Chapter 8
Vector
Getting off my bike, my hand moves toward the pocket in my vest, but I resist the urge to check my phone. Next, I resist the urge to plant my fist in Piercer’s face when I hear him chuckle. It’s undoubtedly because Roman was mocking me, but of the two he has the slower reflexes.
Sloane has barely responded to any of my messages over the past week, and if it weren’t for Paul coming out to look at the work I want done on Bridget’s home, I’d wonder if she hadn’t left the state.
The old guy’s been relatively closed-lipped about her, so I’ve respected that, but I am not prepared to walk away from what I feel when I’m with Sloane. For all I thought that I fucked up my only chance at happiness all those years ago, now, in my heart, I know that I could never walk away from Sloane.
I’m just opening the door when the sound of another motorcycle reaches me, and I turn to see Cowboy pulling into the lot.
The last time I saw him, he was in a truck that was pulling a trailer full of goats—so I’m pretty relieved we don’t have to deal with that nonsense this time around.
Me and my brothers came down this way, following up on a lead on our missing goods when I got a text from Cowboy. He was concluding some business but had a message for us, so we took a fifty-mile detour, bringing us deeper into North Carolina, to save him the ride into Virginia.
“Hey,” I say, turning to Piercer, handing him a twenty before nodding to a worn picnic table at the side of the parking lot. “Why don’t you go get four coffees and meet us over there?”
Roman gives me a knowing look, and I once again tell myself that he should know about my leg. That it’s something that could affect all of us if the cramps come when shit is hitting the fan.
I stay standing, occasionally putting a foot on the bench to stretch my leg while we talk with Cowboy. The news he has is solid, and will save us from dipping down into the Satan’s Knights territory again, but it’s not going to help us tie up any loose ends.
At least not today.
Heading home, my pulse jumps when a call comes in over the Bluetooth, but I’m disappointed when I hear Paul’s voice.
“You on the road?” he asks me without greeting.
“Yeah, should be back in a couple of hours.”
“Good, good. I was hoping you could do me a favor. See, Sloane’s truck is in the shop, and I’m supposed to pick her up from work, but I, ah, a friend of mine wants to have dinner tonight,” he says and I grin to myself, liking where this is going. “Anyway, the two of you have been moping around all week, so I thought you could pick her up for me. Maybe keep her busy for a couple of hours, if you don’t mind?”
I grunt, not exactly pleased with the term that he used as it applies to me, but happy enough with the outcome.
“Just tell me what time she gets off.” I end the call as soon as he tells me.
Rolling the throttle, my bike momentarily surges ahead of Roman and Piercer, until they catch up to me. I’ll have just enough time for a hot bath and to organize a few things as it is.
*
“What are you doing here?” she asks me, slowing down when she catches sight of me outside the building where she works. There’s a little frown pulling her lips down as she looks around.
“Paul called and asked if I could pick you up.” My comment pulls her concern-filled gaze back to me. “You know when you’re a kid and you’re trying to sound like you have a sore-throat to get out of going to school? That’s what he sounded like when he explained that you had to drop your truck off at the garage today, and you needed a ride.”
“You’re sure he’s alright?”
“He suggested I take you for dinner, so I’m wondering if he has a date he doesn’t want you to know about,” I drawl out my reply.
Sloane lets out a small humph before giving me her first real smile since she caught sight of me. “I think he likes you.”
“Well, I’m a likeable guy,” I tell her, trying to keep a straight face. That only lasts a second before she lets out a laugh.
“I’m sure there are dozens of people who would disagree with that,” she sasses back, coming to a stop when we’re nearly toe-to-toe.
“I can live with that, as long as you aren’t one of them,” I reply with a shrug, enjoying the view when I blatantly look down at the view into her V-neck shirt, but stubbornly refusing to initiate physical contact with her. “But you have been a bit elusive lately, so I don’t want to push my luck.”
“I like you juuust fine,” she answers, leaning up to softly kiss my lips. “Where are we going for dinner?”
“Hop on and you’ll see,” I tell her, handing her a helmet. My saddlebags are stuffed, so I help her get her arm through the other strap of her backpack before she joins me on my hog.
