Both of those things are true at once, and somehow, that’s the most honest thing I’ve felt all morning.
And I’ve never been more terrified that I’m about to lose it all.
Chapter Seventeen
WILL
The clubhouse smells like it always does on a ceremony day of good beer and tasty food. It’s the combination of a place that knows something is about to shift, even if the walls can’t say it out loud.
Brothers move through the space with purpose, adjusting cuts, straightening chairs, the low hum of voices carrying that easy, familiar charge. Koa has commandeered the far end of the bar and is arguing with Mace about where the folding tables need to go. Deek has already lost interest in helping and is instead sitting on the counter, eating whatever Ro put out early, looking entirely unbothered by the glare she is giving him.
This is supposed to be the day everything changes for me.
I arrived early because I couldn’t settle after leaving Millie’s. My head kept replaying the sight of her standing barefoot in the doorway in those damn pajamas, looking at me like I already belonged there. I kissed her once, and then I made myself leave, and the whole ride to the clubrooms, I turned one thing over and over in my mind like a stone I couldn’t put down.
I have to tell Sin about Jonas.
I made up my mind somewhere between the driveway and the highway. I can’t stand as a brother at this table and let these men patch me in while carrying something they don’t know.
It isn’t the kind of man I want to be.
It isn’t the kind of brother I want to be.
And if Sin sends me packing for it, then I’ll deal with that.
At least I’ll have gone in honest.
I find him in the hallway outside the Chapel, his shoulders carrying the weight they always carry, though today there’ssomething else in it… something that belongs to this day specifically.
“Sin.” My voice doesn’t crack, but it lands with enough strain beneath it that he looks up immediately, his attention sharpening in that instinctive way a president has learned to read shifts in tone before they become problems.
“Yeah?”
“I need a minute.”
He studies me for only a fraction of a second, but in that brief span, I see the calculation begin, the subtle realignment of priorities that always occurs when something moves outside the expected rhythm of the day. He nods at me and gestures to the door. “Chapel.”
There are no follow-up questions, no attempt to soften the directive into conversation. That has never been Sin’s style, and I find myself strangely grateful for it now, because it means I don’t have to navigate small talk on the way toward something that already feels like judgment.
We walk the hallway in silence, the sound of our boots muted by old carpet worn thin from years of pacing men who have come here to deliver news they would rather not carry. By the time the Chapel door closes behind us, I feel the steady, unrelenting pressure of what I am about to say sitting hard, like the onset of a storm that has already decided its ferocity.
The table occupies the center of the room as it always does, solid and unmoving, the club’s crest embedded into the felt with a permanence that feels ceremonial.
Sin remains standing, folding his arms loosely across his chest as he waits, his stillness conveying more expectation than any verbal prompt could have. “Talk.” The word is neutral in tone but absolute in intent.
I draw in a breath that doesn’t feel large enough to support what follows. “It’s Jonas.”
There is a subtle shift in his expression, not alarm, not even surprise, but the unmistakable signal that the information has registered as relevant. “What about him?”
“He’s sick.”
The silence that follows deepens, thickening the air between us until every word that comes after feels heavier. “How sick?”
“Pancreatic cancer,” I say, forcing the clinical clarity of the diagnosis past the resistance in my throat. “Stage four.”
He begins to move slowly around the table, not pacing in agitation but circling in thought, as though physically mapping the implications while he processes them. His gaze remains distant for a moment, then returns to me with renewed focus. “How long?”
“Doctors gave him six months.”
