Chapter Three - Fire & Ice
1974 Words
Three Years Later
The courtroom was dead silent.
Avery stood at the center, spine straight, heels planted, her voice steady as she delivered the final line of her closing statement.
“She didn’t run because she was guilty,” Avery said. “She ran because for the first time in her life, someone finally believed her. And that someone was me.”
She looked the jury in the eye, each one. Then stepped back.
The judge called recess. The jury filed out. And just like that, Avery Rourke knew she’d won.
Again.
She was twenty-one years old and already the kind of lawyer other lawyers resented. Top of her class. Clerked with two public defenders. Took on pro bono cases like her life depended on it. She’d become the girl everyone underestimated until it was too late.
Until she buried them with facts and fire.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket the moment she stepped outside the courthouse. She ignored it. Whoever it was could wait until she had coffee and ten minutes to breathe.
But it buzzed again. And again.
By the fourth time, her gut twisted.
She pulled the phone out.
Unknown Caller. No Voicemail. Just one line of text:
“You need to come home. Now.”
Then another:
“It’s your dad.”
Her breath caught. She didn’t move for several seconds, fingers frozen around the screen.
Another text came in. This one from a number she did recognize.
Colt Mercer.
“I’m sorry. He’s gone.”
Avery didn’t remember dropping the phone. Or the sound it made when it hit the concrete. She didn’t remember falling to her knees.
But she remembered the cold.
The cold that spread like a sheet of ice under her skin, as if the sun had died above her. As if the heat of everything she’d built had been ripped away in one breathless second.
Two Days Later
Blackridge, her childhood street
The Rourke house still looked like it was holding its breath.
Quiet. Weathered. Stubbornly standing just outside the reach of Blackridge’s chaos.
Avery stepped out of the car and shut the door gently behind her. The wind was sharp, the sky gray and unmoving. She hadn’t been back here in over a year. Even when she called, even when her father said he missed her, she’d put it off.
She told herself it was because she was busy. But really, it was because coming back here meant facing the weight of what she left behind.
She walked up the front steps, her heart hammering harder than she liked to admit.
When she opened the door, she didn’t expect him to be there.
But Colt Mercer sat in her father’s chair like he belonged in it.
She stopped in the doorway, jaw tight, spine straight.
“This isn’t club property,” she said. “You don’t get to walk in here like it is.”
Colt stood slowly. He looked… different.
Broader. Older. Worn in all the ways time and violence shape a man. He still wore the leather cut, but now the patch on his chest was stitched in bold white letters: President.
His hair was shorter than she remembered. His jaw was sharper. And his eyes—God, his eyes—were like ice now. Hard and clear and almost unreadable.
He nodded once. “I let myself in. Just wanted to make sure things were in order before the others got here.”
“The others?” Her voice was clipped. “This is my house. Not a clubhouse.”
“No one’s disrespecting your place,” Colt said calmly. “But your dad was one of ours. The wake’s tomorrow. People are coming by tonight. Some of the guys wanted to help with arrangements. Keep things from falling apart.”
“I don’t need help.”
His eyes locked on hers. “I know.”
She dropped her bag near the stairs, refusing to look at the chair again. At him again. “You’re the one who sent that text.”
“I figured you’d rather hear it from me.”
Her throat tightened. “You were with him?”
He shook his head. “No. He was alone.”
That hit harder than she expected. She nodded, turning her face away so he wouldn’t see what was behind her eyes.
Colt stepped closer but kept his distance.
“You look different,” he said. “Sharper.”
She glanced at him. “You look exactly the same. Just with more people following you around.”
His mouth twitched. “You still hate all this, huh?”
“No,” she said quietly. “I don’t hate it. I just hate what it costs.”
Colt was silent for a long beat. “You should eat something. You look like you haven’t slept in days.”
She let out a humorless breath. “Don’t pretend to care now, Colt. We both know the only reason you’re here is because you think this house—this life—is still part of your world.”
His jaw twitched, but he didn’t rise to it.
“No,” he said. “I’m here because your father mattered. And whether you like it or not… you still matter, too.”
Her heart jerked at that. But she shoved it down. Deep.
“I’m not part of your club. I never was. And you—” she glanced at the patch on his chest, eyes sharp— “you’re not the boy who used to follow me around pretending not to care. You’re someone else now.”
He didn’t deny it.
“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”
She stared at him for one breath too long before finally turning away.
“I’m going to make coffee,” she muttered. “If you’re staying, don’t touch a damn thing.”
