Page 13 of Falcon’s Forever

I pick up my notebook. My face is burning, my heart's going faster than it has any business going, and somewhere behind that door Falcon is finally taking his seat among his brothers again. I've got my own work now, for the first time since I got here, and that thought feels good in a way I'm not ready to name yet.

It feels like the beginning of something that belongs to me.

Chapter 3

Falcon

Vulture doesn't say anything right away. He lets the door click shut behind me, lets me sit down across from him, lets the silence stretch long enough that I start counting seconds just to have somewhere to put my head.

Then, finally: "You know why you're here."

"Yeah."

"Say it anyway."

I could make this easy on myself. Give him the short version, take whatever he hands out, get to Church on time. Some old instinct tells me that's exactly the wrong move, so I don't.

"Because I've been useless for weeks and everybody's noticed except me."

Something shifts behind his eyes, it’s not necessarily approval, but it’s close enough to it that I understand I said the right thing by accident. He leans back.

"The planning meeting on Tuesday. You weren't there. Sterling covered."

"I know."

"The security briefing on Thursday. Zip covered."

"I know that too."

"The supply run on Saturday. Rook and Harrier split your section between them without being asked, because they've gotten used to doing it, which is worse than if I'd had to order them to." He folds his arms. "You want to hear the rest, or do you get the picture?"

"I get it."

"Good. Then here's the part you need to understand." He doesn't raise his voice. He's never needed to. "Every one of those men covering for you thinks they're doing you a favor. They're not. They're teaching this whole chapter that the VP patch is decorative. That it means something on the good days and nothing on the bad ones. If you keep going the way you're going, and it stops being a favor, then it becomes a pattern. And patterns get people killed, because somewhere down the line a brother's going to need you exactly where you're supposed to be, and you're going to be three towns over on that bike outrunning something you haven't named yet."

I don't have an answer for that, because I know there isn't a good one.

"I'm not asking you to stop grieving what happened to her," he says, quieter now. "I'm asking whether you're still capable of doing this job while you do it. Because those aren't the same question, and you've been answering the wrong one for a month."

"I don't know," I say, and it costs me more to say out loud than anything else in this room has.

"That’s a fair answer." He studies me for a long moment. "It’s better than the ones you've been giving everyone else."

He leans forward, his forearms resting on the desk, and asks the question plainly, there’s no theater in it at all.

"Are you still my VP?"

"Yes."

"Then act like it." He says it like it's the simplest instruction in the world, which is exactly what makes it land so hard. "Because I can hand you every ounce of patience this club's got left, Falcon, and I will, because you've earned it more than once over. But patience isn't the same as forever. You slip again the way you've been slipping, and it stops being a conversation like this one. It becomes Church, and a vote, and a patch on the table. I'd rather it never gets there. That's up to you now, not me."

Now I’m standing outside Church with a headache, too much coffee in my system, and the uncomfortable knowledge that I earned every word of Vulture’s lecture.

Ice Pick leans against the wall beside the door, arms folded across his chest. His gaze tracks me as I cross the hall, wearing the same look he gives anything he thinks might turn dangerous.

“Problem?” I ask, stopping a few feet away.

He pushes off the wall but doesn’t move aside. “Depends.”