by Nikki Wild
I couldn’t believe that Sarah was still clinging to this doomed notion in her head. Her father and I were bitter enemies and always had been. How could she possibly think this was going to work?
Didn’t she care how much this hurt?
How bad of a position she put me in?
It went without saying that her sex drive had basically disappeared. The tension hung in the air between us as the days started rolling past, like tumbleweeds caught on a stiff breeze.
We had fallen into a routine of acting our parts, neither of us willing to compromise on this wedge between us that was starting to grow…
Despite the emotional distance, Sarah and I never once stopped caring for one another.
I still cooked her breakfast; I still massaged her feet and tended to her needs. At her request, I’d rush out the door to satisfy whatever fleeting food cravings she expressed.
For her part, Sarah rubbed my shoulders when I was stressed over club activities, without me ever having to ask. When we silently lay in bed together at night, neither of us willing to start a fight with the other, she still ran her fingertips endearingly along her favorite muscles in my strong build. Sarah never challenged me in front of the others, nor caused any trouble.
But I could see how the others looked at us. My club brothers had begun averting their eyes as either of us walked past. They were increasingly awkward when Sarah and I wound up in a room at the same time, politely ignoring one another. The discomfort was painted on their faces; no matter how hard they might try, my men could hide nothing from me.
None of them dared to say it.
But they knew that something was wrong.
One day came, at least a week after our bitter little confrontation, when someone finally tugged at the jagged edge of our quiet, stubborn tension. It wasn’t exactly a shocker who wound up being the one to break the silence…
Sarah and I had our backs to each other in the main bar area. She was sitting at a high top table and taking a rest as I sat at the counter, going over some club documents and checklists.
Grizz was leaning nearby.
I didn’t even have to look up to feel the weight of his attention. When silently ignoring his gaze finally became too much to bear, I looked up.
“You can speak, you know.”
His eyes shifted from me to Sarah.
“I am merely watching.”
Grizz was starting to piss me off. For the first time in distant memory, I didn’t have the patience for that stoic, expressionless mask of a face.
“Watching what, Grizz?”
My quiet, right-hand man silently adjusted his relaxed lean against the support beam. He was such a usually peaceful man that I was surprised to see mounting discontent in his eyes.
“This is wrong, and you both know it.”
I sighed.
Briefly giving up on my work, I stood up from my stool in mounting irritation. Out of the corner of my eye, I faintly noticed Sarah shifting in her seat towards him; she looked just as displeased.
“Fine, Grizz,” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You have my attention. Make it good.”
“Do you really want my advice?”
“I know that I always value and respect your opinion,” I told him, crossing my arms. “You’ve got something to say? Just say it.”
Grizz looked me firmly in the eyes.
Then he turned to Sarah.
“You two are being deeply foolish.”
The handful of club members in there with us cleared out in a goddamn heartbeat, not wanting to be present for whatever came next.
Partly, I was stunned. He hadn’t hesitated to call me out on shit before, but this was the first time, in the many years we’d known each other, that I’d ever heard him describe me that way.
Sarah merely turned away, annoyed.
I scratched the back of my neck.
“Foolish, huh?”
Grizz nodded once. “Bordering on naïve.”
Anyone else, and I’d have probably flown off the handle for the blatant disrespect. But I knew Grizz like he was my own flesh-and-blood. There was no way he’d try to stir me up unless he had a rock-solid reason.
I looked back at Sarah and she turned to me. She and I shared an expressionless glance.
“Alright,” I grunted, turning back to him. “Fill me in, then. Help me see what you see, because clearly I’m fucking missing something here.”
Grizz smiled approvingly.
“I thought perhaps you might react poorly.”
“Go on with it,” Sarah impatiently demanded.
It was nice for us to finally agree again.
My unspoken vice president paused, choosing his words. It was one of my favorite qualities about him – beyond reliable and highly loyal, he was one of the few people I’d met who always thought before they spoke.
It made me listen every time he did.
“Whatever is going on with the two of you, is between the two of you,” he replied calmly. “Yet, I cannot idly stand by and watch you both unravel everything you’ve spent so long rebuilding.”
“We aren’t unraveling anything,” I insisted.
Grizz ignored that, seemingly unconvinced.
“Hunter, Sarah…”
His pale, collected eyes blinked between us.
“I consider the pair of you my dearest, most beloved friends in this world. I’ve seen firsthand how you are both so much better together than you are apart. There is no reason for this strife; we face no threats or looming dangers. Yet, so much of your time since the reunion has been built upon wanton disaster, lurching from one outside catastrophe to another. It makes me truly wonder if you require chaos to function together now.”
That struck home. I averted my gaze.
Grizz waited, but neither of us spoke.
With a heavy sigh, I was the first to look to the other. After a few seconds, Sarah finally lifted her gaze. She quietly watched me with saddened eyes, and I gave her a despondent smile.
Something quietly passed between our eyes.
