23.
Dahlia
Three weeks later
I pulled up to the clubhouse with a heavy sigh. This was the last place I wanted to be, and yet I knew I had to be here regardless. The club was holding a party in honor of Rocky, and despite JD telling me I didn’t have to come, he had made it clear that I should. That it would be the right thing to do by my husband.
I hated that he was right.
I had spent years avoiding this place, hating everything to do with it, including the men that seemed to love it so much. It stood for everything I hated: violence and anger, bloodshed and drugs. It was a toxic place filled with toxic people, and I knew I would never fit in—I knew I didn’t ever want to fit in.
Yet when JD had called me, I had found it impossible to say no.
JD, as much as I disliked him, had been good to me. He had done everything he had said he would. He had made sure that the house and the cabin deeds were both transferred solely to me. He sent me all of Rocky’s stocks and shares, of which he had many. Everything that had once been his was now mine, and now I was free. I could do anything I wanted. Go anywhere. It wasn’t enough to set me up for life, but it was enough to give me the breathing space I needed to figure out my next steps.
I had gone back to the house and JD had already had people in to repair the damage and clean up the mess inside. If I hadn’t been there, you never would have known that I had almost died in that house. That Matt had almost died in there.
JD came to the clubhouse door and lifted his hand in a single wave. I nodded and turned off the engine before climbing out and heading over to him.
“Wasn’t sure you would come,” he said. His breath held the rich aroma of good whiskey and he handed me a glass of it. I took it gratefully, needing it to give me the courage to walk inside.
Who knew what I would find?
Half-naked men and women. Drugs scattered across the tables. Drunk men leering and passed out. Guns on show at every opportunity. I swigged the whiskey and said thanks.
JD was handsome in a way I hadn’t really seen before. I’d been so obsessed with hating him that I hadn’t seen his good looks or his good heart. Because he was good, to some extent. He had made me feel safe. He had held his promise. And even now I knew he was looking out for me, and probably always would.
“Okay, it’s time to do this,” I said, swallowing the last of the whiskey.
JD took the glass from me and smiled in that sly, knowing way he did.
“What?” I asked with a groan.
“I don’t know what it is that you expect to find in there, but I promise you it’s not what you think.” He lit a cigarette and turned, heading inside, and I followed him.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I replied.
Inside the club was dark, barring some lights on the walls. There were no pole-dancers half naked in the middle of the club, there were no drunk men leering at me from the darkness. There was a long bar, with different bottles of alcohol behind it, sure, but it was clean and tidy. There were several sofas dotted around the space, and a large TV on one wall. I narrowed my eyes as I watched cartoons playing on it. I hadn’t noticed any of this the last time I had been here. I had seen something completely different, and I wasn’t sure where I had gotten that version from.
“Where are we going?” I asked, still looking around.
“Out back. It’s a barbeque, darlin’,” JD said with a lazy droll.
He pushed through the door that led to the backyard, and I squinted against the early evening light for a moment, taking it all in.
There were kids everywhere, and three different barbeques running. There were tables and tables of food and music playing from some speakers. Women and men were dancing and laughing, their voices mingling with the scent of grilled meat and the soft strains of country music. The golden hues of the setting sun cast long shadows across the scene, painting everything with a warm, amber glow. Children ran around, their laughter ringing out, while the adults chatted leisurely, plates piled high with food. JD handed me a beer and nodded toward a group gathered around one of the barbeques.
“Bear is over there,” he said, pointing to a tall man flipping burgers with an easy grace, “if you wanted to say hi to him, that is.”
I blinked, trying to reconcile the memories of the dark, foreboding club with the vibrant, joyous scene before me. It was as if I had stepped into a different world—one where shadows were replaced with light, and suspicion with camaraderie. The twilight deepened, and fairy lights strung across the backyard began to twinkle, adding a touch of magic to the atmosphere.
As I stood there, absorbing the unexpected warmth of the moment, I couldn’t help but feel a small flicker of something inside me. Of loss, perhaps, that I had been missing out on something all along because of my own stubbornness.
JD wandered off to talk to a group of men, and I stared after him, unsure of what to do. I had reconciled my feelings toward Matt, or at least I thought I had, but as I looked at him now, flipping burgers while a little kid clung to his back laughing in his ear, I wasn’t so sure.
I stayed away from Matt, unsure of what to say to him. I didn’t know any of the other women—the wives and girlfriends of Alex’s friends, the other Kings—so I took a seat away from everyone, watching it all unfold with a deep sense of loss.
A few of the women made their way over to me, smiling as they did, and I felt the churn of uncertainty in my stomach.
“Hey there,” one of the women said, her overly large hoop earrings dangling from her lobes. “I’m Natalie. I’m Tex’s old lady. You’re Rocky’s, right?”
