Chapter 11
Austin
She said ten o'clock. I pull up at nine thirty.
I know I'm early and I don't care. I sat in my kitchen until well past midnight last night going over everything I want to say.
When I finally went to bed I could only lay on my bed staring at the ceiling for two hours and at some point, I gave up on sleep.
I waited for a reasonable hour to get on my bike. Nine thirty is reasonable. Barely.
I knock on the door and wait for her to come down and open the door.
It isn’t long before I hear her coming. When she opens the door, she's still in her pajamas, little shorts and a tank top.
She doesn't open door wide but wide enough that I can see she's not remotely ready.
She looks exactly as good as she did at seventeen.
Some things don't change no matter how much time passes.
"You're early," she says.
"Yeah." I push the door open. "I couldn't wait any longer."
She gives me a glare that means she's deciding whether to argue about it, and then she turns and walks up the stairs. I follow her and try very hard not to watch her ass the entire way, but I fail completely.
When we get into the living room, I see the couch has a duvet on it and the relief that moves through me is embarrassing. Luke comes out of the bathroom in a towel and grins at me like he knows exactly what he's doing.
"What the fuck?" I say. "Put some clothes on."
He laughs. "You've got it really bad, Austin. I slept on the couch, just like you were hoping. I'm getting dressed now and then I'm leaving. You're early though, so..." He grabs his bag and disappears into Savannah's bedroom.
"Austin. Calm down. He's my friend, not that it's any of your business anyway."
"You are my business, Sav. You're always my business." I sit down at her table and wait while Luke gets dressed. Savannah disappears into the bedroom to change and comes back out in black jeans and a top. I decide not to look at her too closely or this conversation is never going to happen.
Luke comes through from the bedroom, bag over his shoulder, and he stops in front of me. He doesn't look like someone who's intimidated and I respect him for it even if right now I don't particularly want to.
"Don't hurt her," he says. "Don't think with your dick here.
Think about her heart. You crushed it once and it's going to take a lot to put it back together.
She is the reason you're still single, I know that.
But don't just think she's a quick fuck for old time's sake, because she is never just that. Never."
I stand and take a step toward him, and he doesn't move an inch. "I didn't want to hurt her back then," I say. "There was a reason for it. I don't want to hurt her now. That’s the last thing I want to do. She just needs to hear my side and then decide for herself."
He looks at me for a moment longer, then he puts his hand out. I shake it. He's her person, I get that. He's been in her corner all this time and she deserves that and I like him for it even if I don't want to say so out loud.
He goes downstairs and I hear them saying goodbye. When Savannah comes back up, she closes the door and looks at me. "Do you want coffee? I work better with coffee."
"Please."
The room is quiet while she makes it. She puts the cup down in front of me without asking how I take it. She just knows. She's always known. She sits down across from me, holding her mug in two hands, and looks at me over the top of it.
"So. Talk."
I wrap my hands around my mug and look at her. Here we go. Ten years of this sitting in my chest. Now I have to say it out loud and get it right.
"Ten years ago, you were the most ambitious, beautiful woman I'd ever known.
You knew what you wanted and you were going to go and get it.
You wanted to be a doctor. I knew that. I knew it like I knew my own name.
" I hold her eyes. "You asked me to come with you.
You asked me so many times. And I thought about it.
I really did. But I didn't have anything going for me, Sav.
Shit grades, no plan, no idea what I was going to do with my life.
And then I realized I wanted the club. The Black Saints gave me something to look forward to every day, a purpose, a family.
I knew I wasn't going to follow you to med school. "
"Keep going."
"I knew long distance would be hard. I knew what the clubhouse was like and you would have spent six years imagining what was happening there and it would have eaten you alive.
And I would have spent three years going mad not knowing who you were with or whether you were okay, and it would have driven a wedge between us that we couldn't come back from.
I knew all of this. I thought about it for weeks.
