by L. B. Dunbar
Junior holds my shoulders as he speaks, keeping his tone strong but words soft.
“We’ve missed you, Evelyn. Missed all of you. We want our son back, and we want you home, here with us, where you belong.”
Tears I didn’t know were leaking roll down my cheeks.
I should tell them about the texted image. I should let them know I’m at the end of my rope with their son. I’ve had enough from James, but I hold my tongue and let Junior pull me into him.
“Bring him home to us. You’re the only one who can,” Junior whispers, without realizing the extent of his words. The impossibility of it because James has made a choice again.
And it’s not me.
Elaina gives me a hesitant smile as Junior presses me back, and then she steps up to hug me again. “Pillars sometimes crumble,” she says as she holds me. “And then we just build them up again.”
She has no idea, and I’m out of gravel and mortar to rebuild myself, to rebuild us.
The picture haunts me like a ghost on my phone.
Junior and Elaina step away from me, and Letty is back at my side. Her eyes scan my face reading the frailty of me. This wasn’t a good idea. I shouldn’t be here. This is one more thing James might have been right about.
It’s almost eleven, and the club is due to arrive soon. There’s a presentation of their funds, the matching contribution from the brewery, and then the shovel dig. It’s all for photo ops and the news, and then I’m out of here. My presence is like a head nod of approval for this venture, and while I think it’s a good thing, and truly an honor in Michael’s name, I don’t need to be involved in the rest of the project. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place in the late spring, possibly near Michael’s birthday in May, and I’ll have to cross that bridge when I get to it.
When I hear the rumble of motorcycle engines approaching, my stomach is in knots while my heart skips a beat. I’m so angry with James, distraught over the image and his absence, that I don’t want to look up at the paraded arrival of his friends. However, it’s so loud as they arrive with the sheriff in their lead, all heads turn to them, mine included.
I watch as they park, but my eye is instantly drawn to only one biker. The man riding beside another who looks like Sam Shepard stepping off a movie set in the 1980s.
James.
He came.
I want to be excited and relieved. If there’s only one thing I know about motorcycle clubs, it’s the position of a woman on that back seat. It makes a statement, and thankfully, his is empty despite what I’d seen in the picture shared with me. The picture he sent me off his phone.
When James left me the other night, I had a sense of where he’d go, but I would never have dreamed what he’d do. After we played out our little ice cream scene, I had a strange sense of accomplishment. Like we were going to make it as long as we were together.
From the image sent to me, I see we are not.
I don’t want to run anymore, and if this is a means of James trying to push me away again, he’s accomplished the feat.
Message received.
The bikers park, and I turn my attention to the podium. Charlie lingers, preparing to speak before allowing his beautiful new wife to do the honors of accepting large checks both in amount and paper size.
I remain by Letty, still surrounded by the Harrington family, the ones who miss me, and I’ve missed them. I can’t walk away from them again. I’ll mend my fences with them differently, separately.
Letty wraps an arm around me, and I look up at her with a weak smile. I can do this. Just a little while longer, and then I’m done.
James stands with this biker family, instead of walking to me, and it’s a statement as to where he’s stood for the last six years. He’s with them.
Charlie opens the ceremony. Janessa speaks. Justice steps up for a photo op with the club’s contribution. Giant is next with his matching funds from the brewery.
Letty gently nudges me, and I see Charlie waiting on me, holding out a hand for me to approach him. I slip out from under Letty’s hold and walk to Charlie. I feel like it’s the passing of the guard. When I near him, he guides me to where I need to stand. I’m quivering, and my hands tremble as I reach for the shovel. My body feels like it could break into a million pieces. I don’t think I have the strength to lift the garden utensil. The pomp and circumstance of this ceremony is lost on me. It’s only dirt and stone beneath my feet.
“Just drive the shovel in as best you can and then scoop a little dirt out, flip it over maybe,” Charlie explains, his voice low as he speaks to me.
I nod without looking up at him, and images rush my head.
A large pit. Shovels waiting to fill it.
My eyes blur, and I close them against the past.
An arm circles my body and covers my hand on the shovel handle.
“I’ve got you, Peach,” he says, and I stiffen under his touch.
He’s ruined me. Again and again and again, and I’ve had enough.
We lift the shovel together, awkwardly, and then drive it into soil already loosened for our ease. James leans around me, and together, we lift a small collection of dirt, flipping it over as Charlie had suggested.
“Stay right there for a photo. Just one more second.” As director of parks and recreation, Charlie’s wife pleads, but I’m done. I shake my head, and James must sense I’m finished.
“That’s enough,” he growls, keeping his arm around me and guiding me away from the small mound. Pictures flash. Hands clap. There are voices, but I don’t hear anyone.
I keep my head down and let James lead me away from the spotlight.
As we step onto the black pavement of the parking lot, it’s only then that I hear someone speak.
“Ranger, I need to talk to you,” she calls out to him, and I stop short. James stumbles next to me.
“Nope,” he barks out at her, and my head lifts. I look over at her and then at him.
“Evie, I know what you saw, and I can explain everything. I’ve been trying to call you for two days.”
