28. Declan #2
The old answer waits inside the respectable concern Mia warned me about.
A reservation is a page that keeps my name beside hers until a baby is born, and every part of me wants to hold it open like a door.
I look at the written agreement instead of Avery.
“No, Your Honor. Her petition stands where it stood yesterday, and I won’t use our child to move the date. ”
The judge asks Avery whether she wants the marriage dissolved. She places both hands on the table, the left one bare where her ring sat for six years, and answers with her eyes on the judge. “Yes, Your Honor.”
The reservation is the only place the child appears in this room.
The judge asks the required questions, finds the agreement fair, then grants the petition with every issue concerning the baby reserved for the later order.
The marriage is dissolved before lunch while our house burns under county water.
Avery is legally single close enough for me to see her shoulders lower after the words, and I still broke every vow even after the court stops calling her my wife.
I stand when she does. Her attorney gives her a copy of the order, June takes the court bag, and Avery pauses beside my table only because the aisle narrows near Mia’s chair.
“Gage will send the fire report to both attorneys,” I say, keeping my hands at my sides. “I won’t contact the insurer outside the group account.”
“Good.” She shifts the coat over her stomach and looks at the smoke-dark collar of my borrowed shirt. “The house burning doesn’t mean I wanted this less.”
“You wanted the divorce before the house burned.” It costs me to say, and it’s still the answer. “I won’t tell anybody the fire ended us. I did.”
Avery holds my gaze long enough to learn whether I mean it, then walks through the courtroom doors with June. I don’t follow. Mia makes me sign two acknowledgment pages and reads the file stamp aloud, leaving no room for me to claim later that I misunderstood the date my marriage ended.
That evening, the clubhouse fills before Cruz calls the table.
Patched men take the front rows while wives and partners gather along the back wall, some angry at me, some afraid of Sasha, and a few carrying the careful expressions people wear when they intend to blame a woman because blaming the man they trusted would require changing too much.
Cruz has left the Enforcer’s chair open.
Gage stands behind it with his wounded shoulder and doesn’t sit, because acting authority has never needed my old seat to become real.
I take off my cut before I walk to the front.
The patch hasn’t belonged on my back since October, even when the leather technically stayed mine.
I fold it across the empty chair, keeping the name visible, and hear the rear door open.
Avery’s boots cross the floor, then stop near June at the back.
Cruz cleared her attendance this afternoon and put four men on the lot before the first bike arrived.
I know the sound of her walk after six years, and I keep my back to it.
She came because the club helped build the lie around our marriage and she has the right to hear me break it and carry none of what follows.
“Some of you keep saying Sasha got inside my head,” I begin, resting both hands on the back of a plain chair to keep them off the cut.
“You say she used my reading against me, caught me in a bad year, or offered me something Avery couldn’t.
Stop saying it. Sasha used what I gave her after I chose to have sex with her.
I went back for six months. I paid for the room with marital money, let her read club papers, gave her access to our routes, and came home to Avery every time. ”
Nobody interrupts. Hutch stares at the table, his jaw working beneath his beard, while one of the younger men looks toward the back of the room as if Avery’s face might tell him how guilty he is allowed to find me.
“Avery didn’t abandon me,” I say, and the pressure in my hands makes the chair creak.
“She found me in our safehouse bed with another woman, copied the proof I would’ve hidden from her, protected this club from the breach I caused, and left because I made our home unsafe.
Sasha didn’t steal an innocent man from his wife.
I chose the affair, and when Sasha threatened the club, I chose secrecy again because exposure scared me more than the danger I brought to your families. ”
A patched man near the wall shifts his boots. “She played you too, Dec. Nobody’s saying you didn’t fuck up, but?—”
“I am.” I turn toward him before the excuse can become another rumor Avery has to hear.
“Don’t clean it up because you like me better than Sasha.
She is responsible for the thefts, threats, fire, and every person she chose to endanger.
I am responsible for opening the door and lying while she walked through it. Both things are true.”
Cruz lets the room sit with that before he looks at the cut across the chair. “What are you asking from this table?”
“Nothing that helps me.” I release the chair and step away from the leather.
“You took the rank in October. Nothing’s left on my back to hand you.
What I’ve still got is a vote in this room and a name that comes back up when the table’s ready.
Hold my name until the baby’s born. When you’re ready to put it up, somebody who isn’t me goes to Avery first and asks whether she objects.
If she does, nobody sits down. She gives no reason, and her answer doesn’t come back to me. ”
Gage doesn’t wait for Cruz. “She’s at the back of this room and she can hear you.
” His bad arm stays tight against his side.
“You just put a job on her she never asked for, in front of forty people. She objects, she’s the woman who kept a man on the floor.
She doesn’t, half this room decides she took you back.
You’re making her pay for what you did.”
“Then somebody asks her away from here and nobody repeats it to me.” The chair creaks under my hands. “She’s carried what I decided for six years and nobody asked her once. This costs her one word. If she’d rather not give it, that counts as an objection and the vote still doesn’t happen.”
“You still want it back?” Hutch asks, not cruelly, though the question cuts deeper because he once toasted our marriage beneath this roof.
“Every day. That’s why it goes to her.” I keep my hands where the room can see them. “The divorce was granted this morning. Avery owes this table nothing tonight, and she owes no one a reason when Hutch asks. Nobody in this club uses what I do next to move her back toward me.”
The rear door opens again before Cruz speaks.
Cold air crosses the room, carrying a trace of smoke from my clothes toward the place Avery occupied, and her boots retreat across the gravel outside.
I hold still until the door closes. June holds my eyes from the back wall until I face Cruz again, and the look tells me to stay where I am.
Cruz takes the cut from the chair and locks it in the cabinet behind the table.
“Gage holds command through the birth. Nothing with Declan’s name on it comes to a vote before that.
When it does, Hutch goes to Avery first, and if she objects we don’t sit down.
The fire scene stays with Gage, and every update goes through the channel Avery approved. ”
Men begin asking questions about the van and county roads, but I take the plain chair nearest the wall instead of the one beside Cruz.
The court ended the marriage. The table put what’s left of my name behind a question Hutch carries to Avery after the baby comes.
Avery heard me tell the truth and left. I leave knowing that she no longer has to correct my lie for me.
I sit where Gage tells me, smoke trapped in my hair and the Enforcer’s chair empty across the room, and wait for the next order like any other man in this building.