CHAPTER 15
CLUTCH - I STOPPED
The cold hits me the second I step out of the clubhouse, the night colder than usual for mid-September. Not enough to bite through leather, or the heat radiating off me from my rage. Just enough to feel sharp in my lungs, enough to remind me I’m still breathing when it feels like I shouldn’t be.
Gravel shifts under my boots as I head for my bike. Engines are already turning over in the lot. Men moving fast. Weapons checked. Orders barked short and clipped through the dark.
Everything around me is in motion. Urgent and focused. The kind of movement I’ve spent most of my life understanding without needing it explained. But tonight it all feels far away.
Muted.
Like I’m moving through it with cotton packed in my ears and blood where my thoughts should be.
My gloves are in my back pocket. I don’t remember putting them there, it must have been when I got back from the run Angel had us on. I do remember picking her cut up off the floor, I can still feel the weight of it bearing down on me.
The leather, the emblem I wear proudly stained with blood.Herblood.
I stop beside my bike and stare down at my hands, my knuckles are split. I don’t remember exactly where it happened, the whole fucking day has been a shit show. Somewhere earlier. Somewhere between the hospital and that old bastard at the Vultures’ place deciding he wanted proof we were serious before he opened his mouth.
Torch got the worst of it and one of the prospects caught an elbow to the face.
We went looking for answers and came back with half a fucking rumour and blood under our nails. And then I walked into the clubhouse looking for my wife and let the room swallow her whole.
A bike revs too hard to my left pulling my attention. My head snaps up to see Axel.
Torch is already mounted up. Helmet hanging off his handlebar. Burn scar on his wrist pale against his skin where he grips the throttle. One of the prospects is tightening his gloves with his teeth, before climbing onto Four’s bike. The other keeps looking back toward the clubhouse like he wants to ask a question and is smart enough not to. I watch him as he gets into the truck with a sigh.
No one says anything to me.
Good.
Because I’m one wrong word away from breaking someone’s jaw.
I swing my leg over the bike and the motion is muscle memory. The machine settles under me like it always does. Usually that steadies me.
Usually the bike makes sense when nothing else does. Tonight it doesn’t.
Tonight all I can hear is the sound of Razor’s hand cracking across Bex’s face.
I close my eyes for half a second and it’s right there again, the sharp, sickening sound. The way her head snapped and then the white-hot flash in my vision right after, like my body knew what happened before my brain could catch up.
I wanted to kill him.
Not hit him or drag him outside for a beating. No… if I got my hands on Razor I would have killed him. I can still feel that impulse tearing through me. That instant, violent certainty. The need to put a bullet through his skull and let the whole room watch.
But just as my body started to move a hand grabbed me from behind, because Angel’s hand had already gone up. Palm out.
A command.
And I stopped.
I fucking stopped.
My jaw locks so hard it hurts.
Axel rides up beside me. “We need to move, brother.”
I nod once, that’s all I’ve got in me right now.