by Drew Elyse
“Spill. How’d it go?”
“He won’t sign.”
Silence. It was a rare reaction from Max. In the years we’d been friends, I’d heard her blabber crazy reactions to things that could stun an entire room of people mute.
Just to drive things forward—since I knew a big reaction was coming if it was taking that long to build—I semi-repeated, “He said he won’t give me a divorce.”
“Did you guys have sex?” she half-shrieked.
I huffed out a sigh as I collapsed back onto the bed. “No.”
“You wanted to, though. Oh my god. I didn't think my little Quinny had it in her,” Max marshaled on like my complete lack of judgement deserved praise instead of the come-to-Jesus pep talk I knew I should have been getting.
“It was a bad idea. A really bad idea. I stopped it and made him leave.”
There went the silence again. It seemed I was on a roll.
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait. You mean you almost had sex with him tonight?”
“Yes.”
She wolf-whistled down the line while I rolled my eyes. “Damn. I mean, I expected a backslide, but I thought it might take you at least a couple days.”
Was she serious?
Before I could ask her just that, she kept right on talking. “Don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen the man. I’m not judging. I’d have jumped his bones so freaking fast—”
And that was where I cut her off.
“Stop!”
“Oh, yeah, right. He’s your husband and all.”
The universe was just using me to get a laugh. That had to be it.
“He’s not my husband, not really,” I insisted.
“If he doesn’t sign, he’s still your husband.”
I stared at the ceiling, or at the darkness where I knew the ceiling was. The TV had shut off, so there was only a bit of light shifting in through the curtains. Max didn’t push for a while. In fact, she decided to give me exactly what I needed for a while.
“Since you’re obviously not prepared to face that yet, let me tell you about this serious whack-job that came in today. So, this bitch…”
She continued to tell the story about some woman who had her remake the “cappuccino with extra milk” she ordered twice before Max realized the woman actually wanted a latte. The woman then proceeded to insist on speaking to the manager about the “utter disrespect” when Max suggested that might be what she was looking for.
I heard all this, but it barely penetrated.
“That’s my story. Now, are we returning to our regularly scheduled programming?”
“I shouldn’t have come here,” I finally said.
“Why?”
“At least he left me alone before I came here. Now, I’m no closer to getting the marriage severed, and he’s suddenly all…all…” I couldn’t land on a word that worked.
“Sexy?” Max offered, ever so unhelpful.
For whatever reason, I snapped. “He said I’m his! Well, I’m not. I was. I was his from the minute he smiled at me, like a stupid little girl. I was so his, we got married after knowing each other two weeks. Two weeks, Max. Who does that? Idiots, that’s who. But we were idiots together, or at least I thought we were. Then, he left. He did that, and I was still his. He could have walked back through the door any time he wanted for more than a year and I would have welcomed him with open arms. I didn’t even change the freaking locks.”
I took a quick gasp of a breath before charging ahead. “Now, two years later? I’m not his. Yet, I’m still just as stupid. I didn’t make him get out. I told him he could stay, but I was going to bed. It doesn’t even make sense. Why would I say that? Oh, right, because I’m an idiot. He makes me an idiot!”
My throat started burning, forcing me to cut off my rant. That was a lovely addition to the headache he’d already caused. Oh, and let’s not forget the ache that hadn’t fully faded from me pushing him away when I was about to come.
“What did you want out of seeing him?” Max asked, her level voice feeling dissonant against the harsh intensity of my emotions.
“A divorce,” I replied succinctly.
“Are you sure? That was the only positive outcome you could envision from driving out there?” she pressed.
I’d never mentioned any of those ridiculous fantasies of Jack and I starting over with Max, but it didn’t surprise me that she’d seen through me. Still, after the day I’d had, I wasn’t even going to accept the very existence of those thoughts.
“Yes.”
“Quinny…” she sighed.
The fire was gone when I dealt her the blow that had shattered any ridiculous daydreams I’d held onto. “He was shot. I don’t know how, I don’t even know when. A few months ago, I guess. He’s mostly healed now, but he was in the hospital with a gunshot wound and he didn’t even call me. I hit it when I shoved his shoulder. His left shoulder. Who knows how close it was to hitting his heart? He could have died, and I didn’t factor.”
That burn in my throat felt like a roaring flame by the time I finished. “There’s nothing he could give me now but an end to this train wreck.”
“Shit,” Max breathed.
That about summed it up.
“He wants to meet tomorrow,” I relayed. “I don’t know if I should. He’s already made it clear he’s not giving me what I want, so what’s the point?”
“What’s the alternative? You come home and just stay married to him forever?” she pointed out.
You try to leave town, I’ll follow you.
Clearly, there was no alternative.
“I’m just…” I sighed for what felt like the millionth time that day. “I’m going to bed.”
I could fix almost nothing about this situation, but I could do something about how exhausted I was.
“Alright,” Max said, but felt the need to add one more thing before she let me go. “I know it sucks right now, but you need this.”
Closure. Right. The goal was a divorce and closure.
I just needed to keep that in mind when Jack was close and fogging up my head.
