Page 22

Lainey

“I think Harley and Davidson have found a new friend,” Poppy said with a grin, nodding toward the backyard where Lottie was flat on her back in the grass, one dog on either side of her.

“She threw the ball for the last hour for them,” Sloane laughed, adjusting her sunglasses. “They’re in love with her. I don’t think any of us have ever played with them for that long.”

We were all sprawled out in the clubhouse backyard, soaking in the warm afternoon sun. Some of the girls lounged in deck chairs, others were on blankets in the grass. The guys, well, Duane and Aero, stood just inside the patio doors, with their arms crossed, eyes always scanning. Fallon had already tried once to convince them we didn’t need guards while we talked about clothes and dogs, but they hadn’t budged.

Duane had been on edge since the scare with Lottie. It wasn’t Boone and Gibbs, thank God, but it had made everything hit a little harder. How fast things could turn. How close danger still lingered.

“What are you wearing Wednesday?” Dove asked from her chair as she sipped iced tea. “Should we try to dress alike?”

“Dress alike?” Poppy snorted. “Like what? We all wear pink?”

“I will not be wearing pink,” Saylor declared flatly. “I like to wear black, and sometimes… black.”

Everyone cracked up.

I shielded my eyes with my hand. “What’s happening Wednesday?”

“Photoshoot,” Fallon answered. “The production company needs promo photos for the premiere.” She wrinkled her nose. “I keep telling myself we just have to get through it, and then this’ll all be over.”

Promo photos? Premiere?

I blinked, confused.

“And then the premiere,” Olive sighed dreamily. “Hopefully, they do it in Mt. Pleasant. Let the Hollywood people come to us.”

I glanced around like maybe someone was going to fill me in.

I turned to Sloane. “What are they talking about?”

“TV show,” she said, like it was obvious.

I must have looked as lost as I felt because she added, “It’s coming out soon.”

“Okay, you’re saying that like I should know what you’re talking about.” I laughed, more confused than ever.

She stared at me. “ Tread ?”

I shook my head. “What?”

Her eyebrows rose to her hairline. “You mean to tell me Dice hasn’t told you about this? Tread has been the bane of the club’s existence for months.”

I looked straight at Duane.

He didn’t notice at first. I just kept staring until I saw him shift, sensing it. His eyes flicked to mine.

“Oh, honey,” I called sweetly. “Is there something you’ve forgotten to tell me?”

He looked confused. “Um… no?”

“You’ve told her about everything going on with the club?” Dani asked, her voice full of mock innocence. “Like, everything?”

“She knows about Boone and Gibbs,” he said slowly.

Sloane snorted. “Oh, brother.”

“Let me jog your memory, Dice,” Saylor chimed in, smirking. “What are we all doing on Wednesday?”

Duane’s mouth opened, then closed. His brows lifted.

“…Photoshoot?” he said, and then his eyes widened like someone just hit him in the face with a frying pan. “Oh shit.” Then louder, “Oh, shit .”

“Now do you remember something you should’ve mentioned to me?” I asked, my arms crossed over my chest.

He walked away from the house toward me with his hands up. “Okay, babe, this is going to sound crazy—because it really is—but… the club is part of a reality TV show.”

“What?” Lottie shouted from the grass. She sat up between Harley and Davidson. “You guys are on TV?”

“Not yet,” Sloane said with a smirk. “There’s a new show coming called Tread: Iron Fiends MC. It’s following four different MCs across the country. Iron Fiends is the first season.”

I stared at Duane. “And how… on earth… did you forget to mention that? That seems like a pretty big thing. ”

He scratched the back of his neck. “It would’ve been if we didn’t have cameras shoved in our faces while also dealing with two psychos trying to kill us. It kind of… ruined the vibe.”

Only Duane.

Only Duane would forget to tell me they were going to be on national television.

“Are we going to be on TV now?” Lottie asked, bounding over, cheeks pink from the sun.