Then we’re off, leaving town behind us as she snuggles into my back. I’d forgotten this feeling, the complete trust of a beautiful woman, the soft feel of her curves pressed against my body as I speed down the country roads I’ve long since memorized.
A half an hour later, I turn off onto an overgrown dirt path; it’s little more than a couple of tire ruts that lead the way down to a riverbend. I keep my ears open, expecting her to question where I’m taking her, but she just cranes her head up, taking in the area around us.
“It’s beautiful here,” she murmurs after I’ve set the kickstand and turned off the bike.
Helping her off, I stay in place for a moment, unsure if I made the right call bringing her here as memories of the other times I’ve spent in this spot wash over me.
“Do you want to go?” she quietly asks me after a few moments and I shake my head, finally ready to make new memories.
“No, sorry,” I whisper, picking up her delicate hand with chipped nail polish and placing a kiss in her palm before I turn to my saddlebags. “Here, take the blanket and find us a spot. I’ve got sandwiches.”
With my hands and pockets full, I turn to see her spreading the blue blanket out near a fallen log.
“I didn’t take you for a picnic kind of guy,” she says as I kneel beside her and release everything into a pile between us.
“I had enough of people today, so this seemed like the best option for dinner,” I tell her, pulling the flask out of the inner pocket of my cut to toss that into the pile also.
“That’s possibly the sweetest thing you’ve said to me,” she answers with a laugh, before reaching for the flask. Unscrewing it, she holds it to her nose for a whiff before taking a small sip— next she’s got her eyes squeezed together as she waves her hand in the air. “Ugh.”
“It’ll grow on ya,” I reply with a laugh as I reach for it, hoping she doesn’t spill my homemade whiskey as she struggles to breathe. “Hopefully, I will too.”
“I like you, Andrew,” she softly confesses as she scoots closer to me, intertwining our hands. “A lot.”
“But?” I push her, wanting to know where I stand.
Instead of answering me, she reaches one hand over to pick up one of the subs I had gotten us. Pulling her other hand from mine, she unwraps it to investigate the contents.
“Roast beef is mine,” I growl, shooting her a wink as I yank it away from her. “Got you turkey with bacon.”
We take our first few bites in silence, and I’m once again determined to wait her out.
“Pops didn’t need me to move here to help him,” she finally whispers, more to herself than to me. “I finally realized it that day you had us out to the party, but I haven’t wanted to admit that so I don’t feel like a coward.”
I nod, having already seen the man with a tool set and out driving around. Paul didn’t seem like he was incapacitated in any way.
“After Billy’s death, I just felt like I was suffocating. Beau and Austin being around helped for a couple of weeks, but after they went back out on the rig, I packed and drove up here. Dad and Mom went to church, and I just left them a note. I couldn’t even face them to say goodbye.” Tears are flowing down Sloane’s cheeks as she tells me how she left home.
Her sandwich falls to the side as she covers her face in an effort to hold back her sobs and I reach over, pulling her onto my lap. I don’t know much about Billy, or any struggles he had before the explosion, but I have an inkling of the pain he experienced in the aftermath, and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
Even if I knew what to say to her, I couldn’t get the words out right now as it occurs to me that, years ago, I caused this kind of pain to another woman.
Like Billy, I was too wrapped up in my own trauma to consider those who would have eased my way back into the life I knew.
The longer I sit with her in my arms, I finally realize that she doesn’t need me to say anything. Knowing her grandfather a bit, I’m sure nothing I could come up with would be anything that her parents or brothers haven’t said before anyway.
In this moment, I know with absolute certainty that I’m being given a chance to right a wrong.
It’s not a second chance with an old flame.
I’m sure as hell not the man I was back then, and who knows if Grace and I would even have anything in common anymore. I know the loneliness I’ve felt over the years was of my own making, but in a very short period of time the woman in my arms—here and now—has already eased that feeling more than she’ll ever understand.
Somehow the universe put Sloane in my path, and I feel connected to her on a level that I’ve never felt with anyone in my life. If I can do one thing right, and I know there’s no erasing the loss she experienced, maybe we can help each other heal.
