Page 67 of Thunder

I don't think anything of it.

I've got my arms up around his neck and my whole self leaned into the man I love and I am, for one more second, completely happy.

And then I hear my father's voice, and the bottom drops out of the world. "What in the hell?"

We spring apart like the ground's gone electric.

My whole body floods cold, then hot, a sick lurch of adrenaline that leaves my hands shaking and my ears ringing and my heart trying to climb up out of my throat.

I yank my shirt down on pure reflex, too late, always too late.

Everything slows down the way it does in a wreck, that awful stretched-out second where you can see exactly what's coming and you can't do one single thing to stop it.

There's a roaring in my ears.

The gold afternoon that felt like a gift thirty seconds ago has turned into a spotlight, and we're standing dead center in it, with no wall, no door, and no dark to duck into.

Nothing between us and the man at the mouth of the gap but twenty feet of open dirt.

Pops’ standing there, and I don't know how long he's been there.

It doesn't matter, because his eyes aren't on my face.

They're on my back.

On the strip of skin my rucked-up shirt left bare, on the black script he'd have caught before I could yank the hem down.

Property of Thunder.

He read it.

I watch him read it, watch the words hit my father's face and change everything behind his eyes.

"Pops—" My hand's already out, reaching, my heart slamming so hard I taste it. "Pops, wait⁠—"

But he's not looking at me anymore.

He's looking at Thunder.

And I've seen my father angry.

I've seen him cold, seen him deadly, heard the stories about what Phantom Lyle is capable of when somebody crosses the club.

But I have never once seen what's on his face right now, this white-lipped, wild-eyed, betrayed-to-the-bone fury, and it's not aimed at me.

Every ounce of it is aimed at his Sergeant at Arms.

"Harlan." Thunder's voice is low, steady, both hands coming up open and easy, the voice he uses to gentle a spooked animal. "Let's you and me walk somewhere and talk."

"Talk." Pops says it like the word tastes foul. He crosses the distance between them slowly, and there's nothing slow about what's underneath it. "You want to talk to me now. That's rich, Thunder. That's real rich, comin' from you."

"Pops, this is on me too, it's not just—" I try to step between them and my father's arm comes up, not touching me, just barring me back, his eyes never leaving Thunder's face.

"Stay out of this a second, baby. I'll get to you." Quiet. Almost gentle to me, even now. Then, to Thunder, every bit of gentleness gone. "My sergeant at arms. My sword. The man I trust with—" His jaw works, and he drops his voice low and lethal, because even furious he doesn't say the buried things out loud in the open.

"You know exactly what I trust you with. Better than any man breathin'. And you've been puttin' your hands on my daughter behind my back."

"Yes." Thunder doesn't flinch. Doesn't dodge. Takes it standing. "I have."