine roared, and we left the house behind.

The gate groaned closed behind us, and the night swallowed the last of the house lights. I rolled us easy down the lane, gravel tickling the frame, her arms a careful circle around my waist like she was trying to remember the exact size of me.

I eased the clutch, fed the throttle, and we slid out into the empty road like a knife slipping into its sheath.

The bike rumbled into the dark in that low language only engines know.

She molded to me by inches, not all at once—the cautious press of her chest, the tender hook of her knees, then the full settle of her, soft meeting hard, like puzzle pieces figuring out they belong.

A mile in, I felt her shoulders start to unknot. The first sign is always in the hands—fingers go from clutch to cradle. I covered them with my left for a beat, glove on skin, then set my palm back on the grip.

“What do you feel?” I asked, voice pitched to the helmet, to the road, to her.

“The air,” she said, close enough that the word vibrated against the leather.

“Good. What else?”

A pause. “The wind.”

“Where?”

She hesitated, then: “Everywhere.” I could hear the half-smile in it. “In my sleeves. Under my sweater. Across my face. It pulls everything that isn’t me away.”

“Keep going.”

“The road,” she tried. “Under us. It feels like it’s talking through the tires.”

That made me smile. “It is.”

I hit a downshift with a toe and rolled off for the first tight S curve in the mountain. “Lean with me,” I said, wanting every inch of her to relax with me. “Don’t fight the turn. Trust the machine.”

Her knees hugged tighter. She leaned. Not too much. Just enough.

We took the first curve lazily. She breathed out this little sound that wasn’t a laugh and wasn’t a gasp, something in between that said okay to the part of her that used to flinch at new things. I felt the sound through my spine; the bike felt it too and settled deeper in the groove.

“What do you feel?” I asked again.

“The vibration,” she said, surer now. “It’s inside my bones. Like a drum I didn’t know I had.”

I took her left hand in mine, brought it up from my waist and pressed it flat over the center of my chest, under the leather, under the shirt, skin to skin. Then I pulled her right hand up to meet it and held both beneath my palm.

“What do you feel now?”

She went silent. Then she said, small and right next to my ear, “Your heartbeat.”

“No,” I said, because I’m a bastard for the truth. “You feel me alive. You give me life, IvaLeigh.”

She made a soft sound like something in her had just clicked into a slot it’d been hunting for. I didn’t look back; I didn’t need to. I could feel her nod against my jacket.

We climbed out of the tree line into open country where the sky gets bigger by accident. Stars laid out like somebody spilled a jar of nails on velvet. She tucked closer, the curve of her fitting between my shoulders, all was right with my very soul.

I kept us headed to the ridge road. Switchbacks like nowhere else, no guardrails where there should be, the kind of place that teaches you whether you know your machine or you only think you do.

I eased us into it like a dance. First turn right, weight outside, eyes up, throttle steady.

Second turn left, same song different verse.

She followed me—didn’t get in my way, didn’t go stiff.

Trust is always tested before it’s a promise.

“What do you feel?” I asked, and the question wasn’t about weather anymore.

She didn’t answer right away. Her hands under my shirt were warm now. The cold at our edges had given in to engine heat and skin. Finally, she spoke. “The quiet,” she managed. “Like my head wouldn’t stop. Except now. This makes it stop.”

“Good.” I dropped a gear and let the engine ease us into a tighter bend, rolled back on as the line opened. “Hold on to that.”

Past the old mine, the road straightens for a breath before the long curve that holds you like you’re in its palm. I took it sweet and smooth. She laughed quietly and tipped her helmet against my shoulder like agreement.

We crossed the river on the one-lane wooden bridge, boards thumping under us, water smell spiking—iron and fish and cold rock. I tapped the horn twice for the ghosts who built it. Habit. She squeezed me gently.

“Hands higher,” I told her, and slid them from my chest to around my collarbones, forearms crossing over my heart like a harness. I wanted her closer. I wanted her everywhere.

“Feel that?”

She swallowed. I felt the movement. “Yeah.”

“What is it?”

She searched. “You.” She caught on finally, helpless and certain.

“Me what?”

“You, me, and road, and…” She paused. “Home.”

I swallowed that and let it settle in because it scared me. I kissed her fingers where they crossed and heard her breath skip like a stone on a lake.

We hit the overlook turnout before the ridge drops back into trees. I eased us in, killed the motor, and for a half-second the night yawned wide at the sudden silence before crickets rushed in to fill it. The cooling engine ticked. Heat rose off the motor in invisible waves.

I didn’t turn. I just sat with her hanging on the back of my life like an amen, her hands still pinned under mine at my chest.

“Close your eyes,” I instructed.

“They are.”

“What do you feel?”

She answered without thinking now. “My pulse in my wrists.” A pause. “Yours in your chest.” Another. “The ghost of the road still moving under us.”

“And?”

“And that there’s a cliff just a few steps away and I’m not scared because you won’t let me walk off it.”