Page 123 of Cobra
Logan lifts his eyes. “Watch it.”
“Not saying weak,” Hammer says, raising a hand. “Just saying the room looks like someone sprayed mating season all over it.”
Bella chokes on a laugh.
Kya covers her mouth.
Blaze points at Hammer. “That was poetic. Disturbing, but poetic.”
Hammer takes a drink, then looks toward me and Cobra. “Maybe I need to stage a catastrophe. Apparently that’s the club approved way to meet your dream girl now.”
The room bursts into laughter. Real laughter.
Even Cobra’s chest shifts slightly behind me, not enough to call it a laugh, but enough that I feel it because I’m standing close.
Joker tilts his head. “Depends on the catastrophe.”
“No,” Raven says immediately.
Joker’s mouth curves. “I didn’t say I was helping.”
“You were thinking it.”
“Always.”
Hammer looks around. “I’m serious. Every one of you got a woman because someone tried to burn their life down.”
“Romantic when you say it like that,” Mac says dryly.
Logan kisses the side of her head. “Ignore him.”
“Hard to ignore a man planning his own trauma meet-cute,” Kya says.
Dom snorts. “Trauma meet-cute sounds like something Blaze would put on a shirt.”
Blaze perks up. “That’s actually not bad.”
Bella smacks his chest. “No.”
“Okay, but hear me out—”
“No.”
Cobra doesn’t join in, but he doesn’t pull me away either. That matters. He stands behind me, close enough that I can feel the heat of him, one hand resting at my lower back. It isn’t gripping. It isn’t pushing. It’s just there, a steady point of contact in a room full of noise and laughter and people who are slowly becoming familiar.
I lean into it without thinking. His hand spreads slightly. A small adjustment. A response. The kind no one else would notice. I do.
For a little while, everything feels almost normal. Not my old normal. Something different. Bigger. Messier. Louder. More dangerous. But real.
I sit with the women. I listen as Mac tells a story about Knox deciding Logan’s boots were the perfect hiding place for half a banana. Kya adds that Remy tried to feed Dom’s phone to the dog earlier, which apparently was considered “a felony” according to Dom. Brooke saysMason threw a toy at Carter’s head and then clapped like he’d accomplished something important.
Carter doesn’t deny it. “He has aim,” he says.
“That is not the point,” Brooke replies.
“It’s kind of the point,” Blaze says.
Carter looks at him. “Don’t encourage my kid to weaponize toys.”
