Page 49 of Malachi (Outsiders MC #1)

Candace

The smell of antiseptic and ink should make me nervous, but it doesn’t.

Not here. Not tonight. Frankie’s shop is closed to the public, but the lights are on, music low, and the windows are steamed from the warmth of too many bodies and too much laughter.

Ruby brings whiskey. Sloane brings snacks—mostly sugar.

Darla shows up in sweatpants and a hoodie that says “Nope.” Frankie rolls her sleeves up, black gloves snapping into place as she adjusts the stool in the back the way someone might prepare for a sacred little rebellion in motion.

The playlist hums low, a female voice rasping through the speakers—smoky, aching, something that wraps around your ribs and presses where it hurts most. I find myself humming the melody under my breath without realizing it.

Muscle memory. Survival. I catch myself just as Ruby glances over, eyes narrowing in playful suspicion. I look away.

And me? I’m sitting on the cracked leather of her artist’s chair, heart thudding with the rhythm of a drum line beneath my ribs.

“You sure about this?” Frankie asks, voice soft but steady. “Last chance to chicken out.”

I look around. At Sloane perched on the counter, legs swinging, grinning like she already knows the answer.

Ruby sprawled across a loveseat with a half-eaten cookie in one hand and a middle finger poised in the other.

At Darla sitting cross-legged on the floor, resting her head against the wall the way someone does when they finally let themselves exhale.

These women have seen me raw. Bleeding. Vicious. Soft. And they’re still here.

The back of my throat tightens. I nod. “Let’s do it.”

The machine buzzes to life, and the world narrows down to the sting of the needle and the breath I don’t know I’m holding. I don’t flinch. Don’t cry. I watch Frankie’s brow furrow in focus as she carves something permanent into my skin. Not a brand. Not a scar. A choice. A beginning.

The sound is sharp and steady, threading through me the way a needle pulls through cloth. Each burn of the needle against my skin becomes a verse rewritten; painful, deliberate, mine.

“You’re a freak,” Ruby says from the couch, eyeing me. “First tattoo and you’re not even sweating.”

“I’ve been through worse,” I say simply.

That shuts everyone up for a second. Then Sloane, always the gentle one, murmurs, “Yeah. But now you’re writing over it. That’s badass.”

That’s the thing. This isn’t about forgetting. It’s about remembering on my terms. I’ve let too many people carve their names into me the way a thief claims stolen pieces. My father. Donovan. The nightmares that come dressed in skin.

But this? This is mine.

When Frankie finishes, she cleans the skin, her touch surprisingly gentle, and pulls the mirror over. I don’t need it. I look anyway.

A feathered dagger, fine-lined and intricate, lies against my ribs. One wing broken. One sharp edge gleaming. Beneath it, in ink small enough only I’ll ever read if I don’t tell them—she survived the fire.

Not escaped. Not ran. Not was saved.

Survived.

Ruby whistles. “Okay, damn. That’s poetry.”

Frankie pulls off her gloves and grins. “You want a lollipop or a whiskey?”

“Both,” I say.

Darla snorts, then actually laughs. It’s something deeper than I’ve ever heard from her.

It breaks whatever weird emotional spell lingers, and suddenly we’re all talking at once.

Sloane pulls out her phone to take a picture.

Ruby starts a fight about who has the best tattoo; spoiler, she thinks it’s her.

Frankie shows us the stick-and-poke she gave herself when she’s sixteen and stupid.

Darla admits she almost got her ex’s name once, and we all boo with horror saved for confessions of murder.

I laugh so hard I cry. Or maybe I cry so hard I laugh. Either way, no one calls me out on it. No one flinches when I wipe my eyes and lean into Sloane’s side for just a second longer than I mean to. This night isn’t about pretending we’re okay. It’s about knowing we’re not alone.

When Ruby starts twerking to some old Lizzo song and nearly falls into Frankie’s work table, I know I’ll remember this moment for the rest of my life.

Not because it erases the pain. But because it reminds me joy is still allowed to live here. Even for girls who’ve survived what we have. Especially for girls who’ve survived what we have.

We’re still riding the high of the tattoo reveal. High on sugar, laughter, and the kind of emotional vulnerability that makes you think you could arm-wrestle your trauma, then ugly cry over a Disney movie in the same breath.

Ruby dares Darla to chug the rest of the melted Slurpee she finds in Frankie’s mini fridge. Darla does it with the valor of a war hero. Then gags the same way.

“I feel alive and mildly poisoned,” she announces.

“You look like you licked a Smurf,” Frankie says, eyeing her neon-blue tongue.

I’m half-draped over the loveseat, tattoo stinging, cheeks sore from laughing, when Ruby suddenly sits up way too straight. She has that look in her eyes. The feral one. The I-just-had-an-idea-and-no-one’s-safe look.

A tension prickles up the back of my neck, familiar and almost comforting. Her chaos is its own brand of medicine.

“No, absolutely not,” Sloane says immediately.

Ruby blinks innocently. “I didn’t even say it.”

“You don’t have to. You’re smiling like someone who once got arrested for glitter bombing a city council meeting.”

“It was biodegradable glitter and that mayor was corrupt,” Ruby shoots back, lifting her glass in Darla’s direction with a wicked grin.

Darla meets her gaze, smiles faintly, and nods; a silent, shared understanding passing between them.

The current mayor is her father. The dig doesn’t go unnoticed.

“What’s the idea?” I ask, because apparently I’m reckless now.