I ignore what he says, speaking my own mind instead. “Is she the reason you couldn’t come to this event with me?”
“Evie, I—”
“Ranger, this is important,” she interjects over his voice, coming closer to us.
James shifts us, putting his body between her and me. His hands cover my shoulders, and he dips his knees, trying to get me to look only at him, but I only see her. Her and him. Her mouth on him. Her eye looking out at the camera, looking out at me.
“Is she the one to suck you off?” The words are bitter and filled with upset. I’m just spitting vitriol, and I shrug his hands off of me.
“What?” James chokes. “No. Ignore her. Listen to me.” He reaches for me again, but I step back. We’re making a scene, but I don’t care. We can make the biggest scene in the world, and I wouldn’t care about anything. I’m so over everything.
“James, I’m pregnant.” The words freeze my heart, and I stare at my husband, whose mouth falls open while his eyes shut.
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. It doesn’t seem true. It doesn’t seem possible. But I know what I’d seen, sent to me, by him.
“Evie, you know that’s not true,” he says, his voice not registering with me. His eyes have opened. His mouth moves, but I don’t hear him.
“What I know is I have a picture of the two of you from the other night. The same night that we . . . and I can’t believe . . .” I falter in my words. I’ve been in a cloudy bliss for two weeks, and before that, two weeks of emotional turmoil. I don’t know what to believe anymore. I wanted to think we were working toward repairing us. I wanted to think the easy chats and casual dates were bringing us closer in a new way. I wanted to think we were going to start over and be together again.
But I was wrong.
My head turns in slow motion. James is still saying something to me, but I don’t hear him. I’m only focused on getting out of here. Off
this pavement. Out of this town. My eyes land on Justice, casually leaning on his bike. I step away from James.
“Evie,” his voice strains, but I don’t turn back for him. My legs move faster, my feet work harder, and before I know it, I’m power walking to Justice, calling out to him.
“Justice,” I cry out to get his attention. His forehead furrows as I near him. “Get me out of here.”
I’ve hardly finished the words when his bike roars to life, and my leg hitches over the seat. Captured by cameras and a stunned community, I grab the edges of Justice’s vest as he guns us out of the parking lot, and I don’t look back.
+ + +
I don’t know where we’re headed, and I’m briefly worried we’ll end up at the mansion where James can easily find me. However, Justice takes his time to travel through the mountains, riding easy around curves, and slowing over hills, and eventually, I settle into the warmth of his back. It’s a little awkward to hold a strange man, but I can’t let go, and I need the mindless ride to wrap my head around what I heard.
James, I’m pregnant.
It’s on repeat, mixing with all the times I said it to him, and all the times I had to tell him I’d lost another one.
And then we lost the only one we had.
I lift a finger and tap Justice on the shoulder. “I need to stop,” I holler over the roar of the bike under us.
“Hold on,” he calls back, but this is urgent.
“No. Now. I’m going to be sick.” I need off this bike, and the second we pull to a halt, I’m struggling to get over the seat in my dress.
“Whoa, girl,” Justice says, catching my arm and trying to help me. I’m barely clear of the bike when my stomach heaves, and I bend at the waist, losing what little food I’ve eaten lately.
“Shit.” Justice groans, and the engine is cut. He’s at my back in seconds, smoothing a hand up my back as I continue to retch without anything coming up.
This can’t be happening to me.
James, I’m pregnant.
“Okay, baby girl. Settle down.” Justice’s command is intended to soothe, but I’m shaking as I try to lift my head, which throbs. “What the hell happened?”
“She’s pregnant,” I sputter, not concerned I’m sharing something private and personal between James and that woman.
The one thing I can’t give him. Six attempts. Five failed. One lived and then died. This is the one thing I can’t do for him, and he’s done it with someone else.
“Who’s pregnant?”
“The girl. The woman on James’s lap. The one he was in the picture with the other night.”
“Dammit,” Justice hisses. He pauses for a second, taking a deep exhale. “She’s not pregnant by him.”
I slowly look up at him, assuming he’s trying to protect his brother biker, but I don’t need to be coddled. I heard what I heard. And I saw what I saw.
“You’re covering for him.”
“I’d have no reason to lie, so you’re gonna listen to me. I’ve known Ranger for some time now, and while I’ve seen him struggle with his shit, there’s one thing I’m certain of, he has not dipped his wick in another woman. It’s one reason I think he’s so ornery. It’d be impossible to get a woman pregnant without having sex, but I’m thinking I don’t need to explain the birds and the bees to you, Evie.”
“How can you know?” I ask him, swallowing back the disgusting taste in my mouth. “How do you know he didn’t sleep with someone in six years? Or two nights ago?”
“He told me he didn’t.”
“Yeah, well, he told me, too, but she just announced it in the parking lot.”
“She’s a goddamn liar and a good one. Tabitha’s a hanger-on. She’s been trying to get her claws in Rusty for years, and my guess is this has something to do with him.”
I straighten, staring up at Justice. I’m not certain I can trust his word, but something tells me I shouldn’t doubt him either. He knows the men under him—the good, the bad, and the evil ones.
