I didn’t quite think this was accurate to say, but in a wild fucking way, it was almost like Hailey was choosing us over her job. Itwasaccurate to say she was choosing her ethics and sense of honesty over her job, but the fact that included us? Fucking wild.
“Yep.”
“You’re goddamn fucking crazy, and I love it,” I said with a smirk. “You may not be shooting at an enemy or talking shit to a man three times your size, but you got some balls in your own way.”
Hailey laughed, her head tossing back and her hair flowing free. She looked fucking great.
“Oh, well, thanks, I suppose. What did you want to show me?”
Oh, right. That.
I drew in a breath. Everyone who knew me, myself included, would think this was terrible. Sonny would take some time to forgive me. I feared I’d regret it as soon as I did it.
But…
Hailey had shown herself to be real. Not fake. Which meant what we had was real.
Which meant if I wanted it to continue being real, I, too, had to show I had balls, but not the battle-hardened kind.
The fucking vulnerable kind.
“Come,” I said without another word.
I got to the top of the stairs, walked down the hall, and came to my bedroom door. It was slightly ajar from when I’d last been in there. The room hadn’t been made, but I didn’t give two shits about that.
“What’s—”
“Do me a favor and don’t talk while you’re in here,” I said. “I’ll explain everything you need to know.”
But even then, I didn’t yet open the door. Showing myself to this…well, not journalist anymore, but still, this girl. I may have cared about her, but she was someone else. She wasn’t Tamara.
But would I really want her to be? Would it make any sense for me to ask her to be Tamara when she could just be Hailey?
With a quiet snort, I pressed open the door. I decided to rip the Band-Aid right off the wound and took Hailey to the family photo of me, Tamara, and Sonny—the last photo where Tamara was healthy.
“I was once married,” I said, my voice cold and detached—it had to be to avoid looking weak. “For about a decade, in fact. Her name was Tamara, and we loved each other. She was Sonny’s mother. We met in our youth, started as friends, and eventually married. She, more than any other woman I have ever met, understood the biker culture.”
And that’s it.
That’s why I’m opening up to Hailey. Her report showed she kind of understands it too. Not the same, but close.
“And for years and years, I was in a good place. And then she got cancer.”
I still remained detached. But I could feel the emotions swelling.
“Some people, when their significant others die, are driven by some emotion. Revenge. Anger. Bitterness. Sadness. Grief. Me? I wasn’t driven so much as I just slammed the brakes on the car and pulled the parking gear as fucking high up as it would go. I had everything I needed for the good life. My club, my son, and my lifestyle. I didn’t need anything else.”
Until…
“And so for the last decade or so, I’ve lived that way. We do our thing in Phoenix, no one bothers us, and we go on. I keep hoping Sonny finds someone, but I know he’s too young to be thinking of love. Kid can barely grow a beard.”
I laughed. That wasn’t true at all. He could grow one with the best of them. I just liked ripping on the boy to remind him who he was every now and then.
But the laugh quickly went silent when my eyes went back to the photo.
“Because I didn’t do much of anything with my life, I sure as hell didn’t bother looking for love. I’d had it once in my life, and it was one of the greatest joys I’d ever had. But it was also one of the most excruciatingly painful things in the world to lose her. Some people have told me that because her death, once the diagnosis came, was in sight, I was able to say goodbye, but I don’t know. I sometimes think the people who had no choice but to wake up one day and just accept that their lover was gone…”
For the first time since we entered the room, my words trailed off. I didn’t “choke up,” but I sure stopped myself from speaking to the point where that would have become possible. Hailey looked up at me. Her eyes were watery.
