“I don’t know… but I hope,” she said.

“Will doesn’t exactly have a ‘usual type.’ He’s always been a very… self-sufficient man. So if he’s connected with you, Eva, then I would say don’t worry about all that surface bullshit.”

“You’re not going to kick him out of the gang, are you? You seemed so angry at him before.”

“Well, first, we call it a club. But no, we’re not kicking him out of the club. Will’s made amends. He’s on a good path to getting back to himself, now. He’s just going to have to serve out his punishment, first.”

Eva’s eyes widened and she felt her heart drop. She imagined something horrible and bloody. “Punishment?”

Jase paused, then laughed when he read her expression. “Relax, it just means he has to tend bar at the clubhouse for a few weeks instead of working any of the fun or important jobs. I guess ‘demotion’ is a better word for it.”

Eva let out a relieved laugh. “Luckily, we’ve already given him some practice with that. Although I’m surprised he’s accepting a demotion, to be honest. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who listens to people when he doesn’t want to.”

“That’s the thing. I think he wants to, now,” said Jase. “Not that he wants to put up with demotion, of course. It’s that he wants to be different, and he knows step one is putting up with his punishments.” Jase paused a moment, then added. “I shouldn’t say ‘different.’ It’s more like Will wants to be himself again. The Will he was two years ago.” He nodded toward her. “Which, I would guess, is the same Will you got to see underneath his pain.”

Eva was silent. The thought made her heart ache.

“Maybe you can help him get there,” said Jase. He gave her shoulder a gentle pat and left the bar.

~ NINETEEN ~

“So this is what it looks like on the other side,” said Tommy as he propped up his boots on one of the bar stools and gave Will a shit-eating grin.

Will handed him an open beer and gave him a half-smile. “Don’t get used to it.”

“No way, I’m never going back,” said Tommy with a laugh, clinking his beer against Will’s. They both took a drink.

At that moment, Will didn’t mind the idea of the simple duties of being a bartender. It seemed like a fucking vacation, compared to the turmoil and trauma of the last two years. Already in the few days since the meeting with the cartel, he felt ten times lighter, a thousand years younger. Like someone had finally released the steam building up inside of him so he could breathe and think. He didn’t feel half as angry anymore, and while he wouldn’t go as far as to say he was happy, he was basically a pig in shit compared to how he felt just a week before. He was glad to toss off the heavy responsibility of being a spymaster for a few weeks. He’d come back stronger; he always did.

And now that the clouds in his head had fully cleared, he really only had one desire left: Eva.

He thought about the sadness in her face when he left her at Swashbuckler’s days ago. He hadn’t been back since—had been in no shape for it, really. After the cartel meeting, Will went back to his house and slept for fifteen hours, a deeper sleep than any he’d had in months. He woke up and met with a fresh disgust for the living conditions to which he’d subjected himself, and immediately began cleaning up the mess he’d been living in. It was like his brain was running at full function for the first time in two years.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about her—far from it. Not ten minutes passed by, it seemed, without something as simple as her name popping into his head. It was only that Will was suddenly awake to his own sickness, and self-preservation had to come first. The man he used to be, the one he wanted to be again, kept a tighter ship than this. The man his grandmother raised was better. He had to dig that man out from the ashes of the fire.

After that, his next responsibility was showing up to pay his penance to the MC for his behavior, taking over as clubhouse bartender and maintenance man for Tommy Castillo, while the young recruit finally got his shot at some field work. Playing bartender only made him think of Eva more and more. He replayed memories of bending her over the counter, kneeling underneath her soft heat, making her writhe on top of his face. He could practically see her, sitting there at the bar, reading and smiling up at him, eyes heavy with attraction. The thought made his chest ache.

Deep down, Will knew he cared about Eva, but he wasn’t so sure she cared about him—not now. Thinking about that day Jase and Ghost dragged him out of the bar filled him with shame. After that, Eva probably thought he was some lunatic. Who could blame her? He couldn’t have looked sane, pushing his best friend around for no reason, readying to drag Charlie out into battle. He may have saved the Murdocks, in the end, but looking back, he could recognize that he really just got lucky things didn’t go a lot worse. He had no confidence that Eva saw him as anything more than an opportunistic fuck, an exciting affair with a bad boy to get her blood going.

You’ve never told a bigger lie to yourself, came the thought from Will’s own mind. The last thing Eva would do is use you.

“You are literally the worst bartender that has ever existed.”

Will looked over and saw Ghost, both hands spread wide, leaning on the bar.

“Did you say something?” asked Will.

“ ‘Dear Yelp friends: don’t go to the Black Dogs clubhouse. Bartender was lost in a sissy romantic daydream and couldn’t even get me a fucking beer. The available pussy was acceptable. Half a star,’ ” said Ghost, pounding his fist on the bar.

Will smiled and cracked open a beer, handing it across the bar to him. “Everyone knows those reviews are bought.”

“Fair enough,” said Ghost. He took a drink and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “So, how you feelin’, sport? Get that grumpiness dug out yet?”

“You’re such a poet,” said Will. “And I’m feeling better, yes. Thanks.”

“You were a grade-A jagweed there for a while, man. And that’s my thing,” said Ghost, sticking a thumb in his own chest. “Glad to see you feeling like yourself again.”

“Glad to be feeling like myself again.”

“So, where’s your little girlfriend?”

Will swallowed his beer and gave a small shake of his head. “I’m not so sure about the future of that.” He looked down at the hands wrapped around his beer bottle. “She didn’t exactly meet me at a positive time in my life.”

“Yeah, but she knows that, doesn’t she? And she liked you anyway. I think she helped this along.”

Will crooked an eyebrow at him. “Are you trying to give me romantic advice, Ghost?”

Ghost’s face twisted into an expression of mock outrage. “What the shit is that supposed to mean? I’m not a man? I don’t have a heart just because I’m amazing at killing things?”

Will rolled his eyes with a laugh and punched Ghost in the arm. He listened to Ghost ramble on in his dramatic, pretend offense as more members of the MC started to trickle in for the Friday night meeting and subsequent party in the den. So many people were coming in and out that the sound of the door opening had faded into the background, along with the music from the jukebox, and the competitive jostling from Jase and Bones at the pool table.

Will started pulling up beers as new arrivals came in. When he stood up, Eva stood in the big wide doorway that connected the den with the main hallway. She looked like a vision from some nostalgic painting of Americana. Her slender frame was draped by a pastel pink dress, tied neatly around her waist with a matching belt. Her soft, thin brown hair fell in gentle curls at the cut of her chin, freshly washed and brushed. She wore a thin, white cardigan over her shoulders on this chilly evening, and her hands fidgeted at her waist as she gazed into the big den full of bikers, her eyes wide, but unafraid.