When we hung up, despite my frustration with Jack and the flashbacks to his kiss, it didn’t take me long to fall into a much needed sleep.
I took a drag from my cigarette. It would be my last.
Actually, my last had been about two fucking hours before I’d taken two bullets to the chest. Recovering from that had put an end to smoking.
Until right then.
The way my chest was burning from the couple pulls I’d taken, it was clear I was done with the habit forever. I was about to snub the thing out when the door opened a couple feet away from me.
“Smoking, Ace? Really?” Ember sassed.
I looked up to watch her come my way. In the perimeter lights on the clubhouse, I could see she was freshly fucked, even if I wouldn’t say a thing about it. If I looked her over, I assumed I’d see more evidence to that fact—like marks on her wrists from how her and Jager liked things—but I wasn’t going to look.
I thought about taking another drag just because she was gearing up to hand me shit about the smoke, but I put it out.
“You can spare me the lecture. It wasn’t doing the trick anyway,” I told her as she sat beside me.
“Fine, consider the lecture spared. Now, do you want to talk or should I start asking?”
I should have guessed she’d find me once I got back to the clubhouse. In the time since Ember had been around the club, she’d somehow inserted herself into my life. If she truly could have had her way, she probably would have been at the hotel with me.
“How long do you have before he comes out here and drags you back to bed?” I asked.
She laughed. “Jager knows what I’m doing. He’ll give me time.”
I let that hang while I figured out what there even was to say about this shit. In the distance, around back of the building, the party was still at hand. The music was nothing but the thump of the bass where we were, but it was loud eno
ugh for us to feel the vibration.
“She wants a divorce,” I finally settled on.
“Are you going to give it to her?”
“No fucking way.”
Ember nodded, a hint of a smirk on her face before it faded. She didn’t tell me it was going to be close to impossible to repair the damage I’d done to my marriage. That was pretty fucking obvious.
Instead, she said, “She’s still in love with you.”
I’d been telling myself that had to be true—I sure as hell wasn’t ready to accept anything else—but it surprised me to hear it.
“What?”
“It was her expression right after she hit you. When you first reacted to the pain. I recognized that panic on her face. It was exactly how I felt when Jager was taken.”
Those words surprised me too. A few weeks back, Jager was kidnapped during club business. I knew it cost her to go back to those hours when we had no idea if he was going to make it, but she did it for me. If I’d known she was going to take herself there, I would have stopped this before it started.
I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Go inside, babe.”
“What?”
“I know what I’m facing. Doesn’t make this shit any easier, but I know where I stand. There’s not a thing you sitting out here opening wounds is going to do to make my mistakes disappear. Go be with your man,” I insisted.
“I can—”
“I know,” I cut her off before she could assure me she’d sit out there with my sorry ass all night. “But there’s nothing to be done until I see her again tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Ember asked, her doubt bleeding through her tone. She thought I was just blowing smoke.
“Tomorrow,” I answered.
That got me a full grin that held up. “Well, alright then.”
She got to her feet and went in.
I stayed outside a few minutes more, talking myself down from going back to that hotel, even if Quinn wouldn’t let me in her room.
Tomorrow. I would get my chance tomorrow.
I was at Nancy’s by two. If Quinn got there early, I wasn’t letting her get away with sneaking off before seeing me. There was still a chance she wouldn’t come at all, but I’d deal with that if it came to it.
A waitress filled my mug with coffee, then left me to it when I told her I was waiting for someone.
Then, I waited.
And waited.
And fucking waited.
The first ten minutes, half hour, even the first full hour were slow, but I’d been planning on the wait. After that, the frustration shifted to anger as each minute ticked by. Quinn wasn’t late to things. She’d rather show half an hour early than walk in five minutes late—even to casual shit where late meant nothing. With patience born of knowing I was an asshole who had bought this shit, I forced myself to stay in that booth for half an hour after she should have been there.
Then, all fucking bets were off.
I threw some cash down on the table, my tab and a solid tip for wasting the waitress’s time. Without waiting for her to make the rounds again, I got my ass out and on my bike, headed straight to Quinn’s hotel.
It was a short ride, which was good. Any longer, I only would have worked myself up more. As it were, Quinn had better have been in her room avoiding me and not in her car on the way back to Eugene.
When I pulled into the lot, I did a quick scan of the parked cars. It took a minute to locate hers. The silver sedan didn’t stand out, but she had a couple decals on her back window, one she’d had even back in the day. It was a spaceship with the words “You can’t take the sky from me” around it. Whatever it was a reference to was long since lost on me, but I recognized the image. That was definitely my girl’s car.
She hadn’t left. Odds were, she thought she could stay in that room and keep me out. She thought wrong.
The night before, she hadn’t pressed about how I’d found her room. She didn’t know I’d gotten the number from the kid at the front desk. He’d hesitated, but it hadn’t taken much to talk him around when I showed him my ID with the same last name.
