Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Monk
The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the cold. The kind that came from waking up alone in a bed that should have had someone in it. I reached out instinctively, my hand sliding across the sheets where Lina had been sleeping just hours ago.
Empty. Cold.
I sat up slowly, my jaw clenching as I scanned the room. Her clothes were gone from the floor. Her shoes were gone from beside the door. The bathroom door was open, the light off, no sound of running water.
She left. Without waking me. Without saying a goddamn word.
My hands curled into fists against the mattress, my entire body going rigid with a mixture of irritation and something darker, something raw and territorial that made my chest tighten until it almost hurt to breathe.
I poured my fucking soul out to her last night.
Told her things I never told anyone. Confessed my past, my sins, my shame.
Let her see the ugliest parts of me and stayed standing while she looked.
Then I held her like I was trying to make up for seven years in one night, like if I wrapped myself around her tightly enough maybe I could keep the world from taking her from me again. And she still left before sunrise.
No goodbye.
No touch on my shoulder. No whispered promise that this hadn’t all been some desperate collision of grief and history and bad timing. Just empty sheets and silence, and me waking up feeling stupid for how much that silence hurt.
I shoved the blankets off and swung my legs over the side of the bed, my feet hitting the floor with a heavy thud.
My head was pounding, not from a hangover, but from the sheer weight of everything that had changed in a matter of hours.
I had gone to sleep with Lina in my arms and the truth finally out between us, and I had woken up to the same old feeling I’d spent half my life carrying: being left behind.
Maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe it wasn’t even true.
But feelings didn’t give a shit about fairness.
They just sank their teeth in and held on.
I grabbed my jeans from the floor and yanked them on, not bothering with a shirt, too agitated to care about anything except the fact that she was gone and I didn’t know what the hell that meant.
Coffee. I needed coffee and maybe some answers. Because if Lina thought she could just slip out of my bed before dawn and avoid the conversation we were going to have about what the fuck had happened last night, she had another think coming.
The kitchen was already occupied when I walked in.
Trigger sat at the far end of the long wooden table, shoveling scrambled eggs into his mouth like he hadn’t eaten in a week.
Angel was across from him, nursing a cup of coffee and scrolling through his phone with a bored expression.
Judd leaned against the counter near the stove, arms crossed, talking in low tones with Fifty about something I didn’t care enough to listen to.
The smell of bacon and coffee filled the air, and my stomach growled in response, but I wasn’t here for food. I walked straight to the coffeepot and poured myself a cup, black, no sugar. The first sip burned going down, but I didn’t care. I needed the caffeine more than I needed comfort.
“Morning, VP,” Trigger said around a mouthful of eggs as I took a seat across from him.
I grunted in response, not trusting myself to speak yet. My mood was sour as hell, and the last thing I needed was to snap at one of my brothers over nothing.
Angel glanced up from his phone, his eyes flicking over my bare chest before returning to the screen. “Rough night?” he asked, his tone casual.
“Something like that,” I muttered, taking another sip of coffee as Blackjack walked in from the hallway, his hair still damp from the shower, a towel slung over his shoulder. He grabbed a plate from the counter and loaded it up with bacon and toast before dropping into the chair beside Angel.
“Monk,” he said, nodding at me.
I nodded back, my grip tightening on the coffee mug.
Blackjack took a bite of bacon, chewed slowly, then glanced at me with a knowing smirk. “Your lawyer left early this morning,” he said casually.
I stiffened. “What?”
“Lina,” Blackjack clarified, his smirk widening. “Saw her heading out around dawn. Said she was going home to your kid.”
His words hit me like a punch to the gut.
Your kid. Tatum. Our daughter. The daughter I still hadn’t officially met.
The daughter Lina had been raising alone for seven years while I had been here, fucking my way through the clubhouse and convincing myself she was never coming back.
That truth landed ugly every single time it hit me.
Not clean guilt—the kind that could be confessed and burned off—but the heavier kind—the kind that settled in your bones and made you question what kind of man you’d been when it mattered most. I hadn’t known.
