I sit at the bottom of the gravel drive for a long second with the engine running. I look at that sign and think about every story I’ve ever heard about motorcycle clubs in Texas, about my boy asleep in the seat beside me, and about the fact that I have one hundred and forty-three dollars in my checking account and no other plan.
I put the truck in gear.
I drive through the gate.
The gravel road winds for a quarter mile under live oaks that hang low enough I have to watch the U-Haul's clearance, the cicadas are loud, and a kennel of big dogs lifts their heads when they hear the engine, and then the road opens up.
There is a main house on the left—stone-and-timber sprawl with a wraparound porch that looks like it grew out of the ground rather than getting built on top of it.
There is a separate building set back from the house with a sign over the door that just says ‘Clubhouse’.
There are a mix of bikes and trucks parked outside it. Some are newer, while others have been around a while, but all of them are well-maintained.
And there’s a man on the porch of the clubhouse, standing in a white cowboy hat, watching me drive in.
He doesn't move.
He is the tallest man I've seen in two years, wearing a navy plaid button-down with the sleeves rolled to the elbow.
His arms are tattooed all the way down in heavy black ink, his face is shadowed by the brim of that hat, and he’s just standing there with one boot up on the porch rail watching my U-Haul roll up his gravel drive like he has been expecting me.
I park where I can.
Nash stirs in the seat beside me but doesn't wake.
I put the truck in park, sit with my hands on the wheel, and look up at the man on the porch through the dust-streaked windshield.
I tell myself the same thing I told myself at the Phillips 66 two hours ago when I almost turned around.
You can’t lose this job, Hadley.
Not today.
Not with only one hundred and forty-three dollars in the bank.
I take one breath, check on Nash, and get out of the truck.
The man on the porch doesn't move when I cross the gravel.
He just watches.
The afternoon heat is pressing down on the back of my neck, the sweat starting at my hairline already, and I’m wearing the nicest blouse I have left and a pair of jeans that fit me better a year ago.
My hair is in a low knot because that's the only thing it will do without a fight, and I walk across that gravel like a woman walking up to a judge.
He takes his boot off the porch rail when I reach the bottom step and tips his hat back enough that I can finally see his eyes.
They’re not the eyes I expected to find under that brim.
Pale blue-green, set deep, sharp the way a hunting knife is sharp—not menacing, not yet, but the kind of eyes that have already finished looking at me before I've started looking at him.
Sun-flushed cheekbones. A full auburn beard, trimmed close. A small scar above his left eyebrow. Mid-thirties, maybe a little older.
He looks like a man you would not want to be on the wrong side of.
He also looks at me like I’m the only thing on the property worth his attention, and I don’t know what to do with either piece of information.
"Hadley Cross." He says it like a statement.