If I hadn’t been so determined to get to her, I’d have given the guy shit about handing over that information without calling up to her room at least. I mean, I was a fuckin’ biker. Stereotypes associated with that might have pissed me off sometimes, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist. Hell, just being a man and her being a female alone in that room should have been enough.
But I wasn’t exactly in a place to be doling out that lesson when I’d needed him to get me in. And get me in, he did. He hadn’t just provided a room number when I told him I’d rode separately from my wife and she wasn’t answering her phone—adding in a bullshit line about how she’d probably gotten in the shower. He’d done one better and handed over a keycard.
Having to pull the same shit some freak stalker would to get access to my wife felt disgusting, but it was what I had to do now.
Giving Quinn the benefit of the doubt, I knocked when I made it up to her room. There wasn’t even a sound from inside. No water running. No TV on. No shuffling sounds of Quinn coming to check the peephole, then choosing to ignore my knocking. I rapped on the door again, louder even though I was damn certain it had been loud enough to reach the whole of her little room.
Nothing.
Fuck it.
I got the keycard out and let myself in, done with this game.
Only, when I stepped inside, I realized it wasn’t a game at all.
In the middle of the bed, the blankets were bunched into a big lump. There was no response to the sound of me entering or the door shutting behind me. Instead, after a second, I was greeted by a weak, rasping cough. As I moved to the bedside, I noticed a tremor from the pile of covers.
Fuck.
Pulling down the top of the blankets, I found my Quinn. Her skin was pale and clammy. There was a flush adding color to parts of her tense face, but it was only more discomforting. She didn’t open her eyes when I pulled the blankets away from her face. No, the only reaction she gave was to clutch them even tighter around her body. I reached out to lay the back of my hand across her forehead and bit out a curse at the singe of heat it met.
“Quinn?” I tried to call her attention. I didn’t get it. “Fuck.”
She was hot, hot enough I worried it was more than just a standard fever.
“Little bird?” I shook her just a bit and her eyes finally blinked open.
Everything seemed to halt.
It wasn’t the misery and exhaustion in those eyes that made me stop—it was the fact that they were completely different fucking colors.
Colors. Plural.
Gone was the deep brown I’d known. Looking up at me beneath heavy lids were irises of grey blue and a brown so light, it was almost the color of honey.
It shocked the shit out of me to see the difference in a face I thought I knew so well, but that didn’t change how fucking beautiful both eyes were.
She’d been hiding that beauty, popping in contacts to mask it away. I’d thought she was fucking stunning from the start. Maybe she thought hiding that odd trait looked better, but she was dead fucking wrong. Those eyes—her real eyes—were the most gorgeous things I’d ever seen.
I lost that beauty when she gave another ragged cough.
Fuck, focus.
I couldn’t do anything for her there in her hotel room. I didn’t have a thermometer. I had no medicine to give her. I was fucking useless.
“We need to get you out of here, babe,” I told her on the chance she was tracking anything I said. “Gotta take you home where we can get you better.”
She didn’t give me any indication she heard a damn word. She did, however, react when I tried to pull the blankets off. The cry she gave was like a wounded animal, her hands shooting out haphazardly to grab the fabric again.
Fuck it.
I shifted the covers back over her and released a breath as she settled some, though she was
tense as she gripped them like a fucking lifeline. Stepping away, I found her keys discarded on the nightstand before I picked her up, mass of blankets and all, and made my way to her car. If anyone wanted to stop me from walking out of the hotel with all the bedding wrapped around her, they could damn well fucking try.
Quick as I could while keeping her steady, I got us out of the building and settled her into the backseat of her car. My bike would have to hang until I could get one of the brothers to pick it up for me.
Whatever. That shit didn’t matter.
My sick wife fucking mattered.
As I got us on the road, I fished out my phone and made a call. When the ringing stopped sounding from the speaker, I spoke right away. “I need your help.”
It took twenty minutes to get to the club’s farmhouse at the edge of town. I’d thought about changing direction and taking Quinn to the hospital instead at least once every minute, but talked myself down. If there wasn’t a real emergency, she’d just be forced to sit in a waiting room for fuck knows how long. At least I could get her comfortable until I knew whether she needed help.
The house was situated on sixty acres, and it was fair game to the brothers. One or half a dozen of the guys might have been living there at any time. We all had rooms at the clubhouse, but there was no fucking quiet around there. At the moment, it was me, Daz, and Stone—the club president. Though, both of the brothers crashed at the clubhouse more often than not. As we pulled up, their bikes weren’t out front.
Being careful as I got her out of the car and up the stairs still ensconced in her blanket cocoon, I settled Quinn in my bed. She curled herself up tight, still shivering. I had no fucking clue if it was the exact wrong thing to get her another blanket, but I did—anything to stop her from shaking like that.
Those mismatched eyes of hers blinked open and focused on me. “Jack?” she rasped. The sound of her rough voice made me cringe at the same time she flinched from the pain.
I didn’t want to make her speak again, but I had to ask. “I’ve got medicine coming, baby. Do you need anything now?”
She scrunched up her face, and it would have been fucking cute if I didn’t know it was because she knew talking would hurt. “Water.”
