?
— Holden —
The reception was a different animal.
The chairs had been cleared, the altar broken down, the clubhouse opened up into the version of itself that Dutch had spent weeks building. I’d helped with some of it — hauling the vintage road map Dutch wanted hung over the bar, moving furniture. Handful had been put in charge of the sweep — making sure anything inappropriate was out of sight before small children or Indira’s ultra-conservative parents got an eyeful. The club girls were somewhere warm with an open bar. Indira had proposed it — logistics, not judgment — and Dutch had made it happen inside forty-eight hours. From what I’d heard, the girls were thrilled with their all inclusive holiday.
The place looked good. It looked like a place people could bring their families to, which was the point.
I’d noticed Indira’s parents during the ceremony but hadn’t gotten a good look until now. I watched from the bar — not introduced, not my place — and took inventory.
Her mother was small. Dark hair shot through with gray, pulled back neat. She moved through the room with careful thoroughness, her eyes touching every corner of the clubhouse in a way that reminded me of a building inspector who already had her report half-written. Not hostile. Just precise. She’d paused at the road map over the bar and tilted her head at it,something passing across her face I couldn’t read from where I was.
Her father was different. Taller. More formal. The kind of posture that came from decades of refusing to let a body show what it felt. There was a deliberateness to how he moved, an economy — the careful habit of a man who’d been given notice that he wasn’t indestructible. He stood near the bar without a drink and watched Dutch the way Dutch’s enemies watched Dutch: measuring. Looking for the thing that would tell him who this man really was under the surface.
I understood what was underneath the father’s stiffness, though. It wasn’t only culture shock, wasn’t only a conservative man watching his daughter married in a motorcycle club’s main room. Dutch had paid sixty thousand dollars to keep this man’s heart beating, had done it without fanfare, without expectation, without making it a transaction. Men who’d spent a lifetime being self-sufficient didn’t carry that comfortably. The gratitude sat in him like a splinter. He’d come here fully intending to maintain his reservations.
I needed a refill and didn’t want to walk through the crowd to get it. The kitchen was faster — side door, no small talk, straight to the bar.
Bea was at the counter. She turned before I could decide whether to stay or go. Neither of us spoke for a moment.
“Congratulations to Dutch,” she said, raising the glass in her hand. Careful. Not cold.
“Yeah.” I looked at my hands, then back at her. “Long time coming.”
Her eyes dropped to my hands. I was turning my ring — the club ring, the one I wore on my right hand. I’d been doing it all night without realizing.
“You do that when you’re uncomfortable,” she said.
That hit harder than it should have. That she still saw me like that — automatically, without trying. That she couldn’t help it any more than I could.
I opened my mouth.
She set down the glass and walked past me back into the main room before I could find the words.
I ended up near the bar, nursing something I wasn’t really tasting, when Handful made his move.
I saw it coming the way you see a car accident — the slow certainty that this was going to happen and there was nothing anyone could do about it. He’d been circling the room for twenty minutes, several whiskeys deep, and I’d watched him lock on to a redhead standing with a group of women on Indira’s side.
Handful straightened his cut. Grabbed a fresh drink. Adjusted his posture in a way he probably thought was subtle.
I took a sip and settled in.
He crossed the room with the confidence of a man who had never once considered that confidence might not be enough. They were close enough to the bar that I caught most of it.
“Hi. I’m Handful.” He said it like he was handing her a gift.
The redhead looked at him. Looked at his cut. Looked back at his face. “That’s unfortunate.”
“It’s a road name.”
“I assumed it wasn’t what your mother called you. Although—” She tilted her head, studying him with a precision that reminded me of Bea reading a client. “No, actually, I bet she did.”
Handful blinked. His grin recalibrated. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“I have one.” She raised a glass that was nearly full.
“Can I buy you a better one?”
