Kelsey kept her eyes down, shoulders curling forward like she was trying to shield herself from whatever came next.
I tilted her chin up with two fingers, gentle but insistent, until her tear-filled eyes met mine. Seeing the proof that I’d managed to hurt her yet again fucking gutted me.
“C’mon. Don’t do that,” I warned, my voice rough. “Don’t you dare shut down on me again. And don’t—” I had to swallow hard, fighting the urge to shake her until she understood. “Don’t congratulate me like I’m a fucking acquaintance you ran into at the grocery store. Not after everything we’ve been through this week.”
Her jaw tightened, and she jutted her chin up at me, that stubborn streak flaring to life. “You built something good here, Teddy. The club needs?—”
“Stop. Just fucking stop,” I bit out, and she shrank back at the heat in my voice, bringing her elbows in close to her body. I released her todrag both hands through my hair, trying to find the right words. “Yeah, I built something. And yeah, it’s good. Got brothers I’d die for, a chapter that’s thriving. And you know what? None of it means shit.”
“You don’t mean that?—”
“Yes, I fucking do. Spent the past one year and ten months feeling like half my goddamn heart got ripped out of my chest,” I snapped, forcing the words past the anvil lodged in my throat. “Walking around pretending I’m whole when really I’m just—I’m mailing it in. Every single day.”
She tried to step back, a familiar move I’d been on the receiving end of one too many times. But I wasn’t having it. Not this time. My hands found her hips, holding her firmly in place.
“No, you don’t. Been carrying it too fucking long, and you’re gonna let me get this out.” I searched her face before continuing. “Took over because I needed something to care about after I lost everything else that mattered. Needed a reason to get up in the morning.”
My grip tightened on her hips. “You think putting five hundred miles between us made a damn bit of difference? You think I just forgot about you because I’m in Colorado and you’re in Texas? Baby, I wake up every goddamn morning, reaching for you before I remember you’re not there. I cook every meal for two. At night, when I’m lying in bed, I remember how you used to press your cold ass feet against my legs to warm them up.”
“Please,” she whispered, her palms pushing weakly at my chest.
“Please what?” I released her hip to cup her cheek, needing her to understand. “Please stop telling you the truth? Please let you walk away again without a fight? Not fucking happening, baby. Not this time.”
“But it hurts too much,” she choked out. “Hearing this, knowing it doesn’t change anything?—”
“It changes everything.” I dropped my forehead to hers. “You think I decorated that rental cabin for the girls, baby? Did it because it made me feel close to you. Made me remember what it was like when we were happy.”
She hiccupped through another ragged breath, her hands coming up to grip my biceps, squeezing me tightly.
“Those ornaments we put on that tree over there—” I gestured toward the living room. “They’re us, Kels. Every Girl Scout ornament Addie made, all the glittery ones Sky brought home from school, even that weird one Levi made with Santa riding a tornado—they remind me of all the Christmases we spent together. Of you corralling the kids while I tried to get the lights on the house. Of staying up till two in the morning, putting together bikes and dollhouses. They’re a reminder that we were good once. That we had something worth fighting for.”
“We were good,” she agreed, tears flowing freely now. “But that doesn’t mean?—”
“These past few days,” I interrupted, needing her to hear what I was about to say. “Being here with you, waking up next to you, watching movies and baking cookies and doing all the normal shit we used to do—it’s the most alive I’ve felt since I signed those fucking papers.”
I pulled back just enough to look her in the eye, making sure she could see every bit of truth written across my face.
“So I’m gonna ask you again, and I need you to be honest with me, darlin’.” I gripped her face in my hands, drying her tears with my thumbs. “Do you feel it too? Or am I standing here bleeding all over your feet for nothing?”
Because everything I was, everything I’d built, everything I’d become—none of it meant a goddamn thing if she didn’t feel it too.
Outside, the morning sun climbed higher into the sky, but all I could see was her—the woman I’d loved since I was seventeen, the mother of my children, the only person who’d ever made me want to be better than I was.
“Of course I do,” she blurted, and for a second, hope flared so bright in my chest it hurt. Then she kept talking. “But it doesn’t change anything, Teddy. I live in Texas. You live here. You have a whole chapter depending on you, and I’d—I’d ruin it.”
Ruin it.
I recoiled at the statement, taking a step back to process. Like she was one of the natural disasters our son had always been so fascinated by, and not the only thing that had ever made any of it worthwhile. Somethingmust have shown on my face because she immediately tried to soften it.
“You know what I mean. You have responsibilities?—”
“No,” I said, moving back into her space before she could blink. My hands found the counter on either side of her hips, caging her against the island. “Fuck my responsibilities.”
“But you’ve worked so hard for…” she trailed off, and I leaned in close enough that she had to tilt her head back to maintain eye contact.
“For what?” I demanded. “A title? So I could prove to my old man I’m as good a leader as he was? Told you, none of it means shit without you, Kels.”
She opened her mouth, probably to argue, to tell me I was being irrational or making decisions based on emotion instead of logic. All the reasonable things that made perfect sense on paper but crumbled to dust when held up against the reality of how much I needed her.
