She Wants

SONYA

When Iron Havoc was founded, there was only one rule.

Fight or die.

By the time I became part of it, those four words had become a way of life.

You fought for your patch.

You fought for your brothers.

You fought for your family.

And if you couldn’t.. You died trying.

Somewhere between funerals, betrayals, promises that were never meant to be broken, and when she came—Elara—the motto changed.

Fight or flight.

Funny thing is.. I don’t want either.

I’ve spent fifteen years fighting for people, who called me family. I’ve spent just as many years running from everything that family created.

Neither one ever gave me peace.

So maybe...

Maybe there’s a third option no one ever talks about.

Maybe you stop choosing the club.

Maybe you choose yourself.

The Pacific crashes against the cliffs below our rented house, loud enough to shake the windows and rattle the cheap glass in their frames. Salt hangs in the air like a second skin—it clings to everything. To my skin. To the motorcycles parked out front. To the wedding veil folded neatly inside the bedroom closet, the same veil that’s stained with motor oil and blood from a wedding that never should have happened.

I haven’t thrown it away.

I don’t know why.

Maybe because some memories deserve to rot before they disappear. Or maybe because every time I look at it, I remember exactly, who I became to survive. The woman, who stood at that altar two months ago wasn’t a stranger. She was me—all of me, broken and hopeful and terrified all at once. I wanted that wedding. I wanted to stand in front of Jack and promise him forever, even though I knew forever was a lie we told ourselves to sleep at night.

Kace left, and the club fractured. Rafe and Elara wanted something different for me—a different path, a different life. They saw the cracks forming before I did. But I was stubborn. I always have been. I love Jack in a way that made sense, even when nothing else did. He was the constant in a world that kept changing. He was the hand I reached for in the dark.

So I went through with it.

The wedding was small. Quiet. The way I wanted it. White flowers in mason jars. A handful of brothers standing guard. Cassie’s picture tucked into my bouquet like she was walking beside me.

And then the cartel came.

They came with guns and fire and a message from Gravefather: You don’t get to be happy. You don’t get to move on. You don’t get to forget what you owe. What I made you from.

The veil caught a bullet meant for Jack. I remember the sound of it tearing through fabric, the way the blood sprayed across the white lace. I remember screaming. I remember Jack carrying me out of there, half-dragging me through the smoke, my dress torn and my hands shaking.

Two months ago.

Two months, and the blood hasn’t come out of the veil. Neither has the oil from the bike that carried us away from the ruins of what was supposed to be the best day of my life.

I press a hand to my stomach, feeling the familiar weight of this new life growing inside me. Seven months now. Seven months of carrying something that shouldn’t exist in a world like this. Seven months of waking up in the middle of the night, convinced I’ve heard Cassie calling for me, only to remember she’s gone. Like she has been years. Seven months of Jack holding me, while I fall apart and put myself back together again.

The baby moves.

A slow roll against my palm, like she’s turning over in her sleep.

She.

We don’t know for sure. But I’ve always known. The same way I knew with Cassie. A mother’s instinct. A mother’s curse.

I don’t let myself imagine her face.

I don’t let myself imagine her laugh.

Because I’ve learned that hope has a habit of charging interest, and I’m already in debt.

Jack is outside.

I hear the familiar click of a wrench before I see him. He’s pretending to fix the Harley—the one we rode here, the one that carried us both away from everything we’d ever known. But I know him better than that. He only works on the bike when he’s thinking too much. When the silence in his head gets too loud and he needs something physical to anchor him.

He says it clears his head.

It doesn’t.

It just gives his hands something to do while his mind goes somewhere else. Somewhere dark. Somewhere I can’t follow. Mine does the same thing, only I make coffee.

The kettle whistles, a high, piercing sound that cuts through the crashing waves and the memories I’m trying to outrun. I pour two mugs without asking if he wants one—after everything we’ve been through, I already know the answer. I add a splash of milk to his. Black for me. Bitter. Like the life I’ve lived.

The kitchen is small but warm. Yellow cabinets that someone painted in the seventies and never updated. A linoleum floor that’s cracked in the corners. A window above the sink that looks out at the endless gray-blue of the Pacific. The salt air has rusted the hinges, and I have to push hard to get it open.

I lean against the counter, one hand cradling my belly, the other wrapped around my mug. The baby kicks again. Harder this time. I wince and smile at the same time.

You’re going to be stubborn, I think. Just like your father.

The front door creaks open.

“You’ve been staring at the ocean for ten minutes.”

His voice still finds me before anything else does. Low. Rough. The kind of voice that’s been shaped by years of shouting over engines and gunfire. I smile without turning around.

“You counted?”

“I always count.”

Of course he does. That’s who Jack has become. The man who counts exits. Counts bullets. Counts the seconds between silence. Counts every heartbeat that still belongs to the people he loves.

