He Let Her Wear His Shirt, So I Froze the Club's Money novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Three Rules

Boone follows Hallie home and admits four months. She sets three rules and asks who used her approval code. Gus arrives with a payroll deadline and calls a vote for nine the next morning.

I drove home with the flatbed's windows down so I wouldn't have to hear my own breathing.

Our house sat on twelve acres of red dirt ten minutes from the clubhouse.

I had bought the land with my grandmother's money before I ever met a biker, and the deed had only my name on it.

I put my keys in the dish by the door, and I was standing at the sink with a glass of water when his boots hit the porch.

Boone did not knock. It was his house too, and he had never needed to.

He stopped in the kitchen doorway and filled it.

He had my ring in his fist.

"Mags handed it to me," he said. "She said it wasn't hers to carry."

He put it on the table between us.

It sat there on the wood, small and gold, and neither of us touched it.

"Four months," I said.

Boone shut his eyes. "Yeah."

"You told the whole yard three times."

"I lied. I'd been lying so long I said it without thinking." He opened them. "Four months. More than three nights. Every Tuesday since March."

I had asked for the truth and gotten it, and it did not feel any better.

"Did you love her?"

"No."

"Did you want her?"

He took too long to answer, and I watched him decide not to lie again.

"At first, yes," he said. "She looked at me like I wasn't a man who'd already failed somebody. You and I had stopped talking, Hal. You were in the guest room, and I stopped asking why."

"Don't put it on the guest room."

"I'm not. I'm saying where my head was. It's not an excuse."

"Good," I said. "Because I didn't ask for one."

I put the glass down.

My hand wasn't steady, and he saw that, and he took one step toward me.

I held up my palm.

"Stop there."

He stopped.

He was close enough that I could smell the cedar soap he'd used since the day I met him.

That was the worst part. My body still knew him.

I looked at his mouth, the scarred lower lip, and I hated how long I looked.

"I'm going to say three things," I said. "I'm only saying them once."

"Okay."

"One. You sleep at the clubhouse. There's a bunk in the back office, so use it."

He nodded.

"Two. You don't touch me. Not my arm, not my hand, not my back to steer me past a crowd."

His jaw moved. "Okay."

"Three. When I ask you a question, you answer it with the truth. I don't care how bad it is. If you lie to me one more time, I'm gone for good and I take the books with me."

"You're already taking the books."

"The books were never yours to take."

He almost smiled, and then he thought better of it.

"Who approved the eighteen thousand?" I said. "That's my first question."

His whole face went still.

"What eighteen thousand?"

"A wire to Tawny, this morning, at nine-fourteen. It used my approval code."

"I never touched your code," Boone said. "I wrote it on the inside of my wallet in 2019 and it hasn't come out since."

"Where's your wallet?"

"On the dresser at the clubhouse. It's in the bunk." He frowned. "It's been there since Tuesday. I left it when I went to Tulsa."

"Who's been in the bunk?"

"Everybody. It's a clubhouse."

I believed him, and I hated that too.

Headlights swung across the kitchen window.

Boone went to the door before I could ask him not to.

It was Gus's truck, an old green Ford with a dent in the tailgate, and Gus climbed out slowly with one hand on the door.

He looked tired and older than he had at noon.

He came up the porch steps and took off his cap.

"Hallie," he said. "Can I come in?"

"It's your club, Gus."

"It's your kitchen."

He came in and set his cap on the counter and looked at my bare hand.

"I'm sorry, honey," he said. "I should have stopped it in the yard. I should've stopped it months ago, if I'd known."

"You didn't know?"

"I knew Boone was going to Tulsa. I thought it was Raven business." He rubbed his eyes under his glasses. "I'm not here to fight you. I'm here because Friday is payroll."

I said nothing.

"Sixty-one people," Gus said. "Prospects with babies. The kitchen girls. A dead brother's widow with three kids. You froze the account that pays them."

"I froze the account that paid for a hotel room."

"And that's fair. But those families didn't do it."

I knew what he was doing, and it still worked.

Because he was right about the families.

"I'm going to call a vote," Gus said gently. "It's not to punish you. It's so the club can say, together, what happens next."

"When?"

"Church is at nine tomorrow." He picked up his cap. "Bring the books, honey. They're going to ask you to unlock it, and Boone's going to be the one who asks."

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