Thanksgiving in April
June walked out the front doors of St. Brigid's into the noon sun.
The black Ram was idling in the fire lane, right where Piper had said. A security guard stood ten feet away from it with his radio in his hand, looking like he very badly wanted to tell the driver to move and had decided not to.
The passenger door swung open from the inside before June got to it.
She climbed up and pulled it shut.
The cab was warm and clean and smelled like leather and motor oil. Rook sat with his back against the driver's door, one arm stretched along the top of the bench seat. His hand was a few inches from her shoulder.
He was wearing the jacket she'd given back to him last night.
He didn't say anything. He just looked at her.
June had walked out of a hospital room that smelled like disinfectant and throw-up.
She knew she looked tired. Her hair was coming out of its clip. There was a damp spot on her sleeve where Nadia had grabbed her.
Rook's eyes went over all of it, slow, and stopped on her face.
"How's Frost?" he asked.
It was the last thing she'd expected him to say. "Sick. First round of chemo was this morning."
He nodded once, like that was what he'd figured.
"So," he said. "You came down."
"You told me to."
"I told you to bring your own name." He tipped his head. "Did you?"
June looked out the windshield at the hospital doors. She'd been working on what to say the whole elevator ride down. Now all of it was gone.
"Why do you care so much about who's asking?" she said.
"Why do you care so much about Frost?" He shot it right back at her. "You put every dime Dom ever sent you into a dead shop. For what? She your mentor or your mother?"
"She was there."
"There for what?"
June hadn't meant to tell him. She heard herself start anyway.
"My first November in Edinburgh, I didn't know anybody. I couldn't cook. I couldn't even boil pasta right. Nadia was the only person who checked on me." June looked down at her hands. "She spent half a day running all over the city to find a turkey breast and a can of cranberry sauce, because she knew nobody over there does Thanksgiving. She cooked it in my kitchen. It was the size of a closet. The smoke alarm went off twice."
Rook didn't say anything. He was listening. She could tell, because he'd gone completely still.
"Nobody else came," June said. "Not one person. Five years, and not one person from home came for Thanksgiving."
She stopped. She'd said too much. She could feel it.
Rook's hand moved on the back of the seat. Just an inch. The side of his thumb touched her shoulder through her shirt and stayed there.
"Dom came," he said quietly. "Last spring. When you were sick."
"That was different."
"Was it?"
June didn't answer. Her throat had gone tight.
"Does Dom know?" Rook asked. "That his money just bought a turkey dinner?"
"Some things are worth more than money."
"Yeah." He was quiet for a second. "They are."
Then he took his hand off the seat and reached past her knees. He opened the glove box, took out a folder, and dropped it in her lap.
June looked down. Snowline Works. Whiteout Drivetrain. Sovereign Sons National Build.
The same terms Nadia had been offered before any of this happened. Every page was already signed at the bottom except one.
There was a blank line where Snowline's name was supposed to go.
June's hands went still on the folder.
"You already signed it."
"Two days ago."
"Then why did you make me—"
"Because I wanted to hear you ask." Rook leaned back against his door. "You still haven't."
June stared at him. He looked right back at her and waited. He looked like he'd wait all afternoon if that was what it took.
She thought about the clubhouse lot. About her heel sliding on the gravel, and his hand catching her hip. About Dom's little sister, and how she'd never once in her life walked into a room in this town without that name in front of her.
She made herself look him in the eye.
"I'm June Sterling," she said. "I own half of Snowline Works. I'm asking you to give us the National Build. For me. Because I want it."
Her voice shook on the last part. She didn't take it back.
Something moved in Rook's face. It was there and gone before she could name it.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay?"
"Okay. It's yours." He picked a pen up off the dash and held it out to her. "One condition."
June didn't take the pen. "What condition?"
"Crown Run's in ten days. Every chapter president in the country is going to be there, and the national council's going to watch Whiteout run for the first time." He turned the pen over in his fingers. "You're bringing the drive in yourself. Not Frost. Not Piper. You."
"Fine."
"I'm not done." His eyes stayed on her face. "You ride in with me. On the back of my bike. Through the front gate. In front of everybody."
June's mouth went dry.
Everybody in the club knew what it meant when a woman rode into Crown Run on the back of a man's bike. It meant she was with him. It meant something you couldn't take back with a phone call. The whole Sovereign Sons would see her arrive behind the National Vice President.
Dom would see it.
"Why?" June asked. Her voice came out smaller than she wanted.
"Because the council doesn't sign with strangers. They sign with people I vouch for." Rook shrugged one shoulder. "And a woman on the back of my bike? Nobody's going to ask whose sister she is."
"Dom's going to hate it."
"Probably."
"Is that why you're doing it?"
One corner of his mouth went up. "That's just a bonus."
June looked down at the contract in her lap. At the blank line. Up on the fourth floor, Nadia was lying in a hospital bed with a pink basin next to her. Two years of her life were sitting in this folder.
June took the pen out of his hand. Her fingers brushed his. His were warm. Hers were ice cold.
She signed her name on the blank line. June Sterling. No Reyes anywhere on the page.
She held the folder out to him. Rook didn't take it. He put his hand over hers instead, on top of the folder, and held it there.
"Say it," he said.
"Say what?"
"Say you'll ride with me."
June's heart was going so hard she could feel it in her fingertips, right under his hand.
"I'll ride with you," she said.
Rook let go. He took the folder and tossed it on the dash.
"Ten days," he said. "Wear boots."
June reached for the door handle. She had it halfway open when he spoke again.
"June."
She stopped. He'd never called her that before. Only Princess.
"Don't tell Dom," Rook said. "Let him see it."
June climbed down out of the truck and shut the door.
She didn't look back until she was inside the hospital doors. When she finally did, the Ram was still sitting there in the fire lane.
Through the windshield, she could see him watching her. He didn't drive away until the elevator doors closed.
When June walked back into the room on the fourth floor, Piper and Nadia were both pressed up against the window like two kids watching for Santa. Piper still had a bag of takeout in one hand.
They both spun around.
"Well?" Piper said. "What happened? What did he want? You were in there forever!"
"We got it," June said. "The National Build. It's done."
Piper screamed. Actually screamed. A nurse stuck her head in the door, and Piper waved at her with the takeout bag and said, "Sorry, sorry, good news, nobody's dying." The nurse gave her a look and left.
Nadia didn't scream. She was sitting up against her pillows, gray in the face and very still. She was looking at June the way she used to look at a test bench right before something broke.
"What did it cost?" Nadia asked.
June sat down in the chair by the bed. Her hands were still cold. She could still feel exactly where his had been on top of them.
"A ride," she said.