“I’ve got no reason to lie to you or cover for him. If I thought it was true, I’d be telling you to either accept it or cut him loose. Shit happens.”
I stare up at Justice, his deep eyes holding a wealth of stories, and I imagine not many of them decent. But he’s a good man. Somehow, I just know this about him.
“At some point, you’ve got to trust each other again, or you’ll have nothing left,” Justice warns me, and I know he’s correct. I just don’t know if it’s that simple for me.
29
The Chase Begins
[James]
This is just not happening to me. I’m staring at Tabby in disbelief that she’s just said what she said in front of my wife, knowing it’s a damn lie. On top of that, my wife just ran off and hitched herself over another man’s bike.
“I don’t have time for this,” I say, turning for my own bike and making haste to get on it. Tabby is following me, the click of her heels on the pavement behind me. I toss over my shoulder, “You know this shit is not mine.”
“It is who I say it is,” Tabby retorts, and I stop short, turning on her and pointing a finger at her. She halts with a jolt.
“You can’t do that, and you know it. I’ll even have a paternity test, but you damn well know I was never in you.” I sneer at her, disgust rolling over my skin. While she might have touched me, sitting on my lap and kissing my neck the night Evie entered Ridged Edge, I wouldn’t trust Tabby one bit near my dick, and this proves why. She’s a player, and she’s trying to play me, but it’s not going to work.
However, I was the fool who went to the clubhouse the other night after Evie asked me to attend the groundbreaking with her. I might have been drinking, wallowing in my inability to give in on this one concession with my wife, and ended up playing pool with Tabby. Justice warned me I was making a bad decision, but did I listen? I’d misplaced my phone. When I found it, I went to text Evie and noticed the image as the last text sent to her.
I knew she’d be pissed and maybe misunderstand, and I should have gone to her immediately, but it was three in the morning. She didn’t answer any of my texts or calls the next day, and I knew it was bad. I had hoped showing up at the groundbreaking would show her how I felt. I was here for her. I would do what she asked. We could do this together.
I’ve ruined things again.
I hitch my leg over my bike and bring the engine to life. Tabby stands next to me. In some ways, she reminds me of Dolores from decades past, clinging to a man who didn’t really want her. That was Rusty then and now.
“You send that picture to my wife of us?” I ask. I don’t even know when it was taken but not the other night, not any time I can remember, but it is me, and it is her, and I hate myself for the last six years. “Never mind.”
It doesn’t matter if she sent it or not. I need to find Evie and explain. I need to tell Evie it isn’t what she thinks, and then I need to stop trying to prove myself and just tell the woman I love how I feel about her.
+ + +
After I’ve checked all the places I think she might be—her rental, the pub, the clubhouse—I circle back and start again. Growing desperate, I pass our house, my parents, and eventually the cemetery, although I can’t bring myself to enter. Michael was never there for me. He’s somewhere off the ridge.
As I continue to ride, searching out my wife, I think about how this must have sounded to Evie. I can’t imagine any betrayal greater than thinking I’m fathering another child, with another woman, after I lost us ours.
My God, she’ll hate me before she knows the truth.
I consider once again what Evie’s said to me when we discuss Michael. He’s in our hearts and in our heads, but he isn’t in our home. I don’t believe in ghosts any more than Evie does, but I can’t dismiss Silver finding me. I also can’t explain the noises Evie said she heard, only to discover it’s the pup. Her mind was playing tricks on her just as mine has done. I’m not saying our son has been re-incarnated or anything
of the sort, but I believe in some kind of higher power and the spirit of the universe. It’s trying to speak to me, and I haven’t been listening.
The thought slows my ride, and I decide to check the clubhouse once more as Evie left with Justice. Maybe he brought her there and set her up in a room to settle her down. It wouldn’t be ideal, but I just need to find her.
When I arrive, the mansion is hopping with the energy of a ride and the scene Evie and I created both during the groundbreaking and after.
“Not often a man watches his wife run away with another man,” some fucker says to me, and I’m on him before I can blink. I’m looking for a fight. When I was a kid, I’d seek them out, wanting to scrap and for no reason. I had a good life, a good family, a best friend in my brother, but I still was out of sorts. Then I met Evie, and with the baby quickly on the way, I felt like I’d settled into myself. It only took me until I was thirty to do so. At forty-eight, I’m coming apart at the seams again.
I’ve gotten in a few good punches before I’m dragged off the dude and hauled to the staircase.
“Get up there,” Justice yells behind me, pushing me forward. I catch myself on the steps and press off them, standing to my full height and spin to face him.
“Is she upstairs?”
“I’m not telling you a damn thing until you settle down.”
“Is she up there?” I repeat, leaning toward him although he’s larger than me. Justice and Giant would be strong competition in a who’s larger contest, but I’d be taking some licks if I went off against him.
“No. Now, chill.”
“Chill? What am I, five?”
“You’re fucking acting like it.”
“I need to find my wife.”
“What you need is to give her some space.”
I huff. He’s got to be kidding me. We’ve had six years of space between us, and it hits me. I’ve said the same thing to her. We needed time, but we’ve already had so much time between us. We need time together. We need to stop dating and start living with one another.
