Page 36 of Malachi (Outsiders MC #1)

Candace

I don’t know why I said yes. Maybe it was the cinnamon rolls.

Maybe it was the way Maggie smiled at me, the same way she always used to.

As though I hadn’t slipped through the cracks, and I was still that girl she used to sneak extra dessert to when she thought I looked too thin.

The one she and James covered training costs for, quietly, treating it as nothing more than a small kindness.

Or maybe it was the flicker in her eyes when she saw me.

Recognition, hope, and something steadier than pity.

A lifeline I didn’t have to ask for. Or maybe it was the man on the bike in front of me.

The one whose body I’d memorized in a moment I can’t take back.

The one whose soul feels pressed into a bruise I can’t stop touching.

Every mile we ride together, the ache in my chest pulses louder. I don’t know what I’m doing. Clinging to a past I’ve buried or reaching for a future I don’t believe I deserve.

Malachi didn’t say much when we left the clubhouse. Just handed me a helmet, a question he already knew the answer to. The weight of it in my hands felt heavier than it should, carrying a choice wrapped in trust I haven’t earned.

Now the wind claws at my cheeks, and I’m clinging to his jacket, the only thing tethering me to the present.

We cut through the backroads, two ghosts who know the way home.

I bury my face against the leather, breathing in the mix of smoke, cedar, and something uniquely him.

I don’t let myself hum, but my fingers tap a silent rhythm against my thigh.

The words come, but I leave unspoken. A lyric I’ll never sing aloud.

The house is just as I remember. Porch swing creaking in the wind. Warm yellow light spilling from the windows, a soft invitation from the past. A lump forms in my throat. I want to run. I want to stay. Both urges hit powerfully.

He kills the engine, and I peel my hands off his back. They feel too empty now. My palms tingle, already aching for the shape of him. Because they knew better than I did what I was holding onto.

The front door swings open before we reach the steps. “There you are,” Maggie calls, arms already spreading wide, her whole body waiting for me to come back. “Come in, food’s ready.”

The second I step inside, it hits me. The scent of cinnamon, rosemary, and the kind of comfort that makes your knees weak.

Plates clinking. James humming an old blues song off-key, the same way he always used to.

The sound scrapes something raw and nostalgic inside me.

It’s a needle skipping across a record I’d forgotten how to play.

There on the mantle, tucked in a corner as if it still matters, is a photo of me. First fight. Wrapped hands. Split lip. Grinning like I owned the world. My breath catches. That girl feels distant now. A version of me that still believed in winning.

I don’t deserve any of this. The thought loops; it’s a refrain I can’t mute.

But Maggie’s arms are around me before I can talk myself out of it. Her hug is bone-deep. It’s home. It’s heat after cold. I sink into her grip, stiff at first, then unraveling all at once. My eyes sting. My ribs ache with the effort of not crying.

“You look good,” she murmurs against my hair. “Tired. But good.”

I don’t trust my voice, so I just nod. I press my lips tight, swallowing back the truth sitting roughly in my throat, all grit and weight.

James turns from the stove, spatula in hand. “’Bout time you two showed up. Hope you brought appetites.”

“I always bring mine,” Malachi says, voice low and rough, the sound of gravel under tires. My heart stutters. I pretend it doesn’t. But my spine straightens, same as it always does when he speaks. It’s half reflex, half hunger.

We sit at the kitchen table, and the familiarity is a punch to the ribs.

Faint grooves in the wood still mark where I used to do homework.

That chair stays tilted from the time I fell back laughing and James claimed fixing it would insult its character.

Dragging it across the floor triggers something instinctive, a rhythm I haven’t forgotten.

I’m sliding into a life I wasn’t sure had space for me anymore.

Maggie fills our plates with a tenderness that feeds more than just our bodies. I stare down at mine, too full and too empty all at once. The smell makes my stomach growl, but I can’t lift the fork. It feels too heavy, burdened with the baggage of the past.

“Malachi tells me you were thinking about getting back into training,” James says after a few bites.

My fork freezes mid-air. I don’t look at Malachi. “I said that?”

“You asked if we could spar,” he says. Simple. Unreadable. His knee brushes mine under the table—barely there. But it grounds me more than the food ever could.

Heat creeps up my neck. I flick a glance at Maggie, bracing for teasing. Instead, she watches me with pride. A steady pride that never left. That look shatters something in me. I almost flinch from it. As if affection might burn if it lingers too long.

“You still move with a fighter’s rhythm,” she says. “Still carry yourself in a way that says you’re just waiting for permission to punch something again.”

A huff escapes me. Almost a smile. “Sometimes I want to hit something. But I couldn’t afford Coach Tompkins anymore.” She already knows this. “Started working. Saving.”

