Chapter 2
Chapter Two
ROWAN
D amnit.
God-fucking-damnit.
Sadie Cooper had some nerve showing up back here after six years of fucking silence.
It felt like the night I had found my brother all over again—me and Sadie, wrapped in each other’s arms, staring at a pale, lifeless version of him.
That was what I had left of his memory—I couldn’t see past the hurt to remember anything good.
Now, Sadie was throwing it all back in my face by being here.
And was that a fucking bruise under her eye?
She had lurked purposely in the shadows her house wrapped her in, trying to hide.
Didn’t matter. I saw it anyway. I was fucking sure of it.
A dark stain of pain that didn’t belong, purple and stark against her skin.
And the careful way she had hugged her side, clutching herself as though the simple act of breathing was torture.
What a damn shit-show.
Was that why she was back? Someone had put their hands on her? Heat coursed through me at the thought. I should have gone after her right then and there. Should have demanded to know who had laid their hands on her.
Or better yet, why the hell she had never shown up to Logan’s funeral.
Yet, there I was, slinking away, tail between my legs like the coward I’d always been.
My boots crunched over dry grass as I stalked back to where Bear and Scout were pretending they weren’t eavesdropping on my conversation with Sadie and Snake.
Bear cleared his throat and held out another beer to me. I snatched it out of his large hand as I slumped into the chair opposite him by the fire pit and twisted the cap off. I flicked the small piece of metal into the fire.
Flames crackled, sparks shooting into the night sky before burning out mid-air—short-lived and pointless, just like that fucking night.
The heat of Bear’s glare continued to burn hotter than the fire.
I finally dragged my gaze up to meet his. “What?” I said, raising an eyebrow, daring him to say whatever it was he needed to say.
He continued to stare at me with those assessing eyes of his. Nothing ever got past him—especially when it came to my mood.
Then he shook his head, turning his focus to the fire pit. “Never said a thing.”
“Well, your thoughts are as loud as ever.” I took a long swig from the bottle, then wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I could almost taste the poison coursing through my veins, sour as anything. “Out with it.”
Bear sighed, nudging a thick log with the toe of his boot. “Don’t give him the satisfaction, Rowan,” he said, pointing his own bottle at Snake who was now slumming it with some blow in from out of town. “You know he likes to push your buttons. He’s an arsehole. Period.”
I scoffed. He was more than an arsehole. I didn’t trust the bloke as far as I could throw him—which wasn’t far considering he was as solid as a brick wall. Dumb as one, too.
“Yeah, well, Sadie being home just complicates things.” I clenched my jaw, shaking my head.
It did more than complicate things. The moment I laid eyes on her, it was like a grenade had gone off in my head, leaving all the mess that was my life scattered around me.
Her being back shoved every memory of her and Logan straight to the forefront of my mind. I was scrambling to find which way was up. They had always been attached at the hip, always laughing, teasing and pissing me off.
And me? I had been the moody bastard stuck on the sidelines, never fully a part of their world, yet still close enough to taste it, to linger in the warmth of it.
She hadn’t known it back then, but Sadie had been everything to me.
Everything I never thought I’d have when I was younger, naiver.
The two of us, we could’ve had something good, something real. We could’ve had it all.
Then Logan had taken his life, and everything else after that had turned into a fight for survival.
Bear sank deeper into his chair, stretching out his long legs and tapping the bottle against his thigh. “You think he’ll go after her?”
Sadie was fresh meat, at least to Snake. Couldn’t even blame him for wanting her. Fuck, I had wanted her for as long as I could remember.
I recalled the day it had hit me like a punch to the face, the way something in her had changed when we were younger, and maybe she finally saw me. Saw what we could be.
It was in the way she used to bite her bottom lip and smile like I was someone she could love. She was fifteen then. I was seventeen and had known I was wrong for her, known I couldn’t drag her into the mess I had made of myself, so I’d kept my distance.
The last place I ever expected to see her again was Barrenridge.
The town practically chewed up all the good and left the bastards to fight amongst themselves.
I was no different. I’d been planning ways to get rid of Snake for good, just had never found the right time.
I needed to make it look like an accident, or at the very least, like someone other than another Ridge Rider took him out.
I lifted a shoulder, my gaze flitting to Sadie’s bedroom window. It was dark. Maybe she had already fallen asleep. “She’s like a shiny new toy. What do you think?”
Just the thought of what Snake was capable of, had me clenching my jaw and tightening my grip around the bottle.
He’d sell his own mother for convenience, then buy her back just to do it again. He was the sort of guy who thought women were disposable. The sort of guy Sadie should never be around.
It wasn’t enough that she was the chief’s daughter.
Burning the world down would never be enough for Snake.
He only cared about getting even with me for taking what he believed was his—the VP position.
And if he got wind that Sadie and I were somehow .
. . involved, he’d jump at the chance to ruin her.
Prick. Like her being my girl would’ve changed anything, not when he was so hellbent on payback.
But I’d hurt her moments ago. She didn’t need to say as much. It was written all over her face. Still, that was better than the pain I’d have felt if something happened to her because of me.
She’d thank me for it later, for saving her from drawing any further attention from Snake. Maybe, if he thought she was nobody, he’d back off, leave her the hell alone—the way I was planning to.
But I was also naive in that respect.
She’d been back less than a day, and my world was already upside down.
Shaken like a fucking snow globe, everything stirred up and suspended—memories, pain, the pieces of me I thought I’d buried.
I was drowning in it, a tidal wave of everything I’d locked away, numbing the parts of myself that had somehow scabbed over.
Didn’t matter that we’d never shared anything more intimate than a few lingering glances as teenagers. Or that she had ripped my heart out of my chest when she left me six years prior without so much as a goodbye.
Not only did I lose my brother, I lost her, too.
The only warmth I ever let myself feel, and it had broken me more than I cared to admit.
Losing Logan was a dagger in my back, but Sadie leaving