“I should’ve seen it the first night,” I admitted, tracing a fingernail with the edge of my thumb. “When you showed up at the cabin expecting the girls. But I think I was too busy being mortified about the whole situation to really notice. And I guess I always assumed…”
I trailed off, unsure how to finish my sentence without revealing exactly how pathetic I’d been. How I’d been clinging to the fantasy that he was still adrift, still figuring things out, still possibly open to coming back to Texas. To me.
“Assumed what?” he asked quietly.
“I thought—” I stopped, swallowing hard against the lump forming in my throat. “When Addie mentioned you were in Colorado, I thought you were just helping out the chapter. I thought it was temporary.”
“And now?”
“Now I know it’s not temporary.” The words came out barely above a whisper. “You’re not just passing through. You’re… you’re president,” I said finally, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. “That’s not exactly a position you can just walk away from.”
“No,” he agreed, his tone carefully neutral. “It ain’t.”
“That’s good, though,” I heard myself saying, the words automatic, rehearsed. The same voice I’d used when the girls had gotten into their first-choice colleges, and I’d been dying at the thought of them leaving. “You always wanted to follow in Wolverine’s footsteps. Run your own chapter.”
“Don’t do that.” His hand came up like he was going to touch my face, then dropped. “Don’t go all fucking polite on me now.”
“What? I can’t be supportive? I can’t tell you that you deserve a fresh start somewhere that doesn’t—” I mashed my lips together, trying to mask the sudden quiver.
“Somewhere that doesn’t what?” His eyes searched mine, looking for something I wasn’t sure I could give him.
“Somewhere that doesn’t remind you of everything we lost,” I whispered.
Teddy rubbed the back of his neck like he was about to say something terrible and probably necessary and wanted to avoid it. “That what you think this is? That I chose Colorado over you? That I left to get away from everything we had in Texas?”
“Isn’t it?” I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the flannel and the fire crackling behind me.
“Hell no.” He stepped closer, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact. “Colorado chapter was damn near wiped out after that shit with the Sons of Death MC, remember?”
I nodded. How could I forget a war that had lasted almost two decades? A war that had put a target on not just the back of every SPMC biker, but family members as well. The Sons of Death had ruthlessly gunned down Ol’ Ladies and children in their front yards, decimating entire clubs before moving onto the next like a fucking plague.
I’d homeschooled the kids for over a year, sick to my stomach every time the phone rang. Had every club in the country not banded together in the eleventh hour, Teddy and his entire family would have been wiped out.
“Bear and I made a few runs up here, helping them rebuild. Liked the mountains. Liked the club. Irish—the pres at the time—offered me a spot right after…” He trailed off, but I could fill in the blanks.
Right after everything went to hell.
“Thought—Christ, Kels, I thought maybe we could start over here. Away from the house, from the memories, from everything that hurt too much to look at. Came out here to get things ready. Was gonna surprise you with it, this whole new life where we could be different. Where we could heal.”
“But I asked for a divorce before you could tell me.”
“Yeah.” His voice was rough, like the word was being dragged across gravel. “After that, went nomad for a while. Couldn’t settle anywhere. Kept riding, hoping maybe if I went far enough, fast enough, I could outrun it all.”
But you couldn’t outrun grief. I had the gym membership to prove it.
“Irish didn’t give up easily. Chapter needed stability, needed someone who understood both the old ways and the new direction the MC was heading when he decided to step down. So I came back. Took over. Built something here because...” He paused, his Adam’s apple bobbing in a hard swallow. “Because there was nothing left for me in Texas.”
Nothing left. The words cut deep, even though I knew he didn’t mean them the way they sounded. He meant the house, the town, the life we’d built. Not me. At least, I hoped that was what he meant.
My phone buzzed again on the counter, and I snatched it up, desperate for the distraction.
Addie
Will you please tell us what’s going on?
Did you have a fight?
Sky
