13.
Bear
I drove the long winding roads up to Rocky’s cabin in the woods, hoping and praying that this was where she had gone. Rocky and I had stayed there a few times over the years when we’d had time off from the club, which wasn’t often.
Our family was the club.
Our work was the club.
Our life was the club.
But every now and then it was good to get out into the woods and have some time away from everything. It had always been harder for him than it had for me. He had a wife who wanted him home, while I only had my brother who didn’t even know I was there.
Rocky and I had always gotten along because we were similar in that way. We preferred the quiet life to the one of partying and drugs. As far as I knew, he had never cheated on his wife—loved her more than life itself, and who could blame him? I had been that man too at one point.
It still gutted me now that all these years I had never thought to ask more about her. I scrolled back through my memories, thinking of the times he might have mentioned her and wondering how I had never realized that his Dahlia was my Dahlia. True, she looked different now, with her long red hair, but a name like that pierced a man’s heart and left thorns behind. You didn’t forget a name like Dahlia, and you didn’t ever forget a woman like her either.
She had been the one that got away. Though that wasn’t technically true. I had left her. And though I had good reason, it was something that even twenty years on I hadn’t been able to fully recover from. I had looked her up through the years, wondering what became of her. She had been studying psychology and had wanted to help people. But no matter how hard I searched for her, I had found nothing. She had finished college—I knew that much alone—but her parents no longer had anything to do with her. In the years that had passed she hadn’t returned there, and in the end I had decided to just be happy that she was alive somewhere in the world, living a happy life—no doubt married with kids, and a practice that I somehow couldn’t find. Life had taken us in different directions, and I was glad.
I was bad news. Always had been. Always would be. My parents had told me from a young age that I would amount to nothing. And that neither my brother nor I would ever contribute anything worthwhile to society. And they had been right.
I had nothing to show for my forty years on Earth, and Sebastion was now gone. He hadn’t left behind a legacy. He had left behind grief, and I would do the same.
I thought back to the look on her face at the clubhouse, the shock and hurt on her beautiful face. A face I had seen both laugh and cry. Twenty years ago, we had been every love story’s happy couple. We had been the pair that our friends wanted to be like. They saw us growing old together with kids and a dog and careers. But life had played a bad hand, and it looked like neither of us had done much with our lives.
I gripped the handlebars of my bike harder, wincing as pain burned through my muscle. The bullet had gone through me, not hitting anything important, and though I had lost a lot of blood, there was no permanent damage. Though riding my bike so soon was a fucking stupid idea, and I knew that. But there was no way I wasn’t going to find her. I wasn’t laying in some stupid hospital bed knowing she was out there and in danger. I wasn’t having some moron prospect looking after her either. So I had sworn to JD that I would find her, and I would protect her, and he had agreed to let me go.
The bends were sharp on the way to the cabin, but it was roads like these that were precisely the reason I loved to ride so much. The exhilaration from navigating the turns and twists, the future clearly laid out ahead, the past a receding memory, all set against the stunning backdrop of the Colorado Rockies. Fucking beautiful.
‘If anything happens to her, it’s on you,’ JD had warned in his usual calm way. But I already knew that. Just like I knew that nothing was going to happen to her because I would die rather than let that happen.
‘No fucking drinking,’ Confessor had said, his expression serious. ‘I’m serious as a fucking heart attack, brother. This isn’t just your last chance; this is your only chance now.’
Ink had glared at me the whole time, and I worried that he would never forgive me for what had happened to Rocky. It was on me if he didn’t, and I didn’t blame him either way. I had drunk away the last three months of my life since Sebastion had passed. It felt like wherever I went I left bodies in my wake. I hated that he didn’t trust me. That my brothers were turning their backs on me. After twenty years of club life and of giving my loyalty, of giving everything to either the club or to Sebastion, I wasn’t sure what I would do if I had neither. I had given up everything for them.
The road veered off to the left but I went right, the path eventually turning to dirt as I climbed higher. The trees became denser, the scent of pine and wood and wholesome clean air filling my lungs, until finally the cabin came into view.
