Stella

 

Stella exhaled shakily as she stared up at the bright red neon sign overhanging Stormwatch. I got this, she said to herself, even though she felt like the contents of her stomach were about to explode out of her skin. Summoning all the courage in her body, she strode through the front door of the MC’s hangout, straightening her spine as much as possible to give off an air of confidence and ease.

 

“Hey, Stella, sweetheart!” one of the Marauders shouted at her across the bar. Stella smiled and waved but didn’t walk over, instead heading for the back room. Cameron would be in there, and she needed to have a conversation with him, privately. Although, on second thought, maybe she should have considered bringing along witnesses in case Cameron got violent, but it was too late now. She burst into the back office without knocking, slamming the door shut behind her.

 

“Whoa, whoa, what the hell?” Cameron shouted from behind his desk, slumped over at a weird angle in his chair. “I’m busy in here.”

 

“Uh, you don’t look very busy,” Stella said sharply, gesturing to the empty room around her. “What exactly are you doing in here?”

 

Cameron scowled before reaching under the table to pull on something, eventually tugging a girl out from under the desk. Oh, Stella realized, her entire body flushing with both first-hand and second-hand embarrassment at once. The girl, who she recognized from the Marauders’ social gatherings, had been on her knees, sucking off her ex-boyfriend. Lovely.

 

“Get out of here,” Cameron spat at the girl before zipping his pants up. The girl’s face fell, and she kept her eyes glued to the floor as she walked around the desk and headed out into the bar. “What do you want?” Cameron asked Stella harshly, evidently pissed that she’d interrupted his blowjob.

 

Stella blew out her breath, preparing herself as much as possible before forcing the words out of her mouth. “I’m quitting,” she said, keeping her voice as steady and unwavering as she possibly could.

 

“Quitting what?” Cameron said, his brow furrowing up in confusion.

 

“Here. This. Stormwatch,” Stella explained. “I’m not going to bartend here anymore. Sorry.”

 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Cameron said, finally getting to his feet and walking around the desk to face Stella, who felt her fear spike as he got closer.

 

“You heard me,” Stella said, setting her jaw so that Cameron knew she was as irritated as he was. For once, she wasn’t going to let his emotions outweigh hers. Her feelings and opinions and desires mattered as much as his did, even if he was a head honcho in the MC. At least, that was what she kept telling herself, if only to push herself through the next few moments.

 

“You’re quitting Stormwatch?” Cameron parroted back to her, anger simmering off of him, practically visible to Stella’s unblinking gaze. “How the hell didn’t I hear about this before now?”

 

Stella shrugged, feigning ignorance, as if she hadn’t purposefully kept her plans secret from everyone affiliated with the club to keep Cameron in the dark until this very moment. “I guess it slipped under your radar, huh?” she said, just to get under his skin.

 

Cameron visibly bristled, the muscles in his jaw clenching as he considered her words. “So, what are you doing then? Leaving town? Is that what’s happening, Stella?” His tone was oddly calm, a little too calm, as if he was restraining himself from screaming at her. Honestly, Stella might have preferred that instead. At least then she would know what to expect.

 

But again, she forced herself to shrug, acting like she was entirely unbothered by his passive aggression. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I found another opportunity in town.”

 

“Where?” Cameron asked a little too quickly.

 

“In town, like I said,” Stella said, refusing to go into more detail. She had probably already given him too much information. “Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t give you more notice to find another bartender, but I’m sure the girls that hang around here at night will be happy to help serve the MC.”

 

Cameron looked away from her for a long moment, staring off into space before shaking his head slowly in disappointment. “Why are you doing this?”

 

Stella didn’t know what it was about his tone, but he sounded so sad, so despondent, like he was losing the love of his life. Maybe he was. Despite how he treated her, there had to be some part of Cameron that loved her, maybe as much as he was capable of loving anything. Even though it made her feel sick to think about, there was some part of Stella that felt bad for him, some part of her that still instinctively wanted to protect him and take care of him.

 

But she knew that was a bad road to go down. There was no way to “save” Cameron Finley. There just wasn’t any way to bring him out of the darkness and make him into a good person, no matter how hard she’d tried. Stella had spent over a decade on this man, giving him a huge chunk of her youth, and all he’d done was drag her down and make her feel small and worthless. She wasn’t going down that path. Not again.

 

So instead of pitying him, she just gave him the truth, albeit a softer version of it than she might have given if he had screamed at her like she’d expected. “Cameron, I need some space. We aren’t together anymore. It’s not fun for me to be around you. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. And I can’t help but feel like it’s not fun for you, either. Why else would you send your lackeys after me? You need to let me go, Cameron. You need to let me move on.”

 

Cameron sighed deeply and stared hard at her, an edge of ferocity lurking in his eyes that made Stella’s heart pound faster in her chest. “This is where you belong, Stella. It’s where you’ve always belonged. With the Marauders.”

 

“But I’m not even a member,” Stella shot back.