“He was a selfish asshole to leave you. Leave your whole family, I mean,” I finally say, and she stiffens in my arms, her head hitting my chin as she turns her glare up at me.
I don’t know what it is she sees in my eyes, but her words die on her lips.
“He was. And I was.” I get those words out before turning to look at the spot Grace and I used to picnic; where we spent entire afternoons exploring each other’s bodies.
“I should have died in that fucking desert,” I tell her. “I wished for death every day for months afterwards. Stuck in that goddamn bed, on my stomach because my backside was burned to shit. You know they sometimes put IEDs in animal carcasses? That way, even if you live, the infection from the rotting flesh might still get ya.”
“The woman you used to picnic with here,” Sloane says, piecing it all together. “What happened to her?”
“I don’t know. My mail was rerouted to me in the hospital, but I had the nurses toss the letters away. Never once tried to open my old email address either,” I respond, looking down at Sloane so she can see what a bastard I was. Hell, maybe still am.
“My father was down as my next of kin,” I continue. “If you told that man you didn’t want to talk, he would walk away until you were ready. That’s what he did, from the time a nurse brought me a phone a couple of weeks after the explosion until almost two years later when I finally decided to come home.”
“You never tried to find her?”
“No. It took that long for me to be able to fake being whole in front of my family, I sure as fuck wasn’t up for the look of disgust on her face when she saw me naked.”
“Granted it was a quickie that first time, but I was a little peeved you barely lowered your jeans,” Sloane tells me, nudging me with her shoulder.
“Yeah, I caught that. And there I was like a schoolboy, fucking you against a door after years of only getting head.” I can see the shock on her face when she truly registers my confession. I may have come close to saying it to her the other day, but now seems as good a time as any for her to know that.
“One of the hardest things for me is that I can’t ever get any closure. I’m somehow just supposed to button up my feelings and go on with my life without him.” More than her words, I understand what she isn’t saying.
It isn’t the first time in the past decade I considered looking Grace up, but at this point, wouldn’t I just be cutting open an old wound? And dousing it with salt. Is the next thought that pops into my head.
“What about your family? Have you seen any of them since you moved up here?” I ask and feel her nod her head against my chest.
“Beau came up here this past Christmas,” she whispers, and I hear her stomach rumble. “I don’t think I’d ever spent time with just him before. Billy, yes, but Beau and Austin are a year apart and always together. I guess they didn’t want to crowd me.”
“I’ve been wondering how badly I’ve been crowding you.” My words come out as a statement, and she pushes away from me long enough to maneuver around so she’s sitting facing me with her legs circling my hips.
“I appreciate that you’re not like your father,” she slowly responds. “Things got pretty real the other night and I needed to wrap my head around it. Us, I mean.”
“How I live? It’s not always an easy life, but what I’ve been thinking more and more since I met you is that I’ve got to stop punishing myself. I have fucked up along the way, that aside, I’d like to think I’ve also done some good things.” This is not the conversation I expected to have today, I think to myself. Honestly, I thought we’d be fucking by this point, but since I’ve come this far, “If you can’t see yourself making a life with me, here in Virginia and with the MC, I’d like to know now. We go our own ways, no hard feelings.”
Tears well up in Sloane’s eyes again and just before dread overtakes me, she leans up to kiss me. I’m so shocked, I’m just starting to react when she pulls back.
“You can’t ghost me, Andrew,” she growls at me, fire back in her gaze even as a tear runs down her face. “No matter what, because I will come after you and I won’t be coming alone.”
I let out a laugh before I start to kiss away her tears, until I realize what her threat means. “Wait a minute, do you have cousins too?”
“My cousins outnumber your Northern Grizzlies,” she answers with a nod, and I realize she doesn’t know about the other chapters—not that I’m getting into a pissing war over this, not when she’s agreed to be mine.
We sit in each other’s arms, gently kissing each other until I know I need to stand up. “Babe, I think the ants are making off with our dinner.”
After giving me another squeeze, she scoots backwards to start repackaging the food and allowing me to stand and stretch.