I don’t need to.
Then Dad steps back.
Sin studies me for one long second. “That’s it,” he says officially. “Don’t go getting arrested to get out of it this time.”
I let out a strangled laugh, trying to hold back my emotion. “Not on your fucking life!”
“It’s about damn time, brother!” Deek calls out, and the room erupts into cheers.
Dad turns me back to face the room, and then he does the one thing he hasn’t done since the morning I told him I was going to prospect for this club. He puts both hands on my shoulders, both of them, resting with a weight that tells me everything he doesn’t say. His eyes shine at the edges. He breathes in through his nose once, jaw tight, holding his expression steady.
He can’t quite manage it.
He doesn’t try for long.
Something in his face releases, and what’s left underneath is pure, absolute, unguarded pride, the kind you can’t construct, the kind that lives in the deep places a man carries his children.
My chest nearly doesn’t hold it.
From somewhere to my left, I hear Deek pull a breath through his teeth, and I don’t look at him because if I look at him right now, in front of every brother in this room, something is going to give way in me that is not for the strength of this moment.
Sin stands, walking over to me, and his hand comes out. I take it.
“Welcome home, brother,” Sin says. “It’s gonna be weird calling you Anchor from now on.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna call him wanker instead!” Deek calls out, and I laugh as Koa throws a beer bottle cap at his head.
“All right, drinks!” Sin calls out, smiling at me with a proud nod, and we all make our way out of the Chapel.
MILLIE
I’ve been holding Marley’s hand for the last ten minutes without either of us acknowledging it.
We are settled near the bar.
Victoria perches on a stool, one hand resting on the firm curve of her bump, the way she does when she’s trying to look comfortable and isn’t entirely succeeding.
Ro stands with her arms crossed and her chin lifted. Sage sits with her legs crossed, one foot swinging.
Queenie is perfectly still in the chair someone dragged over for her, like she’s presiding over all of this from a position of great personal authority.
Penny stands beside me, her shoulder against mine, wearing an expression somewhere between fascinated and delighted. Right now, she is gripping my arm with both hands in her apprehension. “Is it always this quiet?” she whispers.
“When the Chapel doors are closed…” Victoria says, without looking over, “… you don’t ask questions. You wait.”
Penny purses her lips with admirable composure for someone who runs a flower shop and is not used to being inside a motorcycle clubhouse.
The doors are thick, old, and built for exactly this kind of secrecy, and through them I can hear nothing, which is both the point and the source of my current inability to stay still. I am not a fidgeter by nature. My father raised me not to fidget.
I have shifted my hands three times in the last five minutes, though, and Marley’s caught every single one.
She keeps glancing at me with that look people get when they know exactly what this kind of waiting does to somebody because they’ve survived it themselves.
“He’s fine,” she says, in the low voice she saves for the things she means completely.
“I know he’s fine,” I say.
“Then stop doing that with your fingers.”
