Page 32 of Gonzo’s Grudge (Saint’s Outlaws MC: Dreadnought, NC #1)

“Sleeping home,” she corrected, and the word went through me like a bullet that heals instead of wounds.

Night in the cabin has a sound to it you learn if you stay—trees talking, coyotes far off, the creek interesting itself in rocks. I used to hear it and itch to be out in it. That night it sang like a lullaby I didn’t know I’d earned.

She brushed her teeth. I shaved not completely, but I always kept my beard trimmed down.

I didn’t need to shave, but I did it because sometimes a man does the little rituals as a way to tell the part of him that wants to bolt we’re staying.

When I came out, she was standing in my old T-shirt and nothing else.

The sight alone had my dick hard and my chest full because I could absolutely spend every night like this.

We slept like people who finally figured out how to lie down without keeping boots on. She tucked herself into my side, head on my shoulder, hand flat on my chest. I let myself fall all the way. No exit. No plan B. If the world came in, it could find me with my arms around the thing I chose.

Before dawn, my phone buzzed. I slid out from under her slow, grabbed it off the nightstand, stepped into the hall.

GJ: Ridin’ out at first light. You home?

Me: Yeah.

GJ: You good?

I looked at the closed bedroom door, at the helmet hooks by the front door, at the drawer with the whisper in it that said we’re an us.

Me: For once, yeah.

Dots. Then:

GJ: Tell her thank you for making you less of an ass. See you at breakfast.

I grinned like an idiot in a hallway with a gun safe and a coat rack.

She padded out, sleepy soft, hair messy, eyes half closed. “You talking to your girlfriend?” she teased, voice low.

“My son,” I shared. “He says thanks.”

“For what?”

“For making me less of an ass,” I gave her honestly.

She snorted and stole my coffee mug.

We rode to breakfast feeling the chill in the air. The winter was nosing around the edges of fall; air crisp, sun late. She leaned perfect; I asked her what she felt just to hear her say alive again. Being around her was how she made me feel more than any ride ever had.

At the diner, people did what they do—stared and then stopped staring because staring at me gets you the kind of attention you don’t want.

We took a booth. GJ came in five minutes later, loud and bigger than his time served, with Shanks on his six and a laugh that made the waitresses give the longing for a bad boy gaze.

He hugged her. Not a question in it. He’d made the decision to like her and that was that. “You stickin’ around?” he asked, straight to it.

She lifted her chin. “For as long as he will have me.”

“Then get comfortable, baby. Told you this is a life deal for me.”

GJ laughed. “Yeah, cuz you ain’t gettin’ any younger.”

We ate eggs and biscuits and told lies that turned to truth when you looked at them from the right angle.

GJ headed out with Shanks for a run out to check the farms that fence the county to make sure the old barns that houses some of our guns hasn’t been messed with.

I paid and left a tip that made the owner’s eyebrow go up and got a pie put in a box we didn’t order. Always try to support local businesses.

On the way out, Shay was on the sidewalk. She looked like sleep missed her, lipstick trying to change the subject. Her eyes cut to IvaLeigh’s hand looped in my belt and then back to my face.

“Prez,” she said, chin high. She didn’t reach for me. She’s not stupid.

“Shay,” I remarked.

Her gaze flicked to IvaLeigh. “You win. I’m out. Leaving tomorrow they said.”

IvaLeigh smiled, small and sharp. “There wasn’t a game.”

Shay swallowed a retort, nodded once, and walked on. It wasn’t grace. It was survival.

In the lot, I turned, boxed IvaLeigh against the tank of my bike with my hips, put my hands on either side of her and let the world keep spinning while I stayed still.

“You okay?” I asked.

She tilted her head. “With her? Yeah. I told you—no sharing. I trust you. But the no sharing, that includes space in my head.” She tapped my chest. “And that includes space in yours. She’s gone.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She grinned. “You learn quick, sir.”

“Trying.”

Back at the cabin, I chopped wood because the weather said I should, and she wrote on her laptop at the table because school still exists even when mayors die and judges fall and boys are pulled out of cages. The normal looked strange on me but somehow started to fit.

Mid-afternoon, Loco rolled in, Juanita riding shotgun in a rental that wanted to be a sports car and wasn’t.

They got out with the weight of people who once broke each other and now held each other in respect or enemy regard, I wasn’t quite sure which.

We sat on the porch, four chairs, two histories, and a stack of files that didn’t need to be here but are like a habit we can’t shake.

Juanita eyed me, then IvaLeigh and studied the way we interacted. She smiled like a woman recognizing a commitment even if it doesn’t have a ring.

“You look different,” she told me.

“Less ugly?” I asked.

“Less alone,” she shared.

Loco grunted. “Old dog finally brought it to heel.”

“Old dog finally found something worth sitting for,” I stated.

Juanita sipped coffee and watched Loco like she might kiss him or kill him, probably both. “Hampton Stanley’s fallout is going to splash,” she warned me. “Keep your house tight.”