 

“Only because women can’t be members of the MC, baby, you know that,” Cameron said, waving his hand as if to physically push her protests away. “But you’ve lived and breathed it for ten years. You can’t just walk away from that.”

 

Stella was tempted to say, Oh, yeah? Watch me. But instead she bit her tongue, trying to keep her composure to make sure this interaction ended as smoothly as possible.

 

“Is it another MC? Is someone else trying to push up on our territory?” Cameron asked when she didn’t respond to his previous statement.

 

Stella shook her head. “No, you can relax. It’s just a bar. A regular old bar, like any other in the country. You don’t have to freak out about it. It only exists to make money. It’s what I need right now. There’s no place for me here. But there, I have a real chance.”

 

“A chance for what?” Cameron asked.

 

“To have a life. A real life, away from all of this,” Stella said honestly, even though her voice came out low and soft, like she was still afraid of pissing him off. At least she could hold her head up high and say that she had told him the truth.

 

Cameron’s shoulders became tense, and for a second Stella’s entire body stiffened, awaiting the explosion of rage that was sure to come from Cameron’s mouth at any second—

 

But then he just deflated, all at once, nodding slowly. “Okay. I get it. That makes sense, Stel. Good luck, all right?”

 

He turned on his heel and headed back to his desk, sitting in his chair and pulling out a sheet of paper from the huge pile on his desk, bending over to read the print of whatever document he was perusing.

 

“That’s it?” Stella asked, not believing that Cameron would just let go of her that quickly. “That’s all you’re going to say?”

 

“Yeah,” Cameron said with a half-shrug. “What else is there to say? You got to get out of here. I understand. I feel the same way sometimes. Congratulations on finding a way out.”

 

Stella struggled to come up with anything to say in response for several long moments, standing there in shock that Cameron apparently wasn’t pushing the issue any further. Finally, she mustered up the ability to mutter, “Well, thank you. Jesus, that means a lot to me, actually.”

 

“No problem,” Cameron said without looking up from his paper, tapping his fingers on the desk.

 

“I guess I’ll go find that girl you were with before and let her know that I’m finished with you,” Stella said with a light chuckle, feeling a huge weight lifted off her shoulders, like she could move unencumbered for the first time in years.

 

“Nah, don’t,” Cameron said, waving his hand dismissively. “I’m busy enough. I’ll deal with her later.”

 

“All right, well, good luck with that,” Stella said before turning on her heel and briskly walking out of his office, tearing through the bar before anybody else could call her over and trap her in this place.

 

She was free. She’d done it. The long nightmare was finally over, and for the first time in over a decade she could actually relax. As she stepped out into the fresh air, she knew that this was what people meant when they said, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” She always used to think that was a stupid platitude, but for now, she believed it. She was going to have her own life. She was going to be okay.

 

# # #

 

Cameron

 

Cameron waited for several long moments after Stella left the room, staying perfectly still, his eyes glued on the paper in front of him. When he thought he heard the distant sound of the front door slamming shut, presumably after Stella exited the building, he stood up slowly and stared down at his messy desk for a second before sending all of the papers scattering across the room. “Goddammit!” he screamed, punching his desk so hard he put a fist-sized dent in the surface, breaking open the skin of his knuckles as a result.

 

“Boss?” Miriam, the girl who’d been giving him a blowjob earlier, walked into the room with her arms crossed, clearly terrified but still curious about what was going on. “Is something wrong?”

 

“No, no, everything’s fucking perfect,” Cameron spat at her sarcastically. “Get out of my sight.”

 

Miriam quickly turned and ran out of the room, sniffling a little, probably crying like a little bitch just because he wasn’t nice to her. All these women around here were the fucking worst, always expecting him to love them and cater to them and fuck only them.

 

That was the problem with Stella, after all. If he had just kept his dick in his pants, maybe none of this would be happening, but fuck, that wasn’t really his fault, was it? He was the head of the MC. It was expected for him to fuck around with the various girls who came around here. God, Stella was such a stupid bitch. Such a thoughtless, selfish little cunt, abandoning him like this. How could she do this to me? Cameron wondered, clenching his own fists against the desk, pressing his now-bruised knuckles into the hard surface. How could she leave me, and not even for another man? For some stupid bar that doesn’t even have an MC affiliated with it….

 

Suddenly, an idea occurred to him, hitting him all at once.

 

The bar was neutral territory, according to Stella. That meant it was probably on the border between this town and its neighbor, where the Thunder Rebels reigned. What if there was some way Cameron could take control over the new bar, expanding his territory and giving him advantages over the drug trade in that area of town? Maybe he could even cut into the Thunder Rebels’ business or make them shrink up and hide, far from the border.

 

Cameron liked that idea. He liked that idea a lot.

 

He exhaled heavily, rubbing at his bloody knuckles to make the pain stop. It was okay, though. He was calm now. He knew what he was going to do. He was going to take over the new place in town, and Stella would be the key to making it all happen.