Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ellie
“What about the girls?”
“They’re staying with my parents tonight. I’ll pick them up in the morning.”
He was upset. I wasn’t sure why, but I could tell it was something. We pulled into the parking lot at the clubhouse, and Ryder turned off the truck. When he turned to open his door, I grabbed his arm.
“What’s wrong?”
He turned to look at me. “We need to go in.”
That was all he said, before getting out of the truck and walking around to my side. When I opened my door, he stood there, holding his hand out to me.
Placing my hand in his, I climbed down, expecting him to hold my hand as we walked into the clubhouse. Instead, he dropped my hand as soon as my feet hit the ground.
Something was definitely wrong.
Ryder walked toward the front door, and I followed. I could hear the music as we reached the door, but as soon as we walked in the noise stopped and the silence was deafening.
“Hi, Ellie. How are you?” King asked.
Ryder left my side and went to the bar. King watched him walk away. When he looked back at me, I could tell he was as confused as I was.
“I’m ok, considering. Is Sebbie here?”
King looked over at the bar again, but Ryder never turned around. I tried not to let his behavior get to me. We could talk later. Right now, I needed to talk to my brother.
“Yea, he’s in church. Come on,” King said, guiding me over to the wooden double doors.
Before opening the doors, King turned back to the bar.
“Ryder, you coming?”
I turned to look at him, but Ryder kept his back to us.
“Nope, she needs to talk to her brother.”
King looked down at me, raising an eyebrow. I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t know what crawled up his ass, and at that moment, I didn’t care. I had bigger issues at hand than his tantrum about nothing.
King pushed open the door, and I followed him inside. There were numerous men sitting around a large wooden table. I recognized Jack, Blade, and Cash, and of course, Sebbie. But I hadn’t met the others.
Sebbie stood up and walked over to me hesitantly. When he stood before me, he waited a beat before gathering me in his arms.
“I’m so sorry, Bellie.”
I wrapped my arms around my brother’s neck as the tears I was trying to hold back let loose. He had been gone for so long. Thirteen years since I had heard his voice, hugged him, talked to him.
“Sebbie,” I cried.
“It’s ok. I’m here.” He pulled back and looked me over. “You grew up, kid.”
I barked out a laugh. “Yea, people tend to do that.”
“I want you to know I wanted to take you with me. You were too young. I knew they wouldn’t come after me, but if I’d taken you with me, they never would have given up. I also kept track of you. Well, Nav did. If I had known what they were trying to do, I would have come for you. I should have come for you when you were eighteen. Why didn’t you leave then?”
“I couldn’t. I needed money.”
“But your trust fund,” Sebbie said.
Shaking my head, I explained, “I couldn’t get it until I got my degree. It was one of the stipulations.”
“Is that what they told you? Ellie, you could have accessed it at eighteen. Gramps set it up for eighteen, so we could leave if we needed to.”
“They lied to me. They said Gramps wanted me to get a degree, so I would never have to rely on a man. Son of a bitch.”
I couldn’t believe my parents lied to me.
Well, thinking about who they were, I could believe it.
“Ok, let’s get this shit figured out,” King said. “Patch will be here soon and can do the evaluation. Then, in the morning, you can be at the clerk’s office first thing.”
“Where the fuck is Ryder?” Sebbie asked.
“Out at the bar,” I said quietly.
Blade stood up and walked out the door. Sebbie pulled out a chair for me to sit in and then sat down next to me. A moment later, Blade walked back in, followed by Ryder.
I watched as he walked over and sat on the other side of me. He didn’t say a word. I reached over, taking his hand in mine. He turned to look at me, and there was that look again.
He looked sad.
Another tear slid down my cheek, and Ryder moved closer, wiping it away with his thumb.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
“We’ll talk later,” he whispered back, kissing the side of my head.
I took a deep breath and turned to the front of the room.
“Ok, Nav what do you have?”
“I’ve been watching the airlines.” Nav turned to look at Sebbie. “Your parents have booked the ten-a.m. flight out of JFK. St. Matthews will be with them.”
“Dec reached out to Judge Markham. He has agreed to come here in the morning. So you two will go get the license and immediately come back here.”
“Is getting married the only option?” I asked.
Ryder pulled his hand from mine.
Standing from his chair, I watched him walk out of the room without a word.
“Bellie, you don’t want to marry Ryder?” Sebbie asked.
Yes, I wanted to marry him. More than anything.
“Ellie, Ryder led us to believe you two were together. Is that not the case?” King asked.
I looked over at Jack, then Blade. They both knew what was happening between Ryder and me.
Looking back at my brother, I wasn’t sure how to tell him what I needed to say. I didn’t want to talk in front of everyone, but I didn’t have a choice.
“Bellie, talk to me.”
“I love him, Sebbie. But we can’t get married because of fear. I left after college because I refused to get married out of a distorted sense of duty. I won’t ask Ryder to do something I wasn’t willing to do.”
“You didn’t ask him.”
I looked over at Blade. His eyes were on the table not me.
“What?”
He looked up at me and repeated what he said.
“You didn’t ask him to do anything. None of us did. This was his idea.”
“Because he wants to keep me safe.”
“No, because he loves you. He wouldn’t marry you for any other reason.”
Biting my lip, I thought about the conversation at the apartment. When Ryder told me what we needed to do, he never mentioned duty.
“When Tammi left, Ryder made it clear he would never get married again. For any reason. Until you came along,” Blade said, watching me.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered.
“Ellie, do you want to marry Ryder? Do you want to be his wife? The mother of his children?” Jack asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you know what to do,” Sebbie whispered.