Avery closed the door to her bedroom and leaned against it, exhaling like she’d been holding her breath for years.
The room was smaller than she remembered.
Or maybe she was just bigger now. Not in size, but in presence. In edge. In the hard-earned calluses of a life built far from this place.
The walls were still a soft, faded gray. Her bookshelf still held the classics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Pride and Prejudice, The Federalist Papers. Her corkboard still had old community event flyers, scholarships pinned with thumbtacks, and the photo of her and her father outside the courthouse the day she got her first internship.
She sat on the edge of her bed, the familiar creak of springs underneath her like a ghost whispering, You never really left, did you?
The truth was… this house had been a sanctuary. A bubble. Her father had worked hard to keep the chaos outside those doors. But even so, the cracks had always let a little of it in.
Mostly through him.
Colt Mercer.
God, she’d been in love with him once. Maybe the first time she’d even understood what love was. It wasn’t the sweet kind. It was sharp and reckless. A kind of hunger you learn to live with because you know you’ll never be fed.
She remembered watching him from her window as he rode up to the curb to talk to her dad, the way his voice carried when he laughed, the way his eyes—back then still warm, still young—would flick toward her when he thought she wasn’t looking.
But she had been looking.
Always.
And every time she saw him with another girl, his hands on someone else’s waist, his lips on someone else's neck at some party she'd never attend, it had burned. Every damn time, it reminded her that wanting him was weakness. That in his world, love was just another weapon. And she refused to be a casualty.
She clenched her fists in her lap now, jaw set.
She’d let herself ache for him once. She’d never let it happen again.
He was different now. Older. Harder. And just as dangerous.
But she was different too.
She was here for her father.
To bury the man who gave her everything.
To pay her respects.
And then?
She’d go back to the city. To her real life. Her courtroom. Her future.
Far from Colt.
Far from the club.
Far from everything that tried to chain her to the past.
She lay back against the pillow and closed her eyes, breathing deep.
The smell of dust. Of old paper. Of a life she'd outgrown.
She just had to survive the next few days without letting old wounds bleed open.
And without letting him back in.
The sun was low when they came.
One by one, the bikes rolled in like a procession of ghosts—engines rumbling, black leather glinting under the dying light, patches worn like armor. Crimson Steel MC filled the Rourke property with the weight of a kingdom descending.
Avery stood on the front porch in a black dress that didn’t try to be polite. No lace. No softness. Just clean lines and quiet defiance. Her hair was pinned back, her eyes sharp. She looked every bit like someone who didn’t belong—and made damn sure everyone knew it.
They watched her.
The brothers. Their old ladies. Even a few hangarounds who barely knew her name but remembered what she'd walked away from.
Every step she took across the yard to the makeshift memorial felt like walking into the lion’s den. And still, she moved with her head high, shoulders straight, like she was on a courtroom floor.
She nodded at those who deserved it. Said nothing to those who didn’t.
And Bear Mercer—retired now, sitting in the shade with a glass of something strong and a snake’s smile carved into his weathered face—she didn’t even glance at him.
She wouldn’t give him the dignity of acknowledgment.
He had no hold over her anymore.
That chapter was closed the second her father took his last breath.
She passed Colt once near the back of the crowd. He didn’t speak. Neither did she. But their eyes met for a split second. And it was all there—the grief, the history, the unspoken war they were both pretending not to fight.
The memorial was simple. Just how her father would’ve wanted it. A framed photo. His cut folded neatly beside it. A few candles flickering under the weight of dusk. No priest. No preacher. Just a moment of silence and the low, respectful clink of bottles lifted in his name.
Avery stood beside the photo, arms crossed against the cold, listening to the way the men talked about her father like he was a war hero. Maybe he was, in their world. But to her, he was something else entirely.
He was the man who kept her out of this.
Who stood in front of the fire every time it tried to touch her.
And now he was gone.
But as she looked out over the crowd—at the world she was never supposed to survive—she didn’t feel fear.
She felt free.
This club had no chains on her anymore.
No one to drag her back. No deals to force her hand. Her father was the only tie she had to this place. And now, standing here surrounded by ghosts and men with blood on their hands, she realized something that surprised her:
Despite the pain, despite the weight in her chest—
She felt hope.
She was going to walk away.
And this time, there would be no strings.
No guilt.
No turning back.
Just her life.
Her future.
And nothing—not even Colt Mercer—could take that from her.
- Writer
