Locke
I don’t usually notice women when I walk into a room. I register them, sure, the same way that I register everything else – positions, exits, tensions brewing beneath conversation, who’s armed, who’s nervous, who’s lying – but that kind of awareness is functional. So when something cuts through that discipline before I’ve even taken three steps inside the clubhouse, I take note of it.
I let my attention do what it always does, travel slow and steady, taking in the room in pieces. I clock Brick by the wall, Hawk at the bar, Mayhem pacing just enough to tell me something’s on his mind… and then it catches.
On her.
For one rare, dangerous second, my brain stops giving a f**k about anything else.
She’s standing at the bar beside Jade Callahan, one hip angled casually against the woo
