Page 42 of The Grief We Hold

It helps, the reassurance that I won’t be left to navigate this strange world on my own.

“Okay.”

“Stay there,” he says before jumping out of the truck. He walks around the hood and comes to my side of the vehicle to open the door.

“Nice manners,” Smoke shouts.

“Your mom likes it when I use them on her,” Wraith says.

Smoke grins. “Fuck you.”

Wraith offers me his hand, and while I don’t really need any man’s help getting out of a vehicle, I take it. He doesn’t move much out of the way, and we end up almost toe-to-toe. I have to crane my neck to look up at him.

“Sorry I had to bring you here,” he says.

“We’re on unstable ground, aren’t we?”

He looks down to the gravel lot and nods. “It’s a bit like a hike in the forest without a map. Promises something amazing, but the journey could be treacherous.”

“Wraith,” Butcher yells from the clubhouse door, and we both look over. He doesn’t seem happy to see me. “Get your fucking ass in here.”

I can make this easier for Wraith, who is clearly torn between taking care of me and doing what his president needs. “Look, just take me inside and come find me when you can.”

I see the relief in the drop of his shoulders. “Let me grab your bag.”

When he has it, he takes my hand and leads me to the clubhouse. Inside, there are families dumping bags and supplies on the benches, chairs, and tables.

There are also some women dressed in so little clothing, they must be freezing. T-shirts cropped within an inch of their lives, and booty shorts so short, I can see their ass.

And yet, there seems to be coexistence between everyone.

There’s a bar to the left and the entrance to a large kitchen to the right, where women are putting food into large fridges. “The milk and half and half,” I say, suddenly remembering.

“Hadn’t forgotten. I’ll go back out and get it. Just wanted to get you settled.”

“Settled?” The girl stands in impossibly tall heels that make her legs look a mile long. She towers over me, and I try not to let it intimidate me.

But it does.

“You brought a friend, Wraith?” she asks.

She’s so pretty. A geometric neck tattoo runs down between breasts so perfectly spherical that my breast-feeding-battered boobs would slink away in shame if it were anatomically possible.

And her perfectly lip-glossed mouth is slightly open in shock.

“Be nice, Karlie. This is Raven.”

“I thought only family and club members could stay in lockdown,” she says, eyeing me with a withering look that says I’m not worthy.

“And club girls know better than to question a patched-in member’s judgment. You or any of the girls give Raven grief, I’ll have you bounced from this club faster than you suck Smoke’s dick.”

I have nothing to offer this conversation. This whole world is like a foreign language to me.

There’s a stare down between the two of them for a second, then Karlie capitulates. “Sorry.”

Wraith simply nods and leads me through double doors at the back of the room. The hallway is painted dark green, even the ceiling. Framed pictures of motorcycles and bikers are spaced evenly along the walls, each dramatically illuminated by a brass light.

“I’m this way,” he says, leading me to the left around a sharp corner, all the way to the end. “I called dibs on this room. It’s a bit quieter down here.”

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