Page 36 of Mustang

“Socket called,” she said.“Said the clubhouse is out of everything again and would I please, and I quote, ‘for the love of God make extra because these animals will eat cardboard if I don’t.’”

I opened the bag.Inside, six cinnamon rolls, still warm, the glaze seeping through the parchment paper they were wrapped in.The smell rose out of the bag and hit me square in the chest: cinnamon, butter, the richness of something Hannah made that nobody else in this county could replicate if their lives depended on it.

“Socket’s going to get fat,” I said.

Hannah’s mouth pulled up at the corner.“Socket’s going to be grateful.There’s a difference.”

She reached out and adjusted the collar of my cut where it had folded under itself, her fingers brushing the leather once, twice, the casual intimacy of a touch that had stopped being remarkable months ago.Her hand settled on my arm for half a second, warm through the sleeve of my henley, and then she was stepping back, already turning toward the counter where the next customer had materialized with the raw desperation of someone who needed caffeine and a pastry and needed them five minutes ago.

“I’ll see you tonight,” she said over her shoulder.

I nodded.Pushed off the wall with my coffee cup in one hand and the paper bag in the other, and the bell jangled again as I stepped out onto the sidewalk.Morning sun hit the awning and turned the pale blue almost white, and through the front window I could see Hannah already back behind the counter, laughing at something the caffeine-desperate customer had said, her hands moving between the espresso machine and the display case with the same practiced efficiency they’d shown in a log cabin six months and a lifetime ago.

I mounted the Harley.Fired the engine.The bag of cinnamon rolls sat warm against my thigh where I’d wedged it between my leg and the tank, and as I pulled away from the curb, I caught one last glimpse of the bakery through the rearview — the pale blue awning, the morning light on the glass, Hannah’s red hair visible behind the counter for exactly two seconds before the building slid out of frame and the road opened up ahead of me.

She had built this.Every inch of it.The bakery, the customers, the warmth of a place that welcomed people at eight in the morning and sent them out better than they came in.None of it had anything to do with me or the club or the mountain cabin or the cut I wore on my back.It existed separately, complete unto itself, and the fact that she’d chosen to bring me into it, to hand me paper bags of cinnamon rolls through a front door I’d once approached with a gun, was a gift I still hadn’t found the right words for.

So, I didn’t try.I rode.The bag warm against my leg, the road open, and behind me the bakery kept doing what it did best, with or without anyone watching.

Hannah came through the clubhouse door with her arms full and her property cut riding the shoulders of my old flannel shirt like she’d been wearing it for years.Roasting pan in both hands, the chicken inside still steaming, two loaves of bread wrapped in a dish towel balanced on top of the pan, and a container of cookies perched on the whole precarious stack like she’d challenged gravity and won.She kicked the door closed behind her with the heel of her boot and stood in the entryway for exactly two seconds before Socket materialized from the direction of the bar and relieved her of the cookie container without asking.

“Evening, darlin’,” he said, and had the lid off before she’d fully cleared the threshold.The smell hit the room — chocolate, butter, the richness of something Hannah made that turned grown men into children inside of three bites.Socket shoved an entire cookie into his mouth and made a sound that was either appreciation or a medical emergency.“Jesus Christ.These are illegal in fourteen states.”

Hannah laughed.The sound cut through the low hum of the clubhouse — pool balls clicking from the table near the back wall, the rattle of the ancient fridge behind the bar, someone’s classic rock playing at a volume that suggested the speaker had given up on fidelity years ago.She shifted the roasting pan in her grip, adjusting for the missing weight of the cookies, and that’s when Screwball appeared from the garage door, wiping his hands on a rag that had seen better decades.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” he said, his voice carrying the gravel of a man who smoked things he shouldn’t and didn’t care who knew it.He dropped the rag on the nearest pool table and crossed to Hannah with his arms out.“Give me that before you drop it and deprive a room full of hungry bastards of the only real meal they’ve seen in a month.”