“It’s tight,” I said on a nod, and felt Iva’s hand find mine where it hung over the armrest.

Satisfied with my answer, Loco took Nita back to the hotel she was staying at, leaving me with copies of what had been uncovered in the county deep dive.

When they left, the sun was burnt orange, the shadows long.

I pulled IvaLeigh into my lap and we watched day come to a close.

I thought about all the years I told myself—told the club, told my kid, told the mirror—I didn’t need what I now had.

Exit strategies keep a man moving. They also keep him from arriving.

“I used to keep a go-bag in the truck,” I told her. “Cash, burner, clean shirt, toothbrush, ammo. So if any roof caved in I could be gone in sixty. I’d tell myself I was protecting us. Really I was protecting me from loving anything I couldn’t run with.”

“And now?” she asked, cheek to my throat.

“Now I’m taking it apart,” I said. “Put half of it in your drawer. The rest in the safe. We’ll go together, or we won’t go.”

She shifted to look at me. “Say that again.”

“We’ll go together, or we don’t go.”

Her lashes fluttered like the wind moved them. “Forever it’s you and me.”

“For life,” I responded back.

The words didn’t sound like a prison. They sounded like a place.

That night I did what I do when something is too big for my throat—I wrote it. Paper. Pen. No phone. I wrote three sentences and folded them under her toothbrush because I am a dramatic son of a bitch when no one’s looking:

No secrets.

No sharing.

No exits.

She found it in the morning and pressed it to my chest like a brand.

“You missed one,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Always tell me how it feels.”

I huffed. “It feels like us.”

“Then we’re good.” She smirked.

We were.

The first test came sooner than I liked. Tests always do. Catalina called from a number I shouldn’t have answered and I answered it anyway. Old ghosts don’t need doors to get in.

“Gonzo,” she said, like an accusation and a prayer in one word. “We need to talk.”

“No, Cat,” I tried to contain my aggravation. “We don’t.”

“You think this little college girl?—”

“Stop,” I ordered. “You don’t get to swing at her to make yourself feel better.

I did you wrong years ago. I did you wrong trying to keep this half alive when I should’ve buried it.

That’s on me. But you don’t get to climb in my windows and choke me in my sleep because I finally figured out how to breathe. ”

Silence crackled. Then: “You chose them over me. You always did.”

“I chose the club over everyone,” I admitted. “I chose my son. Tonight I’m choosing someone who chose me back without asking me to become a man I can’t be. Take the part that’s me acknowledging my wrong and leave the rest.”

She exhaled like smoke. “You sound different.”

“I am,” I conceded, and ended the call before she could swing the conversation back to something that never fit.

I walked out to the porch where Iva was reading something that looked like it hurt. She looked up. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I explained. “Ghost hunting.”

“You want me to get the salt?” she shot back, so dry I almost choked.

“I want you to stay,” I admitted.

“I thought that was the plan all along,” she stated, like she was telling me the weather.

I liked the comfort between us.

It wasn’t long before we found a rhythm together.

The club was running smoothly and staying under the radar while the feds picked apart every person in a county position.

Judge Bishop who left us high and dry when Hampton Stanley decided to pull in Judge Walsh didn’t get far enough away.

He was facing some serious jail time for bank fraud.

That was how Stanley got him to walk away from our deal and get the hell out of dodge.

Too bad for him, Stanley going down meant he took everyone he could with him.

GJ watched me like a man watches a horse that used to buck and now wants to pull. “Feels weird,” he said one night on the stoop, smoke curling around words. “Seeing you not look at the door while sitting still. Seeing you not itch for the next fight.”

“Feels better,” I shared.

He nodded. “Good. I liked you angry because it meant you weren’t dead. But this is better.”

“Don’t get sentimental,” I warned.

“Eat me,” he said, and flicked ash at my boot.

We laughed long enough for the night to remember how.

We didn’t make it a ceremony when she became my old lady.

It happened one random day. She had her hand tracing the letters on my cut.

I asked her if she understood what it was to be fully engulfed in the Saint’s world.

She nodded. For IvaLeigh, wherever I was, she wanted to be.

The club was my life and so was she. That night, I slid a small leather strip around her wrist with the Saint’s Outlaw skull stamped in it—property of Gonzo.

A promise. She held it like it weighed five pounds of gold.

“What do you feel?” she asked, testing a joke that was absolutely our own

“Alive,” I said, because that’s still the only word big enough and small enough to fit.

I’d never had a chapter close without a fight or a fire. This one closed like a door you meant to shut. No exit. Just home.

No woman had ever set terms and then stood in them with me. None had ever let my bad plumbing water her field and still called it rain. She did. I wanted to be the man those terms deserved.

Pop Squally always said the road tells you the truth about yourself because it shakes the lies loose. He was right. The road shook me clean. All that was left was a heartbeat under a scarred palm and a girl who put a toothbrush in my cup.

For life.