Chapter Three
Anastasia
Once my flight landed, I had gone to a hotel room to sleep and let myself have a good cry.
In the morning, I went shopping for some clothes and other necessities. I also bought myself a purple suitcase that was just too cute to resist. Once I had everything packed in there, I called a cab to take me to my childhood home.
I took my belongings with me since I wasn’t sure what the situation would be like. It was possible that, depending on how I was received, I would need to leave to another town and start off fresh and alone.
That thought causes a couple tears to fall, but I quickly wipe them away before I walk up to the door.
I take a deep breath and slowly release it before walking up the steps.
I haven’t seen anyone in my family for five years.
I knock on the door and wait. I hear footsteps before the door opens.
The person who opens the door is my baby sister, Serena. She looks so different now. Her disposition is tired and sad.
“Ana?” she whispers in disbelief.
“Hey sis,” I rasp. I can already feel myself breaking just from seeing her.
She pulls me into her arms in a strong hug before a sob leaves her. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“What’s going on?” I ask, squeezing her extra tightly after hearing the pain and relief in her voice.
“It’s dad,” she says while pulling away so she can look me in the eye.
“What about him?” I ask. The last time I saw my father, he had told me that I was no longer his daughter because I chose a criminal for a husband.
“He’s dying,” she says with a choked sob.
My heart stops at those words, and I gasp. “What?”
“He got diagnosed with cancer a few months back, but it had already progressed enough that the doctors only gave him a few months to live,” she tells me while pulling me into the house.
“How come no one told me?” I ask in shock and hurt that they didn’t think to call me.
I look around the house. It has definitely seen better days. It is no longer being well taken care of like I’m used to. Its messy, dusty, and full of garbage. It is not the pristine house my mom liked to keep.
“Dad didn’t want us to call you. He said he made his mistakes and will have to die with the regrets. I could tell he wanted to contact you, but he said that you left us to be happy and he didn’t want to take away that happiness,” she tells me.
“What about mom?” I ask, putting what she said to the side to think about later.
“She’s in there with him. Obviously, she didn’t agree with him and wanted to contact you, but she also felt like shit because she didn’t give you the support you deserved back then. I think it was more about punishing themselves than anything,” she says with a sigh.
“They should have known I would have wanted to see him. At least to say good-bye,” I say while letting the tears fall down my cheeks. “How long does he have?” I ask, afraid to hear the answer.
“He’s only got a few weeks, I think. They say he has lasted a lot longer than they thought he would. I can take you to him,” she says before getting up.
“He’s here?” I gasp in shock.
She nods her head with tears in her eyes. “Yes, because he wanted to die at home. A nurse is here most of the day to take care of him and make him comfortable.”
“Okay let’s go see him,” I say before standing up.
“Wait, why are you here?” she asks, stopping to look at me.
I shake my head. “We can deal with that later. It’s not important right now.”
There will be plenty of time to discuss my failed marriage. One thing at a time.
When my sister opens the door to my parents’ room, I follow behind her. I look over to the bed and let out a shaky breath. My hand flies over my mouth as tears fall.
I was not prepared to see what was inside that room.
The once proud and strong man that I had always looked up to was so small and fragile laying on the bed, obviously struggling to breathe.
“Who was at the door, peanut?” my mom asks tiredly before looking over to the door where I stand frozen.
“Ana?” A gasp of disbelief comes from her. My eyes are blurry with tears, but I can tell by the way she runs over to me and pulls me into her arms that she missed me.
“I never thought I would see you again,” she cries.
“You told me to never come back,” I whisper hoarsely.
“I have had lots of time to come to regret everything we ever said to you all those years ago. We knew we were wrong right away, but we figured you would be happier with us out of your life,” she cries.
“I thought you guys meant it when you said you never wanted to see me again. That I wasn’t your daughter. Do you understand how lonely that is?” I choke out.
“I’m so sorry,” she breaks.
I hold her until she stops crying. I then walk over to the bed to see my father for the first time in years.
He’s sleeping, but I take a seat beside him. I grab his hand in mine; it’s cold and weak.
“D-daddy,” I cry, and my head drops onto the bed as I give into the sobs.
Everything in my life comes crashing down at once, and the weight of the world is on my shoulders.
My marriage is over, and my father is dying. I am losing far more than I had thought I would.
How did this become my life?
Why am I meant to feel so much pain?
I feel a hand in my hair. I don’t know how long I have been crying for. Could be minutes, could be hours, but I know that my face is probably swollen and red.
I look up and see my dad staring back at me.
“My girl. I’m so glad you are home,” he says softly.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I cry.
“I don’t deserve your forgiveness,” he states.
“I would have forgiven you, and I would have always wanted to come say good-bye,” I tell him.
“Why did you come home?” he asks me.
“Because I think my marriage is over,” I say with a sob.
“Oh, my girl. You didn’t fight us that hard for that man for it to end after only five years,” he says softly.
“I fought as long as I could before I couldn’t fight anymore. After a while, it didn’t feel like there was anything left to fight for,” I tell my family. At some point, my mother and sister had also grabbed seats.
“That man isn’t just going to let you go. I saw that back then, and I know it now,” my mom says.
“We had a huge fight, and I told him I wanted a divorce before leaving to come here. I didn’t know if I could even come home; I was just desperate to not be alone,” I tell them.
“So, we should expect an angry biker knocking on our door any moment now,” my sister says with a small chuckle.
“I doubt it,” I say shrugging my shoulders. “I told his brothers to make sure he didn’t follow me. Who knows if he would think that I would ever come back here. That’s if he even cares enough about me anymore to follow,” I say sadly.
