Page 16 of Gatsby's Starlet
Three days ago Mystic had announced he was going to be a daddy, and ever since then the man had been walking around like someone had handed him a live grenade he was trying real hard not to drop.
Devil shook his head. “That’s it.”
The meeting broke apart the way they usually did, chairs scraping across the scarred wood floor as the brothers drifted out in pairs or small clusters, conversations already shifting to other things, but I stayed where I was for a minute longer, leaning back in my chair and staring at the empty space Devil had just vacated while the wordsFire Dragonslingered in my head like something that hadn’t quite finished speaking yet.
Eventually I pushed back from the table and headed down the hallway toward the common room.
The Devil’s House clubhouse had once been a mansion, one of those sprawling Lowcountry homes built back when men with money wanted the world to know it, and even after all these years the bones of it still showed in the wide hallways and high ceilings that made the place feel bigger than any biker clubhouse had a right to be.
Old Jaybird’s place.
The founders had kept enough of the original structure intact that you could still see what the house had once been before apack of bikers moved in and made it theirs. Most clubhouses were old bars or warehouses somebody slapped a patch over, but this place had history soaked into the walls, the kind you could almost feel when you walked through it.
I always liked that about it.
Maybe more than most of the guys did.
There was something about the craftsmanship of the place, the thick wood doors, the old fireplaces in nearly every room, the tall windows that warped the outside world just slightly with their wavy glass—that reminded you this house had been standing here long before any of us were born, and would probably still be standing long after we were gone.
That kind of permanence wasn’t something men in this life usually got to claim.
But the house had it.
And somehow we’d become part of it.
I stepped into the common room, the big space opening up the way it always did after the narrower hallway.
Once upon a time a chandelier probably hung from the center of the ceiling, something delicate meant to impress guests arriving in polished carriages.
Now industrial lights hung there instead, throwing a warm yellow glow over hardwood floors that had been scarred by boots, bar fights, and more spilled beer than anyone could count.
Leather couches sat in loose clusters around the room, most of them cracked from years of use but still comfortable as hell, and the walls were a mix of old wood paneling and club history, framed photos of brothers long gone, faded patches from chapters that didn’t exist anymore, and the occasional piece of motorcycle metal somebody had decided looked good enough to hang like art.
A couple of the guys were already there.
Bolt had claimed one end of a couch, feet kicked up on the coffee table while he scrolled through something on his phone, and Gearhead stood near the bar pouring himself a glass of whiskey like the meeting had been nothing more than an excuse to start the evening early.
They both glanced up when I walked in.
Bolt smirked. “You goin’ cruisin’ with your calendar girl again?”
“Shut up,” I muttered.
Gearhead chuckled quietly into his glass.
The air in the room carried that smell the place never quite lost, old wood soaked with decades of humidity, tobacco that had seeped so deep into the beams it probably wasn’t ever coming out, and the faint trace of oil and metal that followed most of us in from the garage whether we realized it or not.
It was the smell of the clubhouse.
The smell of home.
Funny thing was, sitting across from Evie at breakfast that morning, listening to her talk about old things people forgot the value of, I’d caught myself thinking she’d probably like this place.
Not the biker part. The bones of it. The history. The way time had settled into the wood instead of wiping it clean.
She’d probably run her fingers along those warped windowpanes the same way she studied the edge of an old photograph, like she was trying to understand the life something had lived before it ended up in front of her.
The thought made me shake my head a little.
