That surprised me. I sank down onto the window seat, legs suddenly unsteady. “What?”
“If something’s wrong, you tell me. You don’t just pack up and leave. You fight with me, yell at me if you need to, but you tell me how I fucked up so I can apologize and fix it.” Another pause. “And you let me love you the way you deserve. Which means accepting that sometimes I’m going to want to do things for you—not because you need me to, but because making you happy makes me happy.”
My throat tightened. Tears pricked my eyes, blurring the morning light. “I can do that.”
“Then I’m all in, Indira. Completely, exclusively yours.”
“I still love you,” I said, and the words came out steady, sure. No fear in them. Just truth.
“I love you too.” His voice cracked. “More than I knew it was possible to love anyone.”
After we hung up, I stayed at the window, the phone warm in my hand, watching the sun climb higher. I’d taken a risk. Given him a second chance that could still shatter everything I’d rebuilt.
Time would tell which one it would be.
Chapter 22
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— Dutch —
Saturday afternoon at Murphy’s Hardware shouldn’t have been a minefield, but apparently nowhere in Millfield was safe from my past anymore.
I was loading lumber into my truck bed, working on some repairs to my back deck, when I heard the familiar sound of Crystal’s laugh from across the parking lot. She was leaning against a beat-up Camaro, smoking a cigarette and talking to two other women I recognized from various club parties over the years.
I focused on securing the load. With any luck, I could be gone before she noticed me.
No such luck.
“Well, well. Speak of the devil and he shall appear.”
I turned to find Crystal sauntering over, her bleached blonde hair catching the afternoon sun. She was wearing the kind of outfit that left nothing to the imagination—cropped tank top, tiny shorts, makeup applied with a trowel. The kind of woman I’d once found irresistible and now just found pathetic.
I’d barely seen her since that day in my office. After Indira left, I’d made it explicitly clear to Crystal, the other club girls, and my brothers that I was done with meaningless sex. No more easy fucks. No more warm bodies to fill the emptiness. She still came around the clubhouse—still fucked some of my brothers, from what I’d heard—but I didn’t give a shit about that. Shecould do whatever she wanted, as long as she knew her place. And she did. Every time she’d spotted me at the clubhouse over the past year, I’d given her a hard stare that sent her scurrying in the opposite direction as fast as her cheap heels could carry her.
Apparently, catching me alone in a parking lot had made her bold again.
“Crystal.” I nodded curtly and went back to my lumber.
“Heard your little girlfriend moved back to town,” she said, moving closer. “Brave of her, considering.”
I straightened up, my jaw tightening. “Considering what?”
“Considering how things ended between you two. Must be hard, knowing she walked in on us.” Her smile was all teeth and malice. “Remember that evening, Dutch? You had me on your desk, my legs wrapped around you, fucking me so hard the whole thing was shaking. And then little miss perfect just walked right in.” She laughed, a cruel sound. “The look on her face when she saw us...” She laughed, a cruel sound. “God, that was priceless.”
My blood turned to ice. The worst day of my life was burned into my memory. Indira’s face in the doorway the devastation in her eyes as she watched me destroy everything we’d built.
“That was a mistake,” I said firmly.
“Was it? You seemed pretty into it. Kept telling me how good it felt—”
“Crystal, stop.”
But she was enjoying this too much to quit. “Wonder what it was like for your precious Indira? Standing there watching the man she loved balls-deep in someone else?”
“Excuse me.”
I turned to see Indira walking across the parking lot, carrying a bag from the craft store next door. She looked beautiful in dark jeans and a white blouse.