“He will,” my dad says before he closes his eyes to sleep.
I sit with him for a couple hours before I head to my old room. My mother and sister insisted that I stay with them.
When I walk into my room, it looks just like I left it; only there is now a layer of dust on everything. Not as much as I expected, but I’m guessing my mother hasn’t had much time to clean since my father had gotten the diagnosis.
I decide that tomorrow I’m going to start cleaning this house up. My family needs the help.
I have nowhere else to be right now anyway.
Maverick “Viking”
I drank most of the night with my brothers. Everyone left at some point, except Ice and Knuckles.
We all passed out in the living room, but I remember saying to them that I didn’t want to sleep in my bed without my wife.
Knuckles is on the recliner, I’m on the couch, and Ice is on the love seat which is fucking hilarious because he’s too fucking tall for that shit. His top half is on, but his legs are hanging off the end; that can’t be comfortable.
I feel like shit, but I haven’t felt right in a long time. It does, however, feel like a weight has been lifted off my chest now that my brothers know how I feel about men.
I look around the home I share with my wife. There are holes in the walls, and I can see where shit is broken. The place is kept clean, but you can tell it’s not taken care of. Ana never learned to do any of that stuff because I had always told her that was what I was for.
I make a mental note of everything that needs to be fixed. There is enough money in my account that we can renovate it. Lots of shit needs to be torn out like the cupboards, and new furniture needs to be purchased since it’s all worn out with cracks and holes in it.
“Needs a lot of work, brother,” Knuckles says, his voice still thick with sleep.
I nod my head. “I know. I’m going to do it though. I need this place to feel like a home again,” I tell him.
“I’ve got to head out to the garage. I’ll be back later to help you,” he says while getting up and patting me on the back before leaving the house.
“You have a long road ahead of you,” Ice says once Knuckles leaves.
“I know I do. I feel like I can’t breathe without her. She’s everything to me, and I haven’t treated her like she is in a long fucking time,” I tell him before dropping my head.
“Why? There has to be more than just you also being interested in men that brought you both to this point,” he states.
I look over at him and feel like he wouldn’t judge me and could be a good friend. I was just scared I was going to lose my wife to him, especially knowing that he is a good man.
“We started trying to get pregnant right away but, as the months went on with no baby, the hope of her getting pregnant died. Watching her cry every month when her period came was breaking me on the inside, and I felt like I was a failure of a husband because I couldn’t give my wife the one thing she wanted. I had already taken her family from her. They disowned her after we got together because they didn’t approve of the MC life. I had seen how much she had to sacrifice to be with me and it killed me on the inside,” I tell him.
“That woman loves you, and if you guys couldn’t have kids then you could have adopted. It’s not the end of the road. When you pulled away, she probably felt like you blamed her for not getting pregnant,” he says.
“Fuck,” I choke out. I never thought of it that way, but I have a feeling he’s right.
How much blame did my wife take?
“If you are willing to give it everything you’ve got to get her back, then you have to hope there’s a chance she will,” Ice says.
I have to hope she will come back to me. She took every way for me to track her away. She knew I would try to bring her back. Not knowing where she is at this very moment is driving me crazy.
Is she safe?
I’m broken out of my thoughts when my door opens. Rage and Rock come in carrying food and coffee.
“We are going to eat while we wait for a bin to be delivered. I figured you would want to trash a lot of the shit in here; walls, cupboards, furniture... so one is being pulled into the driveway. We just need to move Ana’s car and your bike,” Rage says before sitting down.
I grab the keys to Ana’s car and move it into the garage before moving my bike to an open spot so I can ride it later. I then return back into the house to eat and start working.
Levi “Ice”
I’m a sweaty fucking mess by the end of the day, but I haven’t stopped working. I had the next couple days off, so I figured I would spend them here to help Viking with his house.
Once the bin came, we got to work throwing shit into the bin. Brothers came and went as the day went on to help pretty much strip the house, only leaving the important things that Viking knew Ana loved.
When I walk up to their room ready to start on it, I look around as images consume me of Viking and Ana fucking in here. I try to shake my head of the thoughts as Viking comes behind me and slaps me on the back.
“Fuck let’s do this,” he says, looking around the room.
I walk to the closet and take in its size. “You should make her a bigger closet. This house has so many rooms that you could probably afford to lose one and then extend this room to make it bigger,” I tell him.
“That’s not a bad idea,” he says.
He gets a pained look over his face as he starts to pack his wife’s clothes. I work on going through the end tables.
I open one of them and find a picture of Viking and Ana on what looks to be their wedding day. I sit on the bed and look at this happy couple who had no idea what troubles waited for them.
“Fuck. This is harder than I thought it would be,” Viking says, looking down at the photo in my hands.
“You guys were happy,” I state.
“We were. I knew she was mine from the moment I laid eyes on her. I moved fast to tie her to me in every way I could,” he says before sitting down beside me and grabbing the picture from my hands.
I turn my head so he can’t see the look in my eyes. That’s how I felt when I saw them months ago.
I knew in an instant that they were mine and could become everything to me, but I ignored it because they were married. Not everyone is okay with the kind of relationship I want. I didn’t want to take the risk of them rejecting me or looking at me with disgust knowing that I wanted both of them.
When I went back to my club, I kept feeling a constant pull because they were always on my mind. Then I heard about the problems they were having, and I fought with myself. I wanted to make everything for them better, but they didn’t and still don’t need the extra complication of me.
I need to help them repair their relationship. Even if my heart gets broken in the process.