I hear his boots on the linoleum. Heavy. Measured. He doesn’t walk like a man who’s made peace with the world. He walks like a man, who’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

His arms wrap around my waist from behind. His hands find my stomach. Rest there. One palm pressed flat against the swell of the baby, the other splayed across my hip. He’s warm. Solid. Real in a way that nothing else in my life has been.

Neither of us says a word.

Sometimes silence is the only language grief understands. Sometimes it’s the only language love speaks, too.

The sea stretches forever in front of us. Endless. Beautiful. Merciless. Free. Seagulls wheel overhead, their cries swallowed by the wind. The cliffs below are jagged and sharp, carved by centuries of water against stone. I wonder how many people have stood in this kitchen, in this exact spot, and felt the same way I do now. Like they’re standing on the edge of something. Like the next step could save them or destroy them.

“I could get used to this,” I whisper.

Jack doesn’t answer immediately. His thumb traces slow circles over my stomach, and the baby kicks against his palm. I feel his breath catch.

When he finally does speak...

“I know.”

Not we can.

Not we will.

Just...

“I know.”

Because we’ve both learned that hope has a habit of charging interest. And neither one of us is ready to pay the bill just yet.

I close my eyes.

For one selfish second, I let myself imagine a life where motorcycles are just motorcycles. Where no one calls in the middle of the night with news that stops your heart. Where brothers don’t bury brothers. Where children grow up without learning how to tell the difference between fireworks and gunshots. Where I can hold my baby without looking over my shoulder. Where I can be a mother without being a soldier.

Then a motorcycle engine echoes through the compound.

One.

Then another.

Then a third.

Jack stiffens behind me, his hands going still. I don’t have to ask why. Peace never arrives quietly. Neither does trouble. And somewhere deep in my chest, the same feeling I buried years ago opens its eyes—the part of me that still knows how to fight.

The baby kicks again, sharp and insistent.

I press my hand over Jack’s.

“Just riders,” I say.

He doesn’t answer.

We stand there together, watching the road, waiting. Counting. Always counting.

I’ve tried to be settled down.

I’ve tried to be away from them.

And every time a motorcycle’s revving comes, I want to run. I want to pack what little we have and disappear into the mountains, into the desert, into anywhere that doesn’t smell like gasoline and blood.

I want to know, what ordinary life feels like.

Away from the evil that has taken so much from me.

I feel guilty most of the time. Because they took, what they wanted and made me pay for it—but I let them. I handed them the pieces of myself and watched them break each one.

One example:

Louis.

I’m still grieving, even after all these years. He was smart, funny, and helpful. The kind of man who made you believe there was still goodness in the world. And because of it—because of me—he was killed.

Then everyone else. In different schools, everywhere I went to study—the war followed me. Every time I thought I could finally breathe, Gravefather came and took it. Took the breath. Took the hope. Took the people I loved.

Then I lost my daughter and Molly.

Cassie and Molly.

I want to say I didn’t do it. I want to blame the club. The war. The world that made monsters out of men. But living in Iron Havoc has taken every normality from you. It’s taken the line between right and wrong and blurred it until you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

I bought it.

They bought it to our doorstep and set it on fire.

And I stood there and watched it burn.

Not everyone knows. Not Elara—she’s too new, too untouched by the reality of our club. Not anyone else, who just came to us in the last years. They see a woman who survived. They don’t see the bodies I’ve buried. The ones I’ve put in the ground with my own hands.

I keep looking at Cassie’s picture and try to hear her laugh. It fades a little more every day. Her face is still clear—the round cheeks, the gap in her teeth, the way her hair curled at the ends no matter how many times I brushed it. But her voice... her voice is slipping away from me like water through my fingers.

I’d give anything to hear her say, Mama one more time.

I’d give anything to hold her again.

But I can’t.

So I hold my stomach instead. I hold this new life—this new chance—and I swear to myself that I won’t let the same thing happen again.

The engines outside don’t stop at the compound.

They pass.

Fading into the distance.

Just riders.

Jack exhales behind me. His hands relax.

“Sonya.”

I don’t answer.

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Going somewhere I can’t follow.”

I turn to face him.

He’s not wearing his cut.

I notice that now. No patch. No colors. Just a man in a worn leather jacket, standing in a rented kitchen, holding coffee he hasn’t drunk yet. His beard is growing out, a little grayer at the temples than it was six months ago. There are lines around his eyes that weren’t there before. Lines from worry. From loss. From loving me, when I didn’t deserve to be loved.

He left it all behind.

For me.

For us.

For whatever this is supposed to be.

“I was thinking about Cassie,” I say.

His jaw tightens.

“I know.”

“I can’t hear her laugh anymore, Jack. I try. Every day. And it just—” My voice breaks. “It fades a little more.”

He sets down the mug.

Crosses the kitchen in three steps.

Pulls me into him.

“I remember,” he says into my hair. “She laughed like she meant it. Like the world hadn’t figured out, how to hurt her yet.”

I press my face into his chest. I can feel his heartbeat. Steady. Slow. The same heartbeat that’s kept me alive through all of this.

“She was two years old.”

“Two,” he agrees.