“I need to talk to Ryder.”
The church doors opened and a man in a cut walked in, with a woman following behind him.
“Patch, who is this?” King asked.
“This is Dr. Levinson. She is head of Psychiatry at the hospital. I know you wanted me to do the eval, but I thought it would be better to have someone who couldn’t be accused of being biased.”
“You’re probably right,” King concurred.
“Dr. Levinson, what do you need?”
“Only a place where I can talk with my patient,” she said.
“I need to talk to Ryder,” I reminded them.
“First, you talk to the doctor. Ryder isn’t going anywhere,” King said. Looking up at the doctor, he added, “You can use this room. Everybody out.”
The men stood from their seats and made their way out of the room. I stayed where I was but called out to Blade before he left.
“Blade.”
He turned around at the door, looking back at me.
“Can you—” I stopped, not exactly sure what I was asking.
“I’ll make sure he’s here when you’re done.”
“Thank you.”
When everyone had left, King stood in the doorway still.
“Dr. Levinson, this room has cameras. Would you like them turned off?”
“Patch filled me in on what was going on. If Miss Livingston is ok with keeping them on, I think it would be beneficial, that way the evaluation can’t be questioned.”
King looked at me, “Ellie?”
Biting my lip, I thought about everything that was going on. My parents would be here tomorrow, and they were trying to have me labeled as mentally incapacitated. Ryder wanted us to get married tomorrow, thereby preventing my parents from forcing me to marry a man that I not only despised, but who could be dangerous.
And they wanted to know if I wanted to be recorded.
“If Dr. Levinson feels it would be beneficial then leave them on.”
King simply nodded and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
“Ok, Miss Livingston —”
“Ellie, please,” I said, twisting my hands together on the table.
“Ellie. It’s ok to be nervous.” She reached over, placing her hand on mine, and I took a deep breath.
“Ok, I’m ready.”
I spent the next several hours in that room with Dr. Levinson. She asked me about my childhood, my missing brother, my parents. She asked about college, and about the books I wrote. She was very thorough, and by the time she was done, I was exhausted.
She told me I had nothing to worry about. She knew my parents’ accusations were baseless, and Ryder and I were free to get married, without any chance if it being annulled without my say so.
One small matter had been handled, but I still needed to talk to Ryder about tomorrow.
I followed the doctor out of the meeting room, and everyone turned to look at us.
“Good news, I’m not crazy. At least not clinically,” I said with my hands in the air trying to break the tension.
“Good thing you added that last part, because anyone who chooses Bookboy”—Romeo hooked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing at Ryder, who was sitting at the bar— “over all this, has to be certifiable,” he said, his hands traveling down his body and grabbing his cock.
“You’re an asshole, Rome,” Jingles said, knocking him on the back of his head. “That’s my baby sister.”
I left Romeo to Jingles and walked over to where Ryder was sitting at the bar with Jessie.
“Hey, I brought your stuff. One of the girls put it upstairs in a room,” Jessie said.
“Thank you.”
Jessie stepped down from the stool she was on next to Ryder and gave me a hug. Jessie didn’t hug me; I hugged her, and she let me. I looked over at Ryder as Jessie whispered in my ear.
“Tell him the truth.”
That was all she said and then walked away.
Tell him the truth?
About what?
I haven’t lied to him about anything.
I sat on the stool Jessie had vacated and looked at Ryder.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. You get everything worked out with your brother?”
Ryder continued to stare at the mirror behind the bar. I needed him to look at me. I placed my hand on his arm, but instead of looking at me, he looked at my hand.
“I know you’re upset; I think with me. I don’t understand why.”
When he finally looked at me, I could see his anger, and his hurt. That was what I saw earlier. The sadness. The hurt.
“You don’t understand why? I asked you to fucking marry me. I told you I loved you. That marriage was always on the timeline, but we were just moving it forward, given the circumstances. And what did you say?”
“Ryder—”
“What did you say, Ellie? You said you needed to talk to your brother. So, I brought you here. And when it was brought up again, you said ‘is marriage the only option?’ If you don’t want to marry me, just fucking tell me!”
Ryder shouted the last part, and I winced.
Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and looked over at us. I saw Sebbie stalk across the room, his face a mask of anger, and I jumped off my stool and ran to him before he reached us.
“Sebbie, stop,” I instructed, putting my hands on his chest.
“He doesn’t get to yell at you. Not here. Not ever.”
He pushed against me, wanting to step closer.
“No, this is my fault, and I need to fix it.”
“I’m your brother. It’s my job to take care of you.”
I pulled back away from him.
“Then where the fuck were you?” I shouted.
“Bellie—”
“No, Seb, where were you? For the last thirteen years, you haven’t been there. You haven’t protected me from anything.”
I turned around and walked back to Ryder.
“Can we please talk in private?”
King walked over and handed Ryder a key. “The room is ready for you two.”
“They need separate rooms,” Sebbie barked.
“Fuck off, Jingles, they’re getting married tomorrow. You think he’s not gonna fuck his old lady? You don’t want nieces and nephews?” King barked.
Ryder scoffed, taking my hand as he led me down the hall and up a set of stairs. We reached a room on the third floor, and he unlocked the door, waiting for me to enter first.
Ryder closed the door behind him and leaned against it, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“But you don’t want to marry me. I thought we were past this shit. I thought we talked all this out days ago and we were on the same page?”
“We are. I do want to marry you, some day. I want to be a mom to Chrissy and Tabby. I want to have more babies with you. But I don’t want to force you into doing something that we aren’t ready for.”