23. Sara
SARA
The rumble faded south and the river went quiet again, but my pulse was still hammering and my hands were still shaking.
When the last echo of their engines disappeared behind the tree line my lungs finally remembered how to work.
I pushed away from Garret and waded toward the shore to get to my phone.
The thought cut through everything else. Kip was at the house with Danny, and if Tony had gone there before coming to the river?—
"I need my phone," I said, stomping up the steep incline where water normally lapped on these rocks. My jeans were in a heap on the gravel and my hands fumbled through the pockets until my fingers closed around the screen. Water ran down my belly and thighs as my thumbs typed.
Sara: 10:42 PM: Is Kip okay? How are things going?
The seconds between sending and receiving felt longer than the whole evening had been so far.
I'd told Danny I was checking on things at the diner and planned to stay late to clean up the pantry. An all-out lie, but he didn’t question me.
I figured he knew I was meeting up with Garret and after the showdown between me and Andy, Danny wasn't brave enough to say a word.
Danny: 10:42 PM: He's fine. Sleeping. Everything good?
I heaved out a sigh of relief and closed my eyes for a few seconds before typing a response.
Sara: 10:43 PM: Yes fine. Just checking in.
Garret had followed me out of the water.
He stood on the gravel a few feet away, watching me patiently.
It made my chest ache because he didn't know anything about Tony's threats or why I couldn’t leave.
When he confessed to wanting me here and wanting to go public with our relationship I almost lost it and told him everything.
But the last thing I wanted was him going off half-cocked and chasing Tony down only to get himself killed too.
"Everything okay?" he asked.
"Yeah," I lied, nodding for emphasis while I tried to plaster a fake smile on my face. "Danny's got things handled."
He walked over to me, hovering behind me as the breeze started to chill me and all I could think about was what he'd said.
If only it were that simple. I could have the very thing I wanted to have—me and him together, a happy life where I felt safe and protected.
But it wasn't that simple. It was the farthest thing from simple that I could think of.
"I need to think about it, Garret." I shook out my pants and pulled my underwear down the legs and off, then started to pull them on, but Garret walked past me heading toward his bike, but naked.
I straightened as I turned my jeans out and watched him pull a few blankets out of his saddle bags, then turn back to me.
He tossed one out on the grass, spreading it on a soft patch, then reached for me.
As much as I wanted to put on my pants and run home to be with my baby boy, my heart was torn. I also wanted to be right here with the man I loved. So I took his hand and let him guide me toward the blanket.
I lay down next to him on my back looking up at the stars overhead that twinkled against the clear sky.
Life had gotten so complicated. I felt locked away from true connection with Garret all because of Tony and the lie I was keeping from everyone.
It wasn't my secret to worry about, and maybe telling the police was the best thing for me.
But if the club found out Tony was under investigation it could go two ways.
They could believe me and push him out, rallying around my family to protect us.
Or they could think I was lying and send club members to silence me.
I had to take those threats seriously and protect myself.
I had a little boy to think of, not just my parents or Garret.
They were all important, but Kip had his whole life ahead of him. I had to be his shield and defense.
"What is it?" Garret asked again, but I shrugged my shoulders and pretended I was fine.
"Just thinking… I don't know how to feel right now."
"Let me help you then." Garret leaned down and kissed me as his hand, draped over my belly, slid around my hip and pulled me into him. We'd just had sex less than half an hour ago, but I could feel him swelling against my thigh.
His mouth moved from my lips to my jaw and then down the side of my neck, and the hand on my hip tightened, pulling me flush against him until there was no space left between us.
I wasn't as aroused as I had been the first time, but instead of feeling the desperate need to be close to him, this time I felt a deep desire to feel connected. Not just sex—this was emotional.
My back arched into him and his hand slid from my hip down to my thigh, gripping the muscle there and hitching my leg up over his hip. The new angle pressed him directly against my center and the friction through the damp cotton made me groan into his mouth.
Garret didn't rush. His fingers traced up the inside of my thigh and found the edge of my underwear, slipping under the fabric and dragging through moisture he found there.
Two fingers parted me and stroked spreading the wetness upward and circling my clit until my hips were rocking against his hand on their own.
"Do you think it'll work again so soon?" I breathed, and his mouth swallowed the whimper that came when his fingers pushed inside me.
"Yeah, baby, I can make it work…" His beard tickled my chest as his lips danced over my nipples, and his fingers kept working me.
My hand found his dick swelling and wrapped around it, stroking in rhythm with the motion of his fingers. He groaned against my neck and his hips pushed into my grasp, thickening in my palm until the need to have him inside me again eclipsed everything else.
He hooked his fingers into the waistband of my underwear and dragged them down my thighs. My legs kicked free of them and then his body rolled over mine, settling between my thighs with his forearms braced on either side of my head.
"I never get enough of this," he growled against my neck and sucked on my skin.
Then his hips shifted and I guided him into my entrance.
He pushed in, filling me inch by inch, and my body was tender and swollen, every nerve was amplified, turning each fraction of movement into something almost too intense.
"Oh holy…" I groaned, letting my eyes flutter shut.
He bottomed out and held still, forehead pressed against mine.
Our breathing tangled together in the narrow space between our mouths, and when he finally started to move the pace was slow and sensual, not at all like earlier.
This was different. His hips rolled against mine, savoring it, drawing out every stroke and grinding at the deepest point before pulling back and doing it again.
"I need you, Sara… I'm telling you I can't let you just run away to play bikes with your brothers.
My heart belongs to you and if you take off with it, I'll never be the same.
" Garret covered my lips with his before I could respond, but I didn't know what to say anyway. I moaned into it and clung to him.