“You didn’t run,” James says. “That counts.”

“I didn’t have anywhere to go,” I mutter. My throat tightens. The truth is an open wound I keep stitching shut.

So I don’t say how my dad drained what little I had. How Malachi bet on himself in that underground fight and gave me back what was stolen. I don’t know why he did it. I know he doesn’t want me to leave, but he gave me the means to. Now I carry that freedom, a grenade with the pin halfway pulled.

Malachi goes still beside me. I feel it in the shift of air pressure. A pause in the atmosphere. The whole room seems to brace for what I might say next. I don’t.

“You always had us,” Maggie says quietly. The words hit with the weight of a stone in my chest. I blink hard, jaw flexing, a half-formed lyric threading through my mind. Safe is a place you build, not find. I don’t let it rise.

I nod once, swallow hard, and stare down at my plate.

Conversation drifts. James gripes about the hardware store.

Maggie tells a story about a stray cat she’s half-adopted.

Malachi says nothing. Just watches me, studying the storm he’s trying to predict.

His silence isn’t empty. It’s electric. As if he sees all the fractures I’m trying to hide.

After dinner, Maggie presses a foil-wrapped plate into my hands.

“Cinnamon rolls,” she says. “Still warm. For tomorrow. Don’t let them go to waste.”

I scowl. She grins, already certain she won.

Malachi thanks them. I don’t. I can’t. Because I feel the risk. By opening my mouth, something might spill out I won’t be able to put back in. Gratitude. Grief. Something too close to wanting.

James starts rinsing dishes. Malachi steps outside to smoke. I hover, stuck between staying and fleeing, but Maggie touches my arm—gentle, insistent.

“Come with me,” she says.

She leads me into the laundry room. The hum of the dryer is soft and steady.

Safe. The warmth wraps around me, charged with a quiet static.

It’s low, rhythmic, soothing in a way I don’t want to trust. She leans back against the wall, arms crossed, eyes sharp in that way they’ve always been.

Cutting through bullshit and bruises alike.

“You okay?” she asks.

I nod. Lie. “Yeah.”

She lifts a brow. Waits.

I stare at the floor. “I don’t know what I’m doing with him.”

“You don’t have to know.”

“He doesn’t push me,” I whisper. “Even when I think he will. Even when I… want him to.”

“That’s not nothing,” she says. “That’s him trying. If anyone understands surviving trauma, it’s him.”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

She hesitates, then breathes deep. “Malachi’s older brother died when he was seventeen. Cornelius too, later on. Same night, his little brother and sister were taken.”

I blink. “I didn’t know. I mean, I knew about Cornelius, that they were close, but... siblings?”

Something shifts in her face, the slow creak of a door beginning to open.

“He doesn’t talk about it,” she says. “But it guts him. He’d walk through fire to find them.”

I feel something crack open in my chest. A pressure I didn’t know I was carrying. The image of him, seventeen and shattered, burns behind my eyelids.

“I didn’t know,” I say again. Small. Hollow.

“You weren’t supposed to,” she replies. “He keeps the deepest wounds quiet.”

“I’ve known him for years.” My voice breaks. “And I never even...”

“Candace.” She steps toward me. “You were surviving your own storm. He never expected you to carry his.”

I shake my head, throat tight. “Still.”

“You know now,” she says. “That’s what matters.”

I lean back against the dryer. The quiet hums through my bones. I want to cry. To sing. I want to scream into the folds of my lyric journal and never look up.

“He feels like a stranger,” I admit. “But somehow... also the only one who sees me.”

Maggie’s smile is warm and sad. “He probably feels the same about you.”

I nod. Eyes stinging. “Thank you. For the training. For everything.”

“We didn’t do it for thanks,” she says. “We did it because we love you.”

I close my eyes. Hold that truth close. Let it stitch something inside me that’s been unraveling too long.

When I step onto the porch, the swing rocks gently in the breeze. Malachi’s finishing his cigarette, gaze lost somewhere in the trees. The night wraps around him, a kind of armor. But his shoulders, his posture, are softer than before.

He doesn’t rush me. Doesn’t say it’s time to go.

I sit. Let the swing move. Let the warmth of memory settle in a place I usually keep cold. The foil-wrapped cinnamon rolls rest in my lap. I tap them once, lightly. A beat. A tempo I don’t name.

When I finally rise, he’s already flicked the cigarette away.

I offer him the rolls without speaking. He takes them, tucks them into the saddlebag, then holds my helmet out, wordless.

I take it. Our fingers brush. I don’t pull back.

He doesn’t either. The contact is brief, but it leaves heat in its wake.

On the ride back, I don’t hold him as tight. Not because I don’t want to. Because I do. That terrifies me more than anything else.