I kept telling myself that. Hadn’t known where she was.
Hadn’t known she was carrying my child. Hadn’t known there had been something left of us to save.
But ignorance didn’t erase the outcome. It didn’t put me beside Lina when she was pregnant.
It didn’t put me in the hospital room the day Tatum was born.
It didn’t give me back the seven years of scraped knees, bedtime stories, fevers, birthdays, first words, first steps, an entire little life that had unfolded without me in it.
I set the coffee mug down on the table with more force than necessary; the ceramic clinked loudly against the surface. “She say anything else?” I asked, my voice tight.
Blackjack shrugged. “Nope. Just that she needed to get back before the kid woke up.”
I clenched my jaw, my hands curling into fists at my sides. Of course she left. Of course she had gone back to the farm without waking me, without giving me a chance to—to what? To stop her? To demand that she stay? To tell her I wanted to meet our daughter?
I didn’t know. All I knew was that waking up alone after last night had felt like a betrayal, even though I knew it wasn’t.
Lina had a life. A daughter. Responsibilities that didn’t bend just because my world had finally cracked open.
And if I were honest, part of what burned so bad wasn’t only that she left—it was that she had every right to.
I hadn’t earned a place in her mornings.
Hadn’t earned a place in Tatum’s life. Hell, I hadn’t even earned the right to be wounded by the reminder that they already had a rhythm, a home, a whole life that functioned without me.
That was the part that cut deepest. Not just that I missed them, but that I was the outsider looking in on something that should have been mine too.
The brothers continued eating and talking around me, but I didn’t join in. I just sat there, staring into my coffee, my mind spinning with thoughts I didn’t want to have.
She left. She went home to our daughter, and I’m still here, sitting in this fucking kitchen, drinking coffee like nothing has happened.
But everything had happened. My whole goddamn life had shifted on its axis, and the world had the nerve to keep moving like it was any other morning.
The brothers were eating breakfast, talking business, bitching about nothing, and I was sitting there trying to act normal while my head filled up with the shape of a little girl I had barely seen and the image of Lina driving away from me before dawn.
The frustration simmered just beneath the surface, but under that was something worse—fear.
Fear that I was already too late. Fear that whatever chance I had with Lina, with Tatum, had already been thinned down to something fragile enough to break if I touched it wrong.
I wanted to be angry. Wanted to storm out to the farm and demand answers, but I couldn’t because Lina had every right to leave.
Every right to put Tatum first, and I had no right to expect anything different.
Not after the way I treated her. Not after weeks of cruelty and accusations.
Not after letting Ruby slap her in front of the entire club.
I took another sip of coffee, the bitterness matching my mood when Kansas walked into the kitchen a few minutes later, Widow trailing behind him.
Kansas looked like he had actually slept—his hair was combed, his shirt clean, his expression calm.
Widow, on the other hand, looked like he had been up all night.
His eyes were bloodshot, his jaw tight, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.
“Whisper got another call from Benedict,” Kansas said, his voice cutting through the low hum of conversation.
The room went quiet as all eyes turned to Kansas. “Widow and Blackjack,” Kansas continued, his gaze flicking between the two of them. “Church. Now.”
Blackjack set down his fork and stood, wiping his hands on a napkin as Whisper appeared in the doorway a moment later, his expression unreadable. I drained the rest of my coffee and stood, my chair scraping against the floor.
“Monk,” Kansas said, his eyes meeting mine. “Shirt first, asshole, and don’t forget your cut.”
I nodded, quickly refilling my cup before heading to my room. My mood was still sour as hell, but at least now I had something to focus on besides the empty space in my bed.
A few minutes later, I walked into church and took my seat at the table without bothering to check who was present. I already knew Shadow would be the only officer missing, as he lived at his sister’s botanical farm with Joan, and unless it was an emergency, he didn’t make it to every meeting.
I would fill him in later.
Kansas walked in a moment later with Widow, shutting the door behind them with a heavy thud. He took his seat at the head of the table, his hands folding in front of him as he surveyed the room. Whisper sat to his right, Blackjack to his left.