Knowing our powerfully intuitive friend, I don’t think either of us would have been remotely surprised if he’d admitted to physically seeing whatever our pained souls told one another.
That amusing suspicion was given weight by the fact that Grizz immediately continued sharing his thoughts without another second’s hesitation.
“It pains me to say this, but it must be made clear: you have both proven to each other that, no matter the risk or the disagreement, your love for one another forces you to stay aligned under pressure. You can fight, and you can try to turn your backs on each other, but your bond is so strong that you always force it to somehow work. This is a rare strength, one that I feel is rarely tested in others, but you are far more complicated people, leading far more complicated lives...”
My fiancée and I smiled.
He wasn’t wrong, and we knew it.
“But that strength is with the imminent threat of untold danger, to yourselves, to the rest of us, and to innocent lives. That excuse is gone. Now we see what happens when there is no crisis to avert and no criminal to fight.”
His gaze hardened.
“My advice is this: if you two cannot make your relationship work in an era of peace, then there is inevitable doom on the horizon.”
The words hit me like a goddamn train.
Sarah was the first to respond, saying exactly what I was thinking.
“You think we thrive only when threatened.”
“I know you thrive only when threatened,” he responded with cooled conviction. “The trial that you face now is to learn how to blossom without a battle to ride into.”
He pulled away from the beam.
“I have work to do,” he told us dismissively. “Reflect on what I’ve said. Figure out whatever this problem is, and move on.”
He cast one last look our way.
“You’re both better than this.”
Then he left the two of u
s alone in the bar, distantly looking at each other. Between us hung the unspoken frays of our relationship, ripping further apart by the day…
Five
Hunter
The talk wasn’t immediate. I was frustrated and needed some time to dwell on his words.
“I’m going on a ride,” I told her calmly. It pained me to realize that this was the first time either of us had spoken to each other today.
Sarah looked at me thoughtfully.
Her head nodded. “I know. Be safe.”
“I will. Do you need anything?”
“Nah.” Her smile was faint but not defeated.
This time, I was only gone an hour.
Everything he’d said made sense, and I feared that he was right. But Sarah had chosen to put her foot down on the one major crux in my past.
I hadn’t even consulted the others about this yet: partly out of my own, personal conviction, but partly out of concern. For a few of the older club members, just being open to this could be a defining crossroads.
After all, Sarah’s father had forever changed the trajectory of the club. With his actions, they had lost some of their own, and that was the kind of lingering wound that time didn’t always heal.
It was a choice I was supposed to shield them from, to make so they didn’t have to.
But after everything Grizz had said, it made me wonder what was really important. I’d always told Sarah that I would move mountains for her.
But what happens now, now that she’s pointed at the goddamn mountain on which my entire fucking life is built?
I didn’t have an answer.
When I finally returned to the bar, I parked Scarlett in her usual, prominent spot and held my fingers around the handlebars. As I stared off into space, I savored the feeling of that worn, textured rubber against my skin. There wasn’t a thought in my goddamn head as I squeezed my fingerless gloves around the grips, tighter and tighter.
After what felt like ages had passed, I pulled myself from the bike with a dissatisfied grunt. There was no avoiding what I had to do…
I sauntered inside.
It didn’t take long to find Sarah. She was sitting in a booth with Kate, laughing about something until they spotted me on the approach.
“Sorry to interrupt, ladies,” I politely nodded to Kate. My eyes locked onto Sarah, who stiffened in her seat. “But you and I need to talk.”
They shared a knowing glance.
The hair on my neck bristled; goddammit, have the two of them been bitching about me? But I pushed that minor irritation down for the sake of being civil, and I helped Sarah up from the booth.
We walked quietly back towards our room, ignoring how the others around were trying to avoid looking at us.
I sat her down on our bed and closed the door behind us. When I turned around, I chose to stay standing, exhaling in exasperation as I ran a hand through my short, thick hair.
“How was your drive?”
I changed my mind, pulling up a chair.
“Refreshing. Just what I needed, but it didn’t offer me any major revelations.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
We sat in silence together for a moment, letting the tension in the air hang between us. I wanted nothing more than to push it all away, but she was asking too much of me.
While I struggled to dig out the appropriate words, Sarah lifted her face. She looked me in the eyes, her gaze quietly defiant.
“You know I can’t back down from this.”
“So much for diplomacy,” I grunted.
“It’s not like I’m asking you to do anything you’re incapable of, Hunter. If you really want to marry me, then I want you to make things right with my father. He’s all the family I have left, and that’s all there is to it.”
“You think I’m not aware of that?” I snarled. “You’re acting as if I don’t know what it feels like to be clinging to that last shred of family. I don’t have anybody left, Sarah, and you know it. At least you have your father. My mother’s long dead, my father’s long gone, and my sister…”
She held her tongue at that one.
