36. HOLDEN

HOLDEN

" H olden Nash! It's been ages !" Maggie coos, coming around the counter to toss her arms around my neck.

I can't help but smile wrapping my free arm around her. Maggie has always been kind of like a second mother. Aside from Marlowe, she's the only other person who never gave up on Cole and I.

"Quit sending those poor prospects to get food for you." She pulls back and smacks my chest with a playful scold. I grin and glance down at Kadence.

"Sorry, Mags," I say sheepishly, looking back at the older woman and feeling like a teenager again. "I've been... preoccupied."

Maggie's eyes glide to Kadence with a bright smile. "It's good to see you again sweetie." Her brow raises knowingly as she notices our connected hands. "Well, well, well.." Maggie giggles, looking back up at Kade. "I had my money on Cole, but you two fit."

Kadence chuckles and I feel like I'm completely out of the loop.

"Cole?" I ask, looking down at Kadence.

"He picked me up from here... the second day I was in town." She smiles looking back at Maggie.

"I'm glad you decided to stick around," she says with a knowing look between the two of us. "Alright, go! Go sit down. Cole already ordered three Lee Specials for you all."

I smile and nod. "Thanks, Mags."

She pats my arm, squeezing it gently and getting that same sorrowful look in her eye that people usually do after I come out of hiding. One that says I'm sorry your sister was brutally murdered, she was a good kid . I hate it but for Maggie, I know she means well. "Don't be a stranger, Holden."

I feel that same twinge in my heart again and nod. "Yes Ma'am."

She moves over to another set of patrons and I tug Kadence towards the table Cole picked. That lightness I felt from seeing Maggie quickly dissipates at the sight of Cole's grim look. Not quite grim, but regretful, maybe? I let Kade slide into the booth first, my eyes never leaving Cole's.

"Are you both sure you want me here for this?" Kade's voice breaks through our glare as she shrugs out of her jacket and sets it on the bench between herself and the wall.

I'm simultaneously focused on Cole and her. Making sure she's fine and that Cole knows better than to help her when I'm around.

I slide in next to her, leaning back in the booth. Her thigh brushes against my leg and it’s a quiet reminder she spoke to us. "Yeah, Sunflower. You should be here."

"He's right," Cole says, glancing over at her. "I uh.. I ordered already."

"Maggie said you did," I reply with a little more bitterness in my voice than I meant to.

I can feel Kade's gaze flickering between the two of us. She's just as nervous to witness whatever this sit down brings as I am. My hand slides over her thigh under the table giving her a soft squeeze of reassurance. In an instant I feel her hand over mine, tangling her fingers with my own and giving me her own soft squeeze. I didn't just bring her here for Cole's apology. Kadence grounds me more than she realizes, and as her thumb runs over my index finger in a soothing motion, I know that whatever we have is more than just two broken people finding solace in each other.

Cole clears his throat, folding his hands together on the table as he glances between the two of us.

"I owe you both an apology," he starts and I narrow my eyes. "Kadence, I have no right to tell you who you should be spending your time with. I also know that you witnessed Wolfe getting arrested because of me... I know that things don't make sense right now but I'm sorry that I brought you into it." He leans back into the booth shaking his head. "I've been trying to hold shit together for so long and now it feels like it's unraveling at the seams."

I shake my head. "It's not–"

Cole stops me with his own shake. "I've had the string in my hand more often than not, Pal."

He stares at me and I can't help but feel remorseful. We were supposed to be a team, running the club together, and all I've done is fuck it up and leave it on his shoulders but still my best friend blames himself. "I let you down. I've let this club down more times than not in the past month and a half. Stokes wants all of us. The club gone, and full control of Moon."

"How can he do that?" Kadence asks the same question that burned the tip of my tongue.

Deep down I knew though. The girls that inhabited Moon came to us because they had no other choice and needed a safe place to stay fed and clothed...not all of them were strays in a bad place. Hell, even Layla had a family that loved her, she just chose this life, chose a new identity for whatever reason. I was sure the girls that Stokes brought to us sometimes weren't just lost women. They had families too, ones that cared about them. We never forced the women he brought to stay. If they ever wanted to leave they could but most of the time they don’t. Whether they’re too content to care or that this is a better life for them... We never know whether they're missing daughters or sisters... We never could prove it and the idea made my stomach roll. We were helping him feed his addiction and the women never complained.

"He has a lot built up on the club. Transactions, ledgers of the runs we've done for him and the ones we haven't. Handguns are easy to move when they're packed into bedrolls." Cole admits more freely than I would have.

I haven't told Kadence everything that the club does outside of running the garage. Guns were just a small portion. Moon brings in most of our income with the shop coming in second. We mostly transport weapons for other clubs. A middle man between MC's that don't feel the need to know each other face to face.

"They take the guns just over the border into Nevada, from there we don't know. They get distributed by the other MC's." I say glancing down at her.