Ruby looks at each of us the way a general surveys soldiers in her private army of chaos. “We prank the guys.”

Silence. Then—

“How hard?” Darla asks, rubbing her hands together.

Ruby’s grin spreads with the speed and chaos of wildfire. “Full send. They’ve all been broody and testosterone-poisoned since the Darla thing, the Candace thing, every thing. I say we remind them who really runs this place.”

Frankie leans on her elbow, considering. “I’m listening.”

Sloane groans. “Y’all. My man is already emotionally constipated. If we prank him too hard, his soul might just leave his body.”

“Exactly,” Ruby says. “We’re giving them group therapy, but with mild emotional distress and maybe a little property damage.”

“What’s the plan?” I ask again, already bracing myself.

Ruby sits cross-legged, hands gesturing the way an evil mastermind plots her villain arc. “We hit all their weak spots. Malachi? Scary calm, never breaks. We convince him the clubhouse is haunted. Real The Ring shit. Voices in the vents. Disappearing boots. A child’s laughter echoing at 3 a.m.”

I snort. “You want to ghost-gaslight a biker gang?”

“Exactly.”

“...Okay, I’m in,” I say with a smile.

Ruby continues, “Knox hates clowns. We fill his garage with balloons and one very lifelike dummy clown that only moves slightly between visits.”

“Oh my God,” Sloane says, half-horrified. “He’ll have a stroke.”

Darla shrugs. “Good cardio.”

“And Nash,” Ruby goes on, “has that whole ‘I see all, fear nothing’ vibe. So I say we flip it. We watch him. I’ve got a baby monitor with a night-vision camera. We strap it to a feral possum and release it in his room.”

“Where are you going to get a possum?” Frankie asks.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ruby says, sipping her whiskey with the calm of someone answering a perfectly normal question.

We’re all cackling by this point, hysteria bubbling over the way champagne does when the cork cracks before you’re ready. The idea of haunting Malachi cracks me up, and I haven’t even seen the man blink in fear before.

“We should rope Maggie in,” Sloane says, wiping tears from her eyes. “Make it official. She knows all their tells.”

“Oh she’s already in,” Darla says. “I texted her twenty minutes ago.”

The door bursts open a second later the way it would in a movie scene where someone’s been summoned by pure chaos. Maggie steps in with a tray of brownies, a bottle of tequila, and a determined glint in her eye.

“What’s the timeline?” she asks. And just like that, it’s war.

We have a whiteboard now. A literal whiteboard Frankie rolls in from the back room, covered in a chaotic map of revenge, glitter trails, and fake ghost sightings. It’s titled: Operation: Outsiders of Chaos – No Man Left Standing.

It has columns. Color-coded names. It has bullet points such as: Knox = clownophobia? Exploit. Malachi = haunt with emotional girl-child ghost. Nash = possum with night cam. East = mustache dye + decoy mission. James = the long con.

Maggie stands at the board the way a general would reviewing battle plans, sipping tequila from a coffee mug that says #1 MILF.

“We’re going full psychological warfare,” Ruby declares, pacing with the energy of an unhinged professor. “But ethically. Emotionally supportive sabotage.”

“James is off-limits,” Sloane says gently.

Maggie raises an eyebrow. “Is he?” We all turn. “Have you met my husband?” she goes on, setting down her mug. “He’s been pulling dad jokes and old-man riddles for a decade. Man uses the word whippersnapper unironically. It’s time for him to be confused for once.”

Ruby cheers. “YES. Maggie gets it.”

“Alright,” Maggie says. “Here’s the plan.

James always keeps that antique alarm clock on his nightstand, right?

The one he winds every night like it’s 1953?

” Everyone nods. “We reset it every night by exactly seventeen minutes. Not enough for him to notice right away. But enough to slowly make him question everything.”

“That’s… evil,” Frankie says, impressed.

Maggie grins. “By day six, he’ll be spiral-Googling early dementia symptoms. Then we give him a card that says ‘Gotcha, Grandpa.’”

“Genius,” Ruby whispers.

“Now for East,” Maggie says as she takes a sip from her mug.

“Oh, I’ve got this,” Darla says, eyes glittering. “He’s too tidy. Too disciplined. That apartment of his? Military precision. Alphabetized spice rack.”

“So?” I ask, slightly surprised because he’s the jokester of the group.

“So… we break in and swap everything. Just slightly. Salt in the sugar jar. Towels one shade off. Move his bed two inches to the left.”

“That’s so subtle it’s diabolical,” Sloane breathes.

“We can tell him we were testing his perimeter security if he catches us,” Ruby adds helpfully.

“We’re all going to hell,” Frankie mutters, laughing.

By the end of the night, we have assignments, code names, decoys, props, and a custom soundtrack Ruby titles Prank War Soundtrack Vol. 1: Feminine Rage and Classic Bangers.

My ribs still burn from the tattoo, but it doesn’t compare to the ache in my cheeks from smiling so damn hard.

Somehow, in the middle of grief, bruises, and memories that won’t quit, we’ve made space for something else. Something dangerous. Ridiculous. Something that sounds a lot like healing.

At some point, when the laughter dulls to embers and the sugar high wanes, I find myself curled sideways on the couch, arms wrapped around a throw pillow that smells faintly of sage and whiskey. My fingers tap a quiet rhythm into the fabric, a verse without melody. A lyric trying to be born.

One wing broken. One sharp edge gleaming. Not a song. Not yet. But maybe someday. For the first time in a long, long time, I don’t try to silence it.