“Nope,” Olive said. “Not unless they do a second season and come back. They’ve already wrapped filming for this one. Trust me, if they were still filming, you’d see a camera stuck up Aero’s nose.”

“Rude,” Aero muttered from the patio door.

“And here I thought things couldn’t get more insane,” I said, laughing in disbelief.

“Well,” Sloane said, “Aero and I ran off to Colorado and got married in the middle of filming, so… I guess the crazy bar was already high.”

Sloane winked at Aero. “We should go back when this is all over,” she said. “Another honeymoon.”

He nodded. “Name the day.”

I looked around at all of them—these women I was still getting to know, who were becoming a weird little support system for me—and back at Duane.

I should’ve been mad. Maybe I still was.

But I was more overwhelmed than anything. Trying to keep up with everything felt like trying to build a puzzle without knowing what the picture looked like.

“Okay, just… hold on,” I said, raising a hand. “Is there anything else I should know? Any other secrets hiding in plain sight?”

Adalee smiled from her blanket and held up two fingers. “You know the two big ones now. One—Boone and Gibbs. Two—we’re on reality TV.”

I dropped my head into my hands. “Those are really big.”

“I’ll admit,” Duane said sheepishly, “I probably should’ve told you. But I didn’t think it mattered. I mean, the filming’s done.”

“It matters when I find out from everyone else .”

“I didn’t even think about it, babe.”

“That’s the problem,” I muttered.

But I couldn’t even muster up real anger. This was just… so far outside the scope of anything I thought my life would include. Last year, I was fighting with Lee over co-parenting and working from my kitchen table. Now I was living in a biker clubhouse, learning my boyfriend was about to be on television.

“Don’t worry,” Poppy said. “You’ll be ready for the premiere. You’re in the club now.”

“In the club?” I echoed.

“Well,” Fallon said, “you survived your first near-death scare and haven’t run screaming. That’s step one.”

“I’ll send you my checklist,” Olive joked.

I smiled, but my eyes drifted to Lottie, who was now feeding Harley pieces of leftover sandwich crust.

She was happy. Relaxed. Safe.

That was what mattered.

Even if the rest of this made zero sense.

Duane walked over and leaned down to kiss my temple. “We’ll go over everything, I promise. You can ask all the questions.”

“You better believe I will,” I said.

He chuckled. “And I’ll answer every one.”

“You forgot to tell me you were going to be on TV. That’s not a small thing.”

“No, babe,” he agreed, settling beside me on the blanket. “It’s not. But now you know.”

“Now I know,” I echoed.

And somehow, that made it easier to breathe.

It was a strange kind of comfort, being part of this chaos.

“You’re coming Wednesday, right?” Sloane asked me as she reached over to grab her water bottle off the patio table. Her sunglasses slipped down the bridge of her nose, and she pushed them back up with her pinky.

“To the photoshoot?” I clarified as I adjusted the hem of my tank top as I looked around at the other women sprawled across the lawn.

Sloane nodded and gave me a hopeful smile. “Yeah. It’s not a big deal. Just some promo stuff for the show, but it’d be good for you to be there. Everyone’s going to be there.”

I hesitated and glanced toward the edge of the yard where Lottie was still tossing a tennis ball for Harley and Davidson. The dogs looked ready to keel over, but neither seemed ready to give up their new favorite human.

“Uh, well… probably not,” I said with a little shrug. “I’m not really part of any of this. I mean, technically, I just found out about all of it five minutes ago.”

Sloane gave me a look—one of those subtle expressions that said Girl, please without her needing to say the words.

Before she could respond, Duane’s voice came from behind me. “She’s coming,” he said simply.

I turned to look at him. He was standing over me with that stubborn tilt to his jaw that made it very clear he wasn’t asking.

“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” he added, just in case I’d missed the alpha undertone.

I raised a brow. “You do realize that sounds a little possessive, right?”

He shrugged, entirely unapologetic. “Good.”