"Yeah, it's trouble alright," she said, moving toward us with that confident stride that had destroyed me from day one. "Which one of you boys am I going to beat at pool tonight?"
"Not me," Phoenix said immediately, hands up in surrender. "I'm still recovering from last time."
"That was a month ago," Quinn laughed, accepting the beer Buck had already started pulling for her—he knew our Thursday routine by now.
"Some wounds don't heal, Deputy," Phoenix said dramatically, hand over his heart.
Tank stepped up to the table. "I'll take you on. Can't be as bad as Phoenix made it look."
"Famous last words," Blade muttered, finally looking up from his phone.
Quinn selected a cue stick with the careful consideration of someone choosing a weapon. Which, knowing her pool skills, was pretty accurate. She'd grown up in bars like this, watching her dad and his deputies unwind after shifts. Sheriff Bill Jenkins had inadvertently trained his daughter to be a pool shark.
"I want no part of this," I said, moving to lean against the bar. "I've learned my lesson about challenging Quinn Jenkins."
"Smart man." She chalked her cue, then proceeded to run the table on the break. Tank's face went from confident to concerned to resigned in the span of three minutes.
"How?" Tank asked as she sank the eight ball with a bank shot that shouldn't have been possible. "You’re a cop, not a pool hustler."
"Can't I be both?" She grinned, collecting the twenty Tank had put down. "Another round on me, boys."
This was us now. Thursday nights at Buck's, Sunday dinners at Viper and Tara's place, and all the days in between figuring out how a deputy and an MC VP made it work. Three months in, and we'd found our rhythm. The town had mostly stopped staring. Her father had progressed from hostile to coldly civil. My brothers had gone from suspicious to protective, especiallyafter Quinn had shut down some state boys sniffing around the garage with nothing but her badge and attitude.
"Your girl's expensive," Phoenix complained, accepting the beer Quinn had bought with Tank's money.
"Worth every penny," I said, catching Quinn around the waist as she passed, pulling her against me. She melted into me for a moment, all that professional tension from her shift finally easing.
"Long day?" I asked quietly.
"The Hendrick brothers again. Third time this month."
"Those idiots need a new hobby."
"Or separate towns," she agreed, then pulled back slightly. "Want to head home soon? I've got the early shift tomorrow."
Home. Our place, where her uniforms hung next to my leathers, where her law enforcement textbooks shared shelves with my bike manuals. Three months of learning each other's rhythms, each other's lives, and somehow making it all fit.
"One more game," Tank insisted. "Double or nothing."
"Tank, man, just stop," Blade advised. "She's gonna clean you out."
"I've been watching. I've got her tells figured out."
Quinn and I exchanged a look. She didn't have tells—she was just that good.
"Alright," she said, setting up the rack again. "But when I win, you're on bathroom cleaning duty at the clubhouse for a month."
"Deal. And when I win?—"
"You won't," Quinn said simply.
She broke again, and I watched my brothers watch her systematically destroy Tank's dreams of redemption. Phoenix was already laughing. Blade had started recording on his phone. Even Wraith, who'd shown up midway through, was shaking his head at Tank's optimism.
This was what I'd never known I wanted. Not just Quinn, though she was everything. But this—her fitting seamlessly into my world while keeping her own. The deputy who could arrest them during the day and hustle them at pool at night. The woman who wore a badge and my mark with equal pride.
"Eight ball, corner pocket," Quinn called, then sank it with casual precision.
Tank groaned. "I'm never gonna hear the end of this."
