Page 1 of Priest

1

Blue

Priest and I enter the clubhouse together.

His hand rests at my back as we step inside, warm and familiar, steering me through the noise and bodies like he always does. Six months with him has taught me the language of that hand. When it presses low, he wants me closer. When his fingers spread, he’s warning the room without saying a word. When his thumb drags once along my spine, absent-minded and soft, it means he’s forgotten to keep me at a distance. That’s the touch he gives me now, soft enough to hurt and dangerous because he doesn’t mean to give it.

He’s in a good mood tonight, looser than usual, his shoulders less locked beneath his cut. His brothers are here with their families. Kids dart between tables, laughter rising over the music, and their last run went well enough that no one came home bleeding. He’s been riding that relief all day.

I’ve been with him long enough to know the difference between relaxed and careless. Long enough to know how he takes his coffee when he remembers to drink it. Long enough to know he sleeps lighter after a run, even when he pretends he doesn’t. Somehow, I’m still not long enough in his life to know where I stand.

Priest is never cold to me. Not to my face. He touches me like I matter and looks at me like I belong in whatever room he’s standing in. Then daylight comes, and the rules come with it. No title. No promises. Nothing I’m supposed to mistake for a future.

For a while, I liked that. I’m an ER doctor. My shifts are brutal, my sleep is inconsistent, and some days I leave work with death still clinging to my skin no matter how hot I make the shower. I never wanted a man waiting at home, expecting dinner and a version of me I didn’t have the energy to become. Priest never asked me to be wifey material, and that was the part I thought made us work.

Then Sadie came.

I have news tucked tight behind my ribs tonight, waiting for the right moment. I don’t know how he’s going to take it. I don’t even know how to say it yet. I only know that it matters, that it changes things, and that it might ask more of him than he’s used to giving. More than he ever promised me.

He leans down and says something low in my ear about the music being too loud, about grabbing us a drink. His thumb presses briefly at my spine again, grounding me in that half-conscious way that always gets under my skin. Then he steps away, cutting toward the bar like the room opens for him because it knows better than to make him push.

I nod. Smile. Let myself believe this is a good night.

Then I pause, because Sadie is already here.

Lately, she always is. Two months ago, I didn’t know her face. Now she moves through the clubhouse like grief handed her a key.

Priest told me enough to keep me quiet and not enough to make me comfortable. Sadie was his brother’s widow. She came from his old club. She was scared. She needed protection. Whatever had been between them before was over, buried deep enough that he said it didn’t matter anymore. He looked me in the eye when he said it, and I believed him. Maybe because I wanted to.

But Sadie has a way of looking at me that says the grave isn’t as deep as Priest thinks it is. She never tells me she wants him. She doesn’t have to. I see it in the way she waits until his hand touches my back before she suddenly needs something. Around Priest, she becomes fragile. Around me, she is patient, like she has time, like she already knows the ending.

Sadie wears black tonight, like she always does. Tight and low, the kind of outfit that answers questions before anyone asks them. Her long dark hair spills down her back, glossy and deliberate. My chest tightens, but it isn’t jealousy. It’s unease. I’ve learned the difference. Jealousy is loud. This is quieter. This is my body clocking a threat before my mind catches up.

Priest stays at the bar, already being pulled into conversation, into noise, into the role he wears so easily here. I don’t follow him. I trust he’ll come back with drinks. That should not matter, but it does.

I stay near the back wall, waiting longer than I expect to. The rest of the club is polite to Sadie because Priest told them to protect her, but polite isn’t the same as comfortable. Graves watches her with the stillness he saves for loaded weapons. Ledger goes quiet when she asks too many questions. They’re wary, but Priest is their president. If he says protect her, they protect her.

This is what I mean when I tell myself I don’t get a say. I’m not an Old Lady. The club knows it too.

Priest is the one who makes it confusing. He notices everything. If my drink gets low, another appears before I ask. When the room gets too crowded, his hand finds my back and guides me somewhere I can breathe. After a brutal shift, he orders food like feeding me is written into club law.

That’s the problem. He treats me like I matter, then reminds me I don’t get a title. He touches me like I’m precious, then keeps me just far enough away that no one can mistake me for permanent.

I used to think I understood why. Priest doesn’t trust soft things. He looks at tenderness like it has teeth, like if he lets himself hold something too tightly, he might crush it in his fist before he realizes what he’s done. So I let him have the distance. Priest never asked me to become less. He only refused to let me become more.

Maybe I could have lived with that, if there hadn’t been someone else standing in the space he wouldn’t give me.

Sadie.

She glances up and finally sees me. The look on her face flickers, quick and sharp. Then the smile settles in, polite enough to pass for kindness. It’s the look that always comes before she moves closer to him.

I tell myself I’m imagining it. I’m not.

She drifts toward the bar like it’s coincidence, slides into Priest’s space like she’s always been welcome there. She laughs at something one of the brothers says, her hand resting on Priest’s arm like it belongs there. Her mouth tilts toward his ear. She says something I can’t hear.

He stiffens.

He doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t lean in. He only goes still.