Page 106 of Reckless

I nod once because I don’t trust my voice yet. When I finally find it, it comes out barely above a whisper. “Because I knew what you’d do.”

“Sage.” My name has never sounded like that in his mouth before.

Not sharp or disappointed.

Just tired.

“They sent you a photograph of my bike.” Every word lands carefully. “They already made me a target.” I feel my heart sink before he even finishes. “The only person who didn’t know that…” his eyes hold mine, “… was me.”

The truth of it hits like a punch.

I don’t argue.

I can’t.

Because sitting here now, hearing the words out loud, I realize how desperately I’d been clinging to the version of events where I could somehow protect everyone at once.

There was never a version where that was possible.

“I was protecting you!” The words sound hollow now, even to me.

Ghost holds my gaze. “By lying to the club, and to me, to my brothers?”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. The excuse I was reaching for crumbles before I can give it a voice. “By—” I stop because there isn’t another way to say it.

Ghost doesn’t help me or soften it. He waits, patient enough to let me arrive there on my own. “I need you to say it.”

A fresh tear slides down my cheek. I don’t wipe this one away. I don’t have the energy anymore. “By lying to you.” The words come out strained. I lower my head, staring at the floor because I can’t bear to watch the hurt on his face for one more second.

“Yeah, Sage, you lied to me.” The quiet that follows is thick enough to press against my chest. He gets up from the table, crosses to the window, and I watch the line of his shoulders, the way he holds himself like a man absorbing something rather than reacting to it.

When he turns back, his voice is level, but there is something underneath it, something that costs him to keep contained. “They sent a target photograph. Men in an SUV on the highway, and they tried to put you into the asphalt at speed. They fucking shot you! They injured my brothers, Sage. And you still didn’t tell me?”

“The road was days ago. The messages have been going on for—”

“Ten weeks. Yeah, I’m fully aware,” he says it as though he’s already done the math a dozen times, turned it over until the edges are smooth. “Ten weeks where I was watching someone I care about carry something that was going to get her killed, and she wouldn’t let me stand beside her. That is what you took from me, Sage. Not information. The chance to be there!”

It hits me all at once that I’ve been preparing for the wrong argument.

I had convinced myself he’d be angry that I kept the messages from him, that he’d tear strips off me for taking the risk, for trying to handle it myself.

But sitting here now, looking into his eyes, that’s not what this is.

He isn’t hurting because I was in danger.

He’s hurting because I decided he wasn’t allowed to stand in that danger with me.

The silence stretches long enough that I feel it deep inside me.

Finally, I say, “If I’d told you, you would have—”

“Made myself a target. Yes. I am aware. You said that already, multiple times.” He pauses, and something moves behind his eyes, something raw. “And on the road last Sunday, I was a target anyway, with you on the back of my bike, because you hadn’t told me. There is no version of this where keeping me out of it kept me safe. There is only the version where I didn’t know and couldn’t protect you properly.”

I sit with that for a long time. He lets me, standing by the window with his arms folded, watching me work through it the way he watches data resolve into a pattern.

“Fuck, I was afraid, okay?” I finally snap.

He turns, finally looking at me, arms crossed. “I know.”