“And I couldn’t—”

“Stop.”

His voice is firm but gentle. He tilts my chin up so I have to meet his eyes. They’re brown. Dark. The kind of eyes that have seen too much and still found a way to be soft.

“You can’t go back there, Sonya. You know that.”

I know.

I do know.

But knowing and feeling are two different countries with a wall between them. And I’ve been trying to climb that wall for years.

I pull away first.

Wipe my face with the back of my hand.

“I’m going to the bedroom.”

Jack watches me. He knows I’m not going to rest—he knows I never do. But he nods anyway.

“I’ll be here,” he says.

The bedroom is small. Beach cottage small. The kind of place tourists rent for a week before going back to their real lives. The bed is creaky and soft, with a quilt that smells like mothballs. The curtains are floral and faded, and the window looks out at the same endless ocean.

I don’t have a real life to go back to.

I open the closet.

The veil hangs there. Still stained. Still folded. White fabric that’s been yellowed by age and dirt, ruined by the violence of that day.

Two months.

I reach past the veil.

There’s a box on the top shelf. Plain cardboard. No markings. I have to stand on my tiptoes to reach it, and my belly makes the stretch awkward.

I pull it down.

Open it.

Inside: photographs. A small stuffed bear with one button eye missing—Cassie’s favorite. She carried it everywhere. A tiny hair clip shaped like a butterfly, blue plastic with the paint chipped off. A folded piece of paper with crayon scribbles that used to say, I love you, Mama before the colors faded into nothing.

I sit on the edge of the bed.

I hold the butterfly clip.

I let myself feel it.

All of it.

Louis’s laugh. The way it echoed in the school's library. The way he always had a joke ready, even when I felt things were falling apart.

Cassie’s weight in my arms. The way she used to tug my sleeve when she wanted attention. The way she smelled like baby shampoo and sunshine.

Molly’s steady presence. The way she never judged me. The way she held my hand in her house, being the mother I never had.

The wedding. The way Jack looked at me when I walked down the aisle. The way the bullets started flying before we could say, I do.

The way the club took and took and took until I had nothing left to give.

And then—

I close my eyes.

No more.

That’s what I decided.

Not fight. Not flight. Something else. Something I’m only beginning to understand.

I’m taking everything they took from me.

I’m taking back my own life.

I put the butterfly clip back in the box. Close the lid. Put the box back on the shelf.

The veil catches my eye again.

I reach for it.

My fingers touch the fabric. It’s rough now. Stiff. The oil stains are dark against the white—black and green and brown. The blood has gone the color of rust, flaking at the edges. The same blood that saved Jack’s life. The same blood that ruined mine.

I pull it down.

Hold it in both hands.

Then I walk to the window and look out at the ocean.

The Pacific doesn’t care about my pain. It doesn’t care about Iron Havoc. It doesn’t care about the years I wasted fighting for people who bled me dry. It just keeps moving. Relentless. Free. The waves crash against the rocks below, and I wonder how many pieces of myself I’ve already let wash away.

I think about Rafe and Elara. How they decided they want everything to themselves. How they wanted to everyone else to be miserable. How me and Jack were not compatible to each other or how our live isn't. But the price of that love was everything else I had left.

Because they are the reason why Kace left in the first place.

I fold the veil carefully.

Place it in the box with the other things.

Then I close the closet door.

Jack appears in the doorway.

“You okay?”

I turn to face him.

“I will be,” I say.

He studies me. He sees the box on the bed. He doesn’t ask. He never does.

“The bikes are gone,” he says. “The ones that passed through. They’re gone.”

I nod.

“Jack.”

“Yeah?”

“Where do we go from here?”

He steps into the room. Takes my hands. His are rough. Calloused from years of working on engines. But his grip is gentle. Always gentle.

“Wherever you want,” he says. “No club. No patch. No war. Just us.”

“Just us,” I repeat.

It sounds impossible. It sounds like hope. And hope has a habit of charging interest.

But maybe—

Maybe this time, I can pay.

I squeeze his hands. My belly presses against his, and I feel the baby shift between us. She’s been quiet for a few minutes, but now she kicks again. Hard. Like she’s reminding us she’s still here. Still growing. Still waiting to meet the world.

“I want to go somewhere our daughter would have loved,” I say. “Somewhere she could have laughed without being afraid.”

Jack’s eyes soften. He looks at me like I’m something precious. Something worth protecting. He doesn’t say it’s not real. He doesn’t say you can’t escape the past. He just holds my hands and promises.

“Then we’ll find that place.”

And that’s enough.

For now.

The sun sets over the ocean.

Orange and red and gold. The sky is on fire, bleeding color into the water. Seagulls circle overhead, their cries distant and mournful. The wind picks up, carrying the salt spray against the windows.

I don’t think about the club. I don’t think about the bodies buried. I don’t think about the war that never ends. Not tonight.

I think about Cassie.

I think about her laugh.

And I think about the life I’m going to take back.

Piece by piece.

Beginning now.