My legs wrapped around his waist and my heels pressed into the backs of his thighs, urging him deeper.
One of his hands slid down my side and gripped my hip, angling me upward so every thrust dragged against my front wall, massaging me and pushing me toward the edge.
When he drove in, his pelvis pressed into my clit at the bottom of each stroke.
The pressure built gradually, winding tighter with each pass until my thighs were trembling against his ribs and my fingers were digging into his shoulders.
His pace stayed steady even as my breathing fractured and my hips started chasing him, grinding up to meet every stroke with a desperation that my body couldn't hide.
"I told you I could make it work again, baby," he whispered. "Now let loose. Make my dick drip."
My orgasm broke open low in my belly and radiated outward in slow, rolling waves that clenched me around him and pulled a moan from deep in my chest. Tears came to my eyes, but this time they were because of how happy this man had made me.
Garret held me through it, his thumb circling gently while my body pulsed and tightened around him, and when the last tremor rippled through me his rhythm finally changed.
His thrusts shortened and his breathing went ragged against my neck.
Then his body tensed and buried himself deep and held there while I felt him pulsing and filling me.
When he pulled out and relaxed beside me I could see sleep creeping in around the edges, stealing his attention.
He lay beside me, curled around me while is sex drained from my body and sadness wrapped me in its grip.
His arm draped across my stomach and his breathing was slowing against my shoulder, but he wasn't asleep yet. His thumb rubbed back and forth on my hip and his lips brushed the top of my head, and when he spoke he sounded drowsy, almost drugged.
"You know why I kept you away for so long?" he asked.
"Because you're stubborn," I said, trying to sound lighter than I felt by making a joke.
He chuckled but then got serious as he said, "Because this life's dangerous, Sara.
Every time I ride out with those guys there's a real chance I don't come back, and the thought of you sitting at home waiting for a phone call telling you I'm dead somewhere on the side of the road makes me sick.
" His thumb stopped moving on my hip. "And when club conflicts spill over they don't stay inside the club.
They reach the people connected to us. If someone figured out you were mine, you'd become a target, and I couldn't stomach that. "
"So you pushed me away," I said.
"I was too scared to pull you close." He tightened his arm around me. "But I talked to Fox earlier today, about Mandy… Losing her killed him."
The mention of Mandy's name made fear seep into my muscles, and I clenched my jaw to avoid trembling. Garret didn't notice, or if he did he read it as the cool air settling over my bare skin.
"That man has been dead inside for four years," Garret continued, "sitting in his own shop with a bottle on his knee while somebody else runs his club.
He loved her more than anything and losing her gutted him, and watching that made me realize I was heading down the same road.
Loving you from a distance and pretending it was enough was making me miserable, Sara. I don't want to end up where Fox is."
Every word he said carved deeper into the guilt that was already eating me alive.
Fox was grieving a wife whose murderer sat at his table and drank his whiskey and called himself a brother.
I was the only person who knew that but I was too scared to tell anyone.
Meanwhile, Garret was this tough guy who never shared his feelings about anything and he was admitting to being afraid.
Him—afraid.
I was a real coward.
"I want to keep things between us quiet for a while though," Garret said.
"The feud with the Locusts is getting uglier by the day and I need to get the club behind me before we go public.
Once things settle down and I've got the backing, we can stop sneaking around and tell Fox. But until then, nobody can know."
"Garret," I said quietly, like for some reason I knew Tony would hear me all the way from town and come hunting. "What if the Black Locusts didn't kill Mandy?"
Garret shushed me, then turned my head to look at him. "Sara, we don't have to talk about any of that tonight, okay?"
"But what if someone else?—"
"Hey." He shifted onto his side and his hand found my face, cupping my cheek.
His eyes were soft and tired and he pressed his lips to my forehead and held them there.
"I don't want to talk club business right now.
I've been talking club business every day for four years and tonight I don't want any of it.
Tonight I want to hold you and listen to the water and fall asleep next to you. Can we do that?"
All Garret wanted was to ignore the facts he'd been facing for years, and I wanted to finally admit them. But as if the hand of fate had reached down and touched my tongue, fear shut me down. I couldn't say another word.
"Okay," I whispered. "Alright."
His arm pulled me tighter against his chest and his breathing deepened within minutes, slowing into the long steady rhythm of real sleep. His grip on my hip loosened and his face went slack, more peaceful than I'd seen him in a long time, and then light snoring rumbled his chest.
For a long time I stayed pressed against him, listening to his heartbeat and memorizing the feel of his arm around me, because I didn't know when I'd feel it again.
When his breathing told me he was fully under, my body slid carefully from under his arm.
My clothes were scattered across the gravel and I gathered them piece by piece, pulling on my jeans and my top while my hands shook.
His phone was still buried in his jeans pocket, which I pulled out and turned to silent.
Then I typed up a quick message letting him know why I wasn't here.
Sara: 12:14 AM: I'm so sorry I had to leave. Danny called and I couldn't stay. I'll think about everything you said tonight. Please don't be upset with me.
I shoved his phone back into his pocket and put his clothing in a neat pile right beside him, then covered him gently with the second blanket. After I was dressed, I walked quietly to my dirtbike parked along the tree line to the north, and started pushing it across the dirt track toward the road.
When I was far enough away that the bike raring to life wouldn’t wake him, I climbed on and kicked it to life. The road opened up ahead of me and the darkness swallowed me and the tears that started streaming down my cheeks.
He'd given me everything I'd ever wanted tonight, and I was riding away from it because the truth I was carrying would destroy him, and the man who held that truth over me would kill us both before he'd let it come to light.
And all of that was without mentioning anything about Kip.
What would Garret do when Tony told him I had his baby in secret?