Chapter 8

Denver, Colorado

Satan’s Bar

Two Nights Later

Satan’s Bar was loud enough to vibrate through bone tonight, the kind of deep, relentless noise that settled into the walls and floorboards and skin alike, until it became less something a person heard and more something they simply existed inside. 

Music thundered from old speakers mounted above the bar, bass rolling through the packed room in heavy waves, while bikers crowded shoulder-to-shoulder around scarred wooden tables, cigarette smoke curling thickly through red neon light, and the sharp smells of whiskey, leather, gasoline, and impending bad decisions.

It was chaos. Controlled chaos, maybe, but chaos all the same.

And somehow Frank ‘Cole’ Porter moved through the center of it with the detached ease of a man who had spent so many years inside places exactly like this, that his body no longer required conscious thought to function there. He poured beers without looking at the taps, slid glasses of whisky across polished wood with precise efficiency, took cash, broke bills, ignored drunk assholes before they became problems and regulars before they became conversations, all while noise rose and crashed around him in endless rough-edged waves.

To everyone around him, he probably looked exactly the same as always: broad-shouldered, tattooed, dark hair streaked with silver, dark eyes flashing with good humor, steady-handed, expression calm and unreadable beneath the dim lights.

But Cole knew first-hand that grief became invisible after enough years passed; that was one of the cruelest things about it. At first people looked at you with sympathy. Then concern. Then discomfort. Eventually they simply adjusted to your sadness the same way they adjusted to old scars or crooked teeth or permanent bad weather. It stopped being remarkable.

It just became you.

“Hey, Cole!” Victor ‘Scars’ Innis barked from the opposite end of the bar, dragging him abruptly back into the present. “Table six needs another two pitchers before they start a fucking riot.”

Cole glanced over automatically, catching sight of the bar manager and club Vice-President weaving through customers with his usual terrifying efficiency, massive shoulders cutting through crowds like a battering ram. Scars looked exactly like what he was: a man built equally for violence and authority, his heavily scarred face and hulking frame carrying enough weight inside the Road Devils that entire rooms shifted instinctively around him.

“On it,” Cole said, automatically switching on his normal good cheer. “Consider one riot halted – though I can’t guarantee what happens with any others.”

He grabbed two pitchers and filled them simultaneously while Scars leaned against the counter briefly, surveying the packed room.

“Busy as hell tonight,” Cole commented, setting both pitchers down. “Maybe we should have had all the girls waitressing tonight, not just three of them.”

“Yeah, well.” Scars grinned. “An engagement party for Ice’ll do that. Everyone has to come and see it for themselves.”

Cole’s gaze went toward the back of the room where Ice Johansson stood beside Vixen Shaw. He had one massive tattooed arm wrapped possessively around her waist, carefully avoiding the brace that she still wore after being run down in the club parking lot. Club members crowded around the couple, offering congratulations and drinks and teasing, loud commentary.

Ice looked exactly as terrifying as always, of course. Tall and broad and coldly gorgeous in a way that never quite looked human, ice-blue eyes unreadable. By bright and beautiful contrast, Vixen laughed against his shoulder, glowing with happiness so openly it almost softened the brutality of him by association.

Almost. Most men looked gentler around women they loved, but Ice somehow looked more dangerous.

Cole watched him glance down at Vixen for one brief unguarded second, and saw something devastatingly real flicker beneath the MC Enforcer’s usual dead-eyed composure. The sight hit Cole with a strange sharp ache low in his chest because he recognized that look.

God, he recognized it. He used to wear it himself… back when Nala still stood beside him.

“Still weird as fuck seeing Ice engaged,” Scars muttered, picking up the beers.

Cole huffed a quiet laugh as he slid the table’s change across the counter. “Thought that man came out of the womb emotionally unavailable.”

“Pretty sure he still is. Just exclusively for everybody except Vixen.”

Cole smiled faintly despite himself, but his eyes drifted back toward the couple again anyway.

Nala would’ve liked her.

The thought arrived instantly and without permission, like always.

Everything still circled back to Nala eventually no matter how many years passed, no matter how hard he worked, or how exhausted he became, or how deeply he buried himself inside routine and responsibility and the endless mechanical movement of everyday life. Every road led back to her, and Cole suspected that they always would – no matter how long he lived.

He still remembered the first time that he’d seen her standing behind the reception desk at Mile High Dental, wearing lavender scrubs and an expression that suggested she was approximately two rude patients away from committing homicide. She’d looked up when he walked in holding a bloody rag against his jaw after some asshole in a pool hall decided to swing a cue at him, and for one absurd second Cole had forgotten why he was there entirely.

Beautiful wasn’t even the word for her, because beautiful implied softness somehow. Nala had been striking. Sharp-eyed and intelligent and composed, dark curls pulled high away from her face while irritation flashed openly across her features as she looked him over.

“You’re bleeding on my floor,” she’d informed him.

Cole had smiled instantly despite the pain in his jaw. “That your professional diagnosis?”

And she’d rolled her eyes so hard he damn near fell in love with her on the spot.

Everything after that had happened terrifyingly fast.

Dinner dates that stretched until two in the morning because neither of them wanted to stop talking. Nights spent tangled together in his apartment while she argued with documentaries on television and stole his hoodies like it was her constitutional right. Her sitting cross-legged on his kitchen counter while he cooked, reading aloud from ridiculous online reviews of local businesses until he laughed hard enough to nearly burn dinner.

She had filled every empty space in his life so naturally he barely noticed it happening…until one day he looked around and realized home no longer meant a place. It meant her.