16.
Dahlia
I heated up the leftover stew from the previous night and settled down in front of the fire with another bottle of beer. The sound of the fireplace crackling and popping was the only thing I could hear, and I was grateful.
My thoughts had been silent since my walk in the forest, and I was glad of the solitude. Or I would be had I been alone. Instead, I knew that Matt was just outside my door, alone.
The shock I had first felt when I saw him had morphed from anger to now curiosity, and I wanted to unravel my thoughts, unpicking them as I wondered what he had actually been doing all these years. Surely he hadn’t given up on us for the sake of the club. He hadn’t even known them back then. At least I hadn’t thought he had. But what did I really know about the men in my life?
I lifted the spoon to my lips, but my thoughts strayed to Matt outside on his own, and I lowered it back into the bowl.
He was probably hungry; I hadn’t seen him bring any bags with him. And I bet he was cold now; the temperature had dropped over the last couple of hours. Cold and hungry outside all on his own… I smiled, and hoped he was suffering at least a little. Because whatever he was feeling, it couldn’t be any worse than what I had been through, or what I had been feeling all these years.
I angrily forced a spoonful of food past my lips, chewing minimally before swallowing it down. It stuck in my throat, my own body betraying me. But when I tried with the second spoonful, it just made me feel sick. I slammed the bowl down and stood up, going to the window and peering around the closed curtain, careful so he didn’t know I was checking on him. All I needed was to see that he was okay out there and I would be able to eat in peace.
Only when I looked, he didn’t look okay. He had a fire burning, and something was cooking over the top of it. His tent was up, and he’d set up some lights around it, and Matt was sitting on the log I had seen him on earlier, a bottle of beer in his hand, and he was staring at it intently.
Frowning, I sat down on the small window ledge, watching him, and hating that instead of feeling just angry, a small part of me felt pity. He looked so sad and lost. His gaze staring at the bottle in his hands, his expression almost tortured. My thoughts strayed to what might be troubling him. Was it me? Was it regret for what he had done? What he had lost? Or was he thinking of Alex, his friend, and that he was dead? Matt hadn’t ever had many people in his life: a brother he hadn’t really spoken of much, other than to say they weren’t that close, and parents who he talked about even less because, in his words, they were the worst parents imaginable.
I wondered, though I knew I shouldn’t, who Matt had been able to talk to all these years. Had he had someone? Had he loved and been loved? Or had he been alone all this time, just his club and his bike to keep him company? I found myself hoping that he hadn’t. He might have broken my heart, for reasons I still didn’t know and didn’t care to, but Matt had once had a good heart. A pure heart. He could make anyone feel good about themselves. He had the sort of magic that only came along every now and then, and it would hurt me even more to know that it had been wasted all these years. That the special talent he had for making someone feel like the only person in the room that mattered had gone to waste.
After fifteen or so minutes, he still hadn’t moved, and curiosity finally got the better of me. I grabbed the log basket from beside the fireplace and headed outside to gather some from the already chopped pile. Matt looked over slowly as I left the cabin, like he was coming out of a daze. His gaze followed me over to the log pile, watching as I put the basket down and began to load some of the wood into it.
I felt, rather than heard him come closer; his heavy presence was overwhelming in the dark night, and my heart began to race at him being so close. It felt almost intimate now that it was nighttime. The sun had gone, and the moon was oppressive.
When he didn’t speak I decided to let him know that I knew he was there. And let him know exactly what I was thinking.
“I don’t need your help,” I said with irritation.
“Who said I was coming to help?”
I rolled my eyes and turned to look at him. “Why are you even here, Matt?”
He grabbed a couple of logs and picked them up. “I told you—I’m keeping you safe until the Kings catch the bastards who shot up your house.”
“Well, you can go, because no one knows about this place. This was Alex’s little secret. The only gift his dad ever gave him.” I placed another log in the basket. It was getting too full, but for some reason I just couldn’t walk away. Instead, I felt forced to stay there and talk to him. To snipe at him in any way I could.
“I knew about it,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “The Kings did too. That means others could know about it.”
Alex had always told me that this was his secret hideout. A place where he could go to forget the world. He had said that no one else knew about it. After looking around the cabin today, I had thought my husband a liar because of some of the things I had found. Now I had definite confirmation of it. But it made no difference. It was just another thing to be angry with him about. Another thing he had lied over. Another thing I couldn’t do anything about.