If she was pissed, I wasn't going to let Cole take the brunt of her anger. I also had a hand in making the deal with the other clubs back when I was VP. Now, that's Falcone's territory. Her features are blank and I realize that I'm just as corrupt as her ex. Pulling her back into shit that she shouldn't be in.

"Stokes found out," she states, furrowing her brows and filling in her own blanks.

Cole nods in the full transparency that I'm still working on. "They let us move across the border without problems and in return they get girls at Moon."

"Until Becca died," I finish. "After we stopped letting Watson and his crew into the club. Girls started getting hurt and—" The words catch in my throat, and I feel her hand squeeze mine again.

"You didn't want them to suffer the same way Becca did," she says softly.

I nod curtly glancing back at Cole. "Watson had something to do with Bec's death. I know he did."

Cole bristles at the mention of my sister and Watson in the same sentence. He was silent for a moment before speaking. "Then we find the evidence, and then we kill him."

That was fine with me but when I look down at Kadence her features have stoned over. Her eyes are glued to Cole. "You loved her... didn't you?" She asks.

"More than I care to admit," he answers immediately.

It doesn't shock me how I thought it would. Cole is a hothead with a big heart and a love for Becca that I'll never be able to relate to. My gaze slides to Kadence. Or used to be able to relate to.

She glances up at me and nods. "How can I help?"

"No. Baby," I say, turning towards her. "You aren't helping with this. I'm not putting a target on your back bigger than the one already there." I look to Cole for help. "We're not involving Kade."

"Then why bring me today?" She asks with a hint of bitterness laced within her words. "After everything, you can't expect me to sit here and play the innocent girlfriend."

My eyes widen for a moment looking down at the woman next to me. Girlfriend. I know deep down that's what she is but hearing her call herself that sends a jolt of mixed emotions through me. I must have made a face because she rolls her eyes at me and I can't help the small upturn of my lips at her attitude.

"Watson already knows something is up with me. By now, with the news junket circulating, I'm sure he and Stokes both know more than we want them to know about who I am and why I'm here." She tugs her hand out of mine and sets it on the table. "It's only a matter of time before they make a phone call to Jeremy's office and Miami-Dade is crawling all over the shop, not to mention Stokes having everything he needs to take down the club. So, before that happens and I fuck things up around here even more, we stop them." She glances between us. "We stop them both."

"You want to kill Stokes?" Cole's brows shoot to his forehead, his shock matching mine.

I was beside myself staring at the woman who not two hours ago was moaning my name. I want her to be strong, to be this firecracker of a woman instead of the meek one she thinks herself to be but I don't want that at the cost of her life and dealing with Stokes and Jeremy at the same time was a death sentence.

"Don't you?"

"So, we kill Watson and Stokes, then what? There's just going to be some other asshole who will replace Stokes and pull the same shit or shut us down completely," I argue. "Killing them both won't work."

A throat clears to the side of us and we all look up to see Maggie standing there, arms full of our plates before she begins dishing them out. "Anything else I can get ya?" She asks, glancing between the three of us with a raised brow.

"No, Mags, thank you." Cole glares at me as she nods and walks away. "Keep your damn voice down."

Kadence picks up her fork, pushing around the hashbrowns on her plate before scooping up a bite. "It'll work," she mumbles. Her eyes bounce between us. "Hand pick someone. Use what you have already on Stokes, release it to the town and show them he's not the upstanding Sheriff he claims to be. Throw your hat in the ring for whoever you choose. It's best if it's a friend of the club’s." She pauses. "And get the town eating out of your hands."

She shrugs like the master plan she just spewed wasn't more than a grocery list. I watch her take another bite and then another before the corners of my mouth turn up. A combination of pride and the fact that she's eating more now than she has in weeks.

I look at Cole, who is still staring at her with the same amount of curiosity and awe that I feel. "It's not a bad plan," I mutter and Cole's eyes collide with mine.

"It worked for Jeremy, well until..." her voice trails off, "his office pulled shit like this all the time. I'm not entirely sure about the whole murdering part but it wouldn't surprise me." She glances up at me. "Innocent girlfriend, remember?"

I'm thrown back to our earlier conversation of how Jeremy never hid anything he did. She flashes a grin at me before looking at Cole. "I heard things I wasn't supposed to, doesn't mean I forgot them and didn't catalog them for later as a backup plan."

I huff out a laugh, throwing my arm over her shoulders and press a kiss to her temple. The woman sitting next to me feels different than the woman I barged in on the first night I met her and fuck I'm proud of her.

"You're really something, Sunflower." I press my nose into her hair, taking in the lavender and vanilla that I love so much before dipping my head to her ear. "And you aren't my girlfriend ," I rasp lowly pulling back as she furrows her brows at me.

"You're my old lady ." I smirk.