A small smile pulled at the side of my mouth when I saw a car parked outside. Like even after all these years apart, I somehow still knew the woman I had fallen in love with all those years ago. The curtains twitched as I pulled my bike to a stop before duckwalking it back into position and shutting off the engine.
I stared at the cabin, thinking of the last time I had been here. Must have been two years ago, and Rocky and I had been hunting. Killed a deer and cooked it on an outside fire. We drank beer well into the early morning, just talking shit about life, and then sinking into silence. When he was drunk, he told me how much his wife hated club life, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. She refused to have anything to do with the club or the people he loved there. Never came to family barbeques or got to know the other women. He had hoped that things would change once they had kids because she would want some support. But he said they had been trying for years, but that it just hadn’t happened for them.
I wondered now, if it wouldn’t have changed anything if I had known that his Dahlia had been my Dahlia. I wondered if I would have given better advice, or if I would still have been good friends with him. Would I have told him that she had been the only woman I had ever loved? That before him, there had been me, and Dahlia and I had planned a life together. We had planned futures and careers, and just like him, we had planned families. I wondered if he had met her parents and if they had liked him, because they had always fucking loved me.
I stared at the closed wooden door, knowing that Dahlia was on the other side of it, and I wondered what would happen now.
She hated me, and rightly so. Like everything else in my life, she was another thing that I had messed up. We had made promises to each other, and then I had walked away. In her eyes, it probably looked like I never gave her a second thought. That when I had left, promising to be back within a week, that I had lied to her because I had never returned.
She didn’t know the truth though.
She didn’t know that I had come back, and I had seen her with our friends. I had watched her reading under a tree on our college campus like she was in some Jane fucking Austen novel. That I had secretly watched her over the years.
I had watched Dahlia for weeks after I left, wishing that I could go to her. Wishing that my path had been different. That I could still be following the same route as she was. Trying to find a way to make it work. She didn’t see the tears in my eyes when I finally acknowledged that it could never work.
Being with Dahlia would have put her in harm’s way. Sebastion had gotten himself in with the wrong people, and they wanted compensation for this shitstorm he had left behind. He couldn’t do it on his own, so I had gone with him, ruining my own life in the hopes that I could save his. But in the end it hadn’t mattered. I found out too late that the people he had been dealing with had never intended to forgive his slip. They had beaten him to within an inch of his life, leaving him all but braindead. I had killed every last one of them, knowing with each bloodthirsty kill that I had lost Dahlia for good. That I could never go back to her—not with the amount of blood on my hands.
In the space of a week, my life had been ruined. I had murdered people, lost the love of my life, and my brother was in a coma. A coma he remained in until three months ago when the hospital had forced my hand and we had switched off the machines that had kept him alive.
I had blown up my life to save his, and now he was dead.
That was the story of my life: always one step too late.
The door of the cabin opened and Dahlia looked out, our eyes connecting like they had so long ago. Only now there was nothing but anger in her gaze.
I stared at the woman I still loved, her long red hair gone, and I saw the woman from twenty years ago looking back. And despite my love for Rocky and the friendship we had shared, I vowed in that moment that I would get Dahlia back. She was here, my second chance at life and love; how could I not? I would do anything for my club, give anything, be anything, but I knew now, despite everything they had given to me and everything they had done for me, that if it came to a choice between them or her, it would be her every time.
Dahlia had given Rocky many ultimatums, and he had always chosen the club, and each time she had forgiven him and stayed. His loyalty was strong to his brothers, as was mine. And her loyalty had been to her husband. But how many times in a lifetime did a man have to lose out? How many times could a man come back from a broken heart? And looking at her now, I wondered how many times she would allow the men she cared about to choose the club over her.
I had not chosen her once before, but I wouldn’t do it again.
I vowed right there and then to try and get her to see the good the club did, to get her to open up to them, and to me. I vowed to win her back, and this time I would never leave.
It was time to put my life back together. To put it back on track. To choose the path I should have all those years before. I wasn’t a selfish man, but it was time to be a little selfish. Rocky was my brother, and I loved him through all his faults, but Dahlia was mine…she always had been, he just hadn’t known he was keeping her safe for a little while. But now I was cashing in my chips and taking her back.