I nodded. “I…yeah, I guess so. I mean, not anymore, obviously.”
“Sweetheart,” she said, grabbing a chair and sitting down, “you’ll always be his woman—until you don’t want to be, that is.” She laughed, and the other women that she was with laughed too, pulling up chairs in front of me.
They each held out hands, some with rings on, some without. I forgot most of their names as quickly as they said them, but I was grateful for them making the effort with me.
Kids ran over to some of them at different points, and the women changed places frequently. Some of them were mothers, some were not, but all of them were women after my own heart. Women I could have bene friends with all along.
As the evening wore on, the atmosphere grew even more relaxed. Laughter echoed through the yard, and the camaraderie among everyone was palpable. I found myself taking numbers and joining in conversations. And I got up and danced to a song or two.
I saw Matt, watching me through the night, and I wanted to go to him so we could talk. We had left things so badly, but I’d had time to reflect, and though I still couldn’t get over the fact that he should have been there the night Rocky died, I knew I couldn’t keep on blaming him for what had happened.
Suddenly, the door leading back into the club opened and a woman appeared in the doorway, holding the hand of a toddler. Her eyes scanned the crowd until they landed on JD. Without hesitation, she walked over, the little boy trailing behind her. The air seemed to thicken with anticipation, and conversations around them quieted as people noticed her approach.
“JD,” she called out, her voice steady yet tinged with emotion. “This is Liam. He’s Rocky’s son.”
My breath caught in my throat, and I almost choked on the beer I was drinking. I put the bottle down, suddenly horrified.
JD’s expression shifted from surprise to something deeper, a mix of confusion and recognition. He knelt down to the boy’s level, his eyes searching the child’s face, trying to find traces of my husband. The toddler gazed back, wide-eyed and curious, clutching a small toy plane in his hand.
For a moment, the world seemed to stand still, the hum of the barbeque, the laughter, the music—everything faded into the background. Then, slowly, JD stood up, his face softening as he reached out to pick the little boy up.
“You know where your daddy is?” he asked him, and Liam nodded.
“In heaven,” he replied shyly.
My heart ached painfully, the realization of everything crashing down around me.
“You know who we are?” JD asked.
“You’re his family,” Liam replied.
“Damn straight,” JD said, “and now we’re your family.”
JD looked at the woman. Her arms were folded across her chest and her purse was slung over one shoulder. He looked around the yard until he found me, an apologetic expression on his face.
“It’s Carly, right?” he asked, handing Liam over to another biker.
She nodded, watching as Tex sat down with the boy and started showing him how to play the guitar.
“Well, whatever you need for him, you ask, and you’ve got it. You feel me?”
“I’m sorry about this, JD. Rocky said he would look after us,” she said, her voice softer than I expected. “He said he would be back after the run, but he never turned up.”
“He do that a lot?” JD asked, and Carly nodded.
“Especially the last couple of months. He was helping my brother out of a situation he got himself in with the Wolves. He was supposed to drop some money off to them, but they said he never showed with it.” She ran a hand through her long hair and swallowed nervously. “I know he’s gone—I heard what happened, and I just wanted…I don’t know. I didn’t want Liam being a dirty little secret any longer. I wanted him to meet his family, and I wanted to say I’m sorry for getting Rocky mixed up in my stuff.”
JD looked across at the other men, each one of them holding on to shocked expressions.
Rocky had been having an affair. He’d had a little boy with someone else. And his death hadn’t been Matt’s fault, or the club’s. It hadn’t been anything to do with any of them.
I searched the yard for Matt, but he was nowhere to be seen. I needed to tell him. I needed to unburden him.
We had all blamed him for what had happened to Rocky, but none of it had been his fault. It had been Rocky’s alone. If he hadn’t been seeing another woman…if he hadn’t been mixed up in someone else’s life, entangled in another woman’s bed sheets… I covered my mouth with my hand to hold in my sob as I thought passed the affair and saw the child that was his.
Rocky had a child.
I waited for the sucker punch, but none came. I expected to feel sad or angry, but I found all I felt was a strange kind of happiness that a small part of Rocky was still here in the world. That his blood would continue. That he would, in some way, carry on.
An image of Matt came to my mind, and that’s where the guilt and the grief hit me. Not for my husband, but for the man I had loved all along.
I had blamed him for Alex’s death, and he had blamed himself. It was bad enough that he was carrying the burden of his brother’s death on his shoulders, but he didn’t need to carry Rocky’s too.
I watched as JD nodded his acceptance of the facts, and the bikers led Liam toward a quieter corner where the other kids were playing. The crowd began to disperse, the moment passing but leaving an indelible mark. Life moved on, but something profound had shifted, a new chapter beginning in the most unexpected of ways. And as the fairy lights continued to twinkle, they seemed to echo the promise of hope and new beginnings.