“His dad did give it to him, but it was the Kings who had financed the build for it,” Matt said.
I wasn’t sure I believed him on that, and my expression must have said as much because Matt cocked a dark eyebrow at me.
“What? You think I’m lying?”
I shrugged noncommittedly and threw another log in the basket. “Why would the Kings finance anything for his dad?”
Matt looked confused before he spoke again. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
He smiled. It was the kind of smile that used to make my heart grow warm and heavy, but now it just annoyed me. “Rocky’s dad was a King. Rocky joined the club because of him. Wanted to make his old man proud.”
I frowned, confused and a little annoyed that he was telling me something I should have already known about my own husband.
I threw another log in the basket, my thoughts swimming. It made sense now, though, when I thought about it. The reason Rocky would never give the club up—it wasn’t about his stubbornness, or his obsession with the club and the men in it. It was because his dad was a member. Rocky had said when we had first met and we had been talking about parents that he and his dad didn’t have a lot in common so they had never had a typical father/son relationship. The club had given him something that connected him to his dad. Why had he never told me that, I wondered.
“You won’t be able to carry that,” Matt said, jerking his head toward the basket of wood on the ground.
I looked down at it, seeing that I had definitely overfilled it. “I’ll be fine, thank you.”
I would not be fine.
I reached down and gripped both handles before lifting it up with a grunt. I staggered a step or two, and then another couple of steps before stopping briefly to catch my breath. The handles were digging painfully into my hands, but I refused to admit that he was right.
“I can carry it for you,” he offered, coming up beside me. He was holding two logs for his own fire, which he threw over to his small campsite. It didn’t matter that he sounded sincere in helping, or that I was struggling; the truth was I didn’t want his help.
“I’ve got it,” I replied shortly.
“It looks heavy.”
“It is.” I picked it up again and staggered another step or two.
“If you’ll just let me—” He reached for the basket, but the second his hands touched mine I jerked back like I had been burned from his touch, dropping the basket entirely.
“I said I’ve got it!” I snapped. I glared it him, my chest heaving from both exertion and anger.
“Jesus, okay.” He stepped back, holding his hands up in surrender. “Fucking hell, Dahl, just chill out.”
“Chill out?” I glowered. “How dare you, Matt. Who do you think you are?”
He shook his head and looked away. It was clear that he was trying to control his temper, but I would have preferred him to just say what he wanted to say, because his silence was more infuriating.
I pointed a finger at him. “You show up here—after all this time—offering to help me like you have any right, like you know all about helping people.” I snorted on a laugh and continued. “You know how you could have helped me, Matt?”
“How?” he asked, his eyes pleading.
“By coming home to me twenty years ago!” I shouted, my words echoing through the trees. The more I spoke, the angrier I was getting, until my anger felt like an inferno ready to explode. And Matt was in the firing line.
“Dahl,” he began, but I cut him off.
“No, Matt. Just…just no.”
I just wanted him to shut up. I had waited twenty years for a reason, and now he was here and could give me one. He could give me my explanation…but I found I didn’t want it anymore. I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. I already had so much going on inside me. The loss of Alex, the shootout at my house, not to mention that I had tried to shoot JD… I didn’t have any space for Matt in me. All my heartache had gone on someone else now.
Silence fell between us as we stood and stared at one another. I felt a bubble of grief flow through my chest, my throat tightening. No, I could not cry because of this man. I wouldn’t. I had cried for months after he left me—he had had all the tears I would give him.
“Dahlia, please—” he began. His large hands, palms up, reached for me but I staggered away from him, my basket of chopped logs forgotten.
“No.” I shook my head. “Don’t touch me. You had your chance. Go home, Matt, there’s nothing here for you anymore.”
I turn and ran from him, heading back inside the cabin. When I got there, I slammed the door closed behind me, resting my back upon it as the tears I had been holding back finally came. I tried to swallow them down. Tried to push them away. But they came regardless. I thought he’d had all my tears, but apparently I was wrong. Matt could still hurt me, even after all this time.
I slid down the closed door and put my head in my hands, wondering why I was crying for the man that had broken my heart twenty years ago and not for my husband who I would have to bury in the next couple of days.
Footsteps moved around outside, and I listened as I tried to force my tears to stop. I wasn’t sure what has more painful—that the man I had loved was so close after all this time, or the fact that I thought I still might love him after everything he had put me through.
Worse still was that Matt being there was making me forget my love for Alex.