Page 23 of Handful

He smiled — slow, satisfied, not pushing it. He reached over and stole the last piece of bread from my side of the basket, which he had no right to.

I let him. A month ago I’d have taken it back just to win. I didn’t, because he was right. He really was the safe one.

Chapter 7

❧

— Austen —

Handful had been asking for weeks. Sunday dinner at the clubhouse. The whole crew. Just food and family. He’d said it casually, the way he said things when they mattered to him and he didn’t want to show how much. I’d said no the first few times — not because I hadn’t figured him out by now, but because I knew enough about myself to know I wasn’t ready to walk into his world until I was sure about what I’d be walking into it as.

The Handful I’d met originally and the one I’d been dating for three months barely seemed like the same person. The first had been all swagger and sharp edges, and I hadn’t liked him much. The second was quieter — content, polite, surprisingly willing to take things slow. And I couldn’t shake the worry that I’d walk into a clubhouse full of his brothers and watch him slide back into the first version.

But, the third time he asked, I said yes. Because three months of dating a man who showed up, read Jane Austen and asked before he kissed me had earned him a yes to dinner. Just like he’d earned our first date way back when.

He hadn’t made a big thing of it, but I’d noticed it was Sunday, not Saturday. The brothers held family dinner on Saturdays, he’d mentioned that once in passing. No more parties on Saturday nights, no more of whatever the weekends used to look like. But I worked Saturdays. So they’d moved it.

Handful’s truck rumbled to a stop on the gravel a little after five. He’d offered to bring me on the bike — asked almost shyly, like the answer mattered — but I’d said no. The thought of sitting pressed to his back with my arms wrapped around him for the whole ride felt like a kind of intimacy we hadn’t gotten to yet, and I wasn’t going to ride behind him on his bike on the way to a dinner I was already nervous about. The truck was easier.

I’d been here before so the place wasn’t completely foreign to me. The main building with its flat roof and the row of garage bays. The houses visible through a gap in the fence line, on what Handful had told me was club-owned land. The bikes lined up outside the main door. The prospect at the gate, who nodded at Handful and looked at me with the careful blankness of someone who’d been told to be polite.

What was different was me — why I’d come, and who I’d come for.

Handful parked, cut the engine, and turned to look at me. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“We can leave whenever you want. Say the word and we go.”

“Handful. I’m fine. Take me inside.”

He grinned and we went inside.

The noise hit first. Not loud, exactly — not the thumping bass and shouting of the parties I’d been to — but full. Layered. The sound of a lot of people in a space that was built to hold them: conversations overlapping, kids shrieking, something clattering in a kitchen I couldn’t see, and underneath it all, music from a jukebox.

The common room was large and lived-in. Bar along one wall, pool tables, couches that had seen better days. The kind of place that looked rough until you noticed the details — the floor was clean, the bar was stocked properly, the lighting was warm instead of harsh. Someone had put effort into making this a room people wanted to be in. It wasn’t exactly The Velvet Hour, but I could see the attraction.

And it was full. Not just the brothers I’d expected — the officers, the ones Handful talked about — but families. Women, kids, a chaos of movement and noise that didn’t match anything I’d pictured. I’d braced for a version of the parties — drunk men, women wearing almost nothing, nude posters tacked to the walls, the air thick with swearing, floors sticky with spilled beer.

Across the room, Colt looked up from the pool table — took in Handful’s hand at my back, then me, then Handful again. He set his cue down.

“You’re the one who threw him out of her bar,” he said.

“I am.”

“Good.” He nodded. “He deserved it.” Then he turned to Handful. “Does she know what she’s getting into?”

“Colt—”

“Still time to run,” Colt said, back to me. “I can hold him down if you need a head start.”

A woman I knew was his wife appeared at his shoulder. “I’m being welcoming,” Colt said without even looking at her.

“Austen.” Handful tightened his hand at the small of my back. “Colt, VP. His old lady, Lilac.”

“Welcome.” Lilac’s mouth curved. “Colt’s offer stands. I’ll help too if you need to escape.”

Near the far wall, Holden stood with a woman I didn’t recognize — dark-haired, quiet, her hand through the crook of his arm. He studied me for a long moment. “We were starting to think he’d made you up,” he said. The woman poked him in the ribs.