I took the pan from her before Screwball could reach it.The weight settled into my palms — warm through the metal, the chicken inside releasing a cloud of herb-scented steam that hit my face and reminded me I hadn’t eaten since the cinnamon roll at ten that morning.Hannah handed me the bread wrapped in its dish towel with a look that said I’m fine, you’re ridiculous, and thank you all at once, and I carried both to the reclaimed table in the center of the room where the brothers were already pulling up stools.

The table was the heart of the place.Eight feet of scarred oak that had been salvaged from a barn demolition twenty years back and refinished with more elbow grease than technique.Generations of beer rings and knife marks mapped its surface, and the chairs around it were as mismatched as the men who sat in them: bar stools, dining chairs, one folding camp chair that had belonged to a prospect in 2009 and never left.Brothers settled into their usual spots with the particular efficiency of people who’d been sharing meals at this table long enough to have territories.Loch took the seat nearest the bar.Socket dragged a stool from the pool area and wedged it between Screwball and a prospect whose name I still hadn’t bothered to learn.Ace appeared from the office with a folder under his arm and set it on the shelf behind him before pulling up a chair across from mine.

Before he sat, he nudged the folder across the shelf toward me.“Cole’s dead.Found him in his car off the county line two weeks back, ruled it a robbery gone wrong.Nobody’s asking questions.”He shrugged out of his cut and dropped into the chair across from mine.“Reeves resigned the same week.Federal indictment came down Tuesday, racketeering and money laundering, courtesy of a very thick, very anonymous envelope that found its way to the U.S.Attorney’s office.He’ll die in a courtroom instead of a cabin.Different ending, same result.”

I nodded once.Filed it away in the same place I filed everything that no longer needed watching.Two names, closed.

I set the roasting pan in the center of the table and pulled the lid off.The smell expanded, filling the clubhouse from floor to ceiling — rosemary, garlic, chicken fat rendered to something golden and rich, the quiet alchemy of Hannah’s hands turning basic ingredients into a meal that made grown men shut up and eat.Hannah unwrapped the bread and set the two loaves on the cutting board Socket produced from somewhere behind the bar, and the table went quiet for exactly three seconds while everyone looked at the food.

Then Socket picked up his fork, pointed it at my plate, and said, “Prez.You need help cutting that chicken, or you got it handled?Because last time you tried to carve something in front of witnesses, we had to call a medic.”

The table erupted.Screwball nearly choked on the bread he’d already torn into, his shoulders shaking with the effort of not spraying crumbs across the oak.Loch leaned back in his chair with that ice-blue gaze fixed on my face and the smirk of a man who’d been waiting for this opening since the day Hannah walked through the door wearing my cut.

“Ignore him,” Hannah said, sliding into the seat beside mine.“He carved the Thanksgiving turkey without incident.”

“Without incident,” Socket repeated, deadpan.“He stabbed it fourteen times and called it ‘efficient.’”

“Did he cry the first time you made him soup?”Screwball asked, reaching for the chicken platter with grease already on his fingers.“I bet he cried.Man’s got the emotional range of a concrete slab until someone feeds him, and then it’s all downhill.”

I tore into a piece of bread and said nothing.Jaw set, eyes on my plate, taking every bit of it the way I’d been taking it for six months — without flinching, without deflection, because every word was true and they knew it and I knew it and pretending otherwise would have been worse than the teasing.

Someone from the far end of the table, J.D., maybe, or one of the newer prospects, cleared his throat.“I heard he gave a twenty-minute speech once.Church meeting, 2014.About how a woman in a man’s life was nothing but a distraction from the brotherhood.Said it with a straight face and everything.”

The table went still.Not the bad kind of still — the charged quiet of twenty men holding their breath because the joke had landed exactly where it was supposed to and now everyone was waiting to see if the target would fire back.

I looked up from my plate.Across the table, Hannah had her hand pressed over her mouth, her green eyes bright with the delight of someone hearing a story about me that I’d never told her and absolutely should have.She was laughing — the kind of laugh that started in her chest and reached her eyes completely, crinkling the corners, and the sight of it did something to my sternum that I was still getting used to after six months.

I set my fork down.Leaned back in my chair.Looked at Socket, then Screwball, then the prospect at the far end who’d just volunteered for kitchen duty for the next month, and said, “You’re not wrong.”

The silence held for exactly one beat.