Page 60 of Road to Absolution

CHAPTER 13

For the Best

DELILAH

Leaving Maverick behind… I had finally crossed an invisible line that I wouldn’t soon forget. On the other side of that line, my body gave up. It surrendered to my broken heart and crumbled under the pressure. No water. No food. Nothing but Maverick would bring it back.

Sitting behind Tucker, who was in the driver seat of his black race car, my head stayed up against the window. The streetlights of the night glowed against my drained face. The only sound I heard was the haunting roar of all the motorcycles escorting us to the clubhouse as if the queen of MC was making quite the entrance.

A statement. That was the point. Diesel was claiming his new wolf… and that wolf’s Old Lady. And the unborn in her stomach.

How is this happening?

It’s terrible, I know, but I actually wondered if I could have avoided all this had Kenny truly died that fateful night.

Fateful. No word had been truer. My fate was spiraling…

Only days before my husband’s accident—attempted murder, I had moved into a dream home that I never believed would be mine. The house wasn’t extravagant. It was who and what was inside that was truly magnificent. All I had been through with my mom and Kenny, I had survived. Now I was living every little girl’s dream.

Only for it all to drop out from under my swollen feet.

Maverick, consumed with trying to get out of that hospital in one piece, never asked where I had been that morning. My OBGYN had officially put me on bed rest, no matter how many tears I shed, begging her not to restrict me to a bed.

I had a man to tend to.

Yes, when I was to arrive at the clubhouse, like a queen on fire, I was to get in a bed… and stay there until my little girl was born.

How is this happening?

I didn’t need to see Tuck’s hand when it reached back for me, tapping my knee, waiting. His long arm made it possible to hold his hand in my lap, not having to move from the window holding me up.

Dust from the long dirt road that was on the Redemption Ryder’s acres and acres of property floated up into the glow of all the headlights of our caravan.

As the tall barbed wired gates that surrounded the expansive compound rolled open, so many memories blew through my broken heart, reminding it of how it broke in the first place.

Kenny. Art.

Ryders had rallied around me after Kenny died—

My eyes slid shut. They knew the truth. He was alive the whole time.

I was now being forced to live with these men who knew more about my life than I did.

As Tuck’s wheels spun over the gravel, I had to make the decision to forgive them all or I was going to lose my mind. I couldn’t afford that shut-down since my body was already falling apart.

Bikes veered off into delegated parking spots as the gates rolled shut behind us, literally sealing my fate.

Overly exhausted, I didn’t move when Tuck turned off his engine. Nor did I move when the passenger door opened. That was more of a fall, my body following the door.

Scooped into a set of arms, I stared at the night sky, wondering if Maverick was okay. There were stars, so unlike the bigger city I left behind, along with the love of my life.

Too far. I was too far from him.

And too close to… “Hi, Art.”

His boots crunched on the gravel. “Hey, babe.”

In a catatonic state, my eyes stayed locked above me. As I watched us pass through the main doorway, I asked, “You okay?”