“My sister is lost,” I remembered painfully. “After all that I did for her, and the strides I took to keep her safe, in the end it never mattered…”
Sarah’s defiance weakened, only a little.
I hadn’t brought up my older sister since we’d seen her last. For the longest time she had been my entire world, and I would never see her again. It was such a painfully traumatic memory for me that I barely even thought of her anymore.
In fact, I barely ever spoke her name.
“What happened with Hannah was terrible,” she replied sympathetically. “I’ve tried to be here for you since that all went down…”
“You’ve done great,” I replied sincerely.
“Thank you. But I was there when your last family member came back into your life. Please, Hunter… all I’m asking is that you try to be here for me as I do the same with mine.”
“My sister didn’t derail our lives,” I insisted. “She didn’t wreak complete havoc on your closest allies, drive you out of town, or take the only good thing in your life away from you.”
She stayed quiet as I narrowed my eyes.
“Jack Buchanan is my enemy, Sarah. As far as I’m concerned, he fucked up everything for me. I’ve spent the years since trying to build whatever I could out of the shattered pieces left in his wake. There hasn’t been a goddamn day in the last ten years that I haven’t cursed his fucking name…
“And that’s just me. Have you asked any of the club? He has done greater damage to the Devil’s Dragons than almost any of our other enemies. I keep saying this, but you’re not listening: you want me to rewrite the past with him? What if he was ever around the club again? He has bad blood with all of us, and I don’t know if I can guarantee his safety.”
“They wouldn’t dare,” she insisted.
“Try them,” I laughed. “If you haven’t already, tell them. Tell them that you’re demanding they swallow their fury and tolerate keeping their guns holstered around the bastard who almost destroyed the club. That they respect me offering the olive branch to the most successful murderer of our people that we’ve ever had. So, let me be crystal clear about something here: even if I did agree to this – and that’s a huge fucking ‘if’ – I’m not going to be the fucker to tell them that.”
“You’re the club president,” she stubbornly replied. “Hunter, you can do anything. Or are you telling me that you’re not man enough to convince them that it’s for the best?”
What a fucking low blow.
I refused to bite at that one.
“It’s your goddamn problem to deal with,” I told her. “You brought this thing upon us, so if this happens… it’s your responsibility to make everything right by them.”
Sarah scoffed, turning her head away. I was holding back my anger over this, but the fact that she refused to see fucking reason was starting to really get on my goddamn nerves.
As if I wouldn’t hear it, she muttered under her breath: “You just don’t understand.”
I snapped at her, harder than I meant to. “Go on, Sarah. What don’t I understand? Because here are a few things you don’t understand…
“You can’t always get what you fucking want. You’re acting as if I’m trying to get in your way just for the hell of it! If I tell you something can’t happen, especially something you’re so bent out of shape over, chances are that I’ve got a goddamn good reason for it!” I rose up from the chair, barely containing my rage. “Sarah, I have to make sacrifices! I have to consider factors beyond you! The needs and wants of other people, especially a trigger-happy motorcycle club, can sometimes be more goddamn important than your own!
“So, go on, Sarah. Why don’t you tell me what I don’t fucking understand? Because I have tried… no, I have goddamn struggled to make it clear to you from the start why this will never work…”
She was holding b
ack tears.
If my head were a goddamn ship, my anger would be the mighty, rising sails. But one look at that tearful face and those sails were slashed, the fury pouring straight out.
The force behind my anger died in her eyes.
I sat next to her on the bed. Irrationally, I struggled to stay angry, but I could already feel how weak my spirit was.
I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t stay mad at her.
Instead, I pulled her into my arms. She shuddered against me, holding back her tears with everything that she had.
Minutes passed as I held her like that, feeling her body slowly slacken against mine. Only a woman like her could ever drive me this insane, yet rip the momentum out of my temper with a simple glance.
I loved it and I hated it.
As I held her close, something clicked in my head...
But I held the thought on the tip of my tongue until we finally pulled away, gazing sorrowfully into each other’s eyes. She looked defeated. Her last little sparks of happiness were fading away in those quiet eyes of hers.
I whispered her name.
“Sarah…”
As I pushed a knuckle against her cheek, drying the moisture from along her eyes, she held the sides of my hand with hers.
“Babe,” I pressed her now, “Why on earth are you pushing so hard for this now? Your dad hasn’t come up in ages…”
She looked at me, sweet and forlorn.
Her gaze fell to the rock against her fingers. I’d proposed to her a few months back, at the end of our last harrowing adventure together. It had made me the happiest goddamn man alive when she said yes, and helped me start to move past the greatest tragedy of my recent life.
“I want Daddy to walk me down the aisle.”
Everything else seemed to stop.
THAT was what this came down to?
THAT was why she was fighting so hard?
“Sweetheart…” I shook my head in confusion. “You want your sheriff father…” The words were so ludicrous that I could barely speak them. “Are you telling me that you want the man who never condoned us, the man who went out of his way to keep us apart and succeeded…”