" I put the mug down. "And then I made the worst decision I’ve ever made in my life. "
She's watching me carefully. Not softening yet but listening.
"I invited you to the clubhouse. I made sure you would find me with Raven.
I thought it was the only thing that would make you hate me enough to leave and not look back.
I thought if I made you hate me, you'd go and you'd be free of it.
Free of me." I stop. "I was wrong. I know that now.
I think I knew it then, if I'm honest with you. "
"You fucked her."
"Yeah." I don't look away from her. "I'm not proud of it.
I wasn't myself. I thought if I was with someone else it would help me get through what I'd done.
It didn't. It made everything worse. And then I found out she'd sabotaged the condom and she was pregnant.
Razor told her the baby would come and there'd be a paternity test. It could have been anyone’s; she was clear about that.
But when EJ was born, I didn't need a test to know he was mine.
I did it anyway. And when the results came back, a piece of something I thought was completely broken put itself back together. "
"She doesn’t have anything to do with him." I say. "She signed over her maternal rites as soon as he was born, so he’s I just mine. The club have helped me to raise him."
Savannah is quiet.
"I’m so sorry, Sav. I'm sorrier than I know how to say.
I staged that night because I loved you more than I knew what to do with.
I couldn't think of any other way to make sure you went and lived your life.
I thought I was protecting you." I look at my hands and then back at her.
"That isn’t an excuse. I know it's not. I'm telling you the reason, not asking you to forgive the decision. "
"You had no right," she says. Her voice is controlled but there's heat under it. "My dream was always to come back here and open a practice. That was always the plan. Come back to you. I wasn't leaving you, Austin. I was going to do this and come back."
The ground shifts under me slightly.
"You never said that."
She looks at me steadily. "I shouldn't have had to say it.
We talked about everything. That was us.
And then you made this enormous decision for both of us without a single conversation.
" She puts her mug down and the sound of it on the table is quiet but deliberate.
"You didn't trust me to make the right choice for myself. You made it for me."
That lands.
"Yes," I say. "You're right."
"Why didn't you just talk to me about it?"
"Because I knew if I talked to you, you'd talk me out of it.
You were always better at it than me. You always made more sense.
" I look at my hands. "And I believed I was doing the right thing.
I needed to believe that. If I'd let myself question it, I'd have collapsed.
" I look back at her. "That's not a good reason.
I know it's not. I'm just telling you what was true. "
She goes quiet for a moment.
"What did you do," she says carefully. "After. That night."
I wasn't expecting that question.
"I sat in the clubhouse," I say. "Alone.
Until about four in the morning. I didn't drink.
I just sat there." I can see it clearly still, the way the bar looked at that hour with the lights low, and everyone gone, the sound of nothing except the road outside.
"I went back to my room afterward and I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, and I told myself I'd done the right thing.
And I was certain of it. Absolutely certain.
And I hated myself anyway, which is a strange thing to hold at the same time. "
She's very still.
"After about a week I wasn't sure anymore.
After a month I thought I'd made the worst mistake of my life.
I kept running it back. Should I have talked to you?
Should I have tried? Would it have worked?
I went around that circuit for a long time and I never came out the other side of it with the same answer twice.
" I look at her properly. "I still don't know if I was brave or a coward.
I've spent ten years trying to work that out and I honestly don't have the answer.
Some days I think I did the only thing that made sense.
Some days I think I chose the easier option and dressed it up as sacrifice.
" I stop. "I'm not asking you to feel sorry for me.
I'm just telling you the truth of what it was like, because I think you deserve that. "
She's looking at me differently now. The anger is still there but there's something else with it.
"You really sat there until four in the morning."
"Yeah."
"Not drinking."
"No. I thought if I drank then I'd call you. I thought if I heard your voice I'd drive to wherever you were and take the whole thing back." I look at her. "So, I sat there and I didn't call, and I didn't drink. I kept telling myself it was for you."
The silence between us is different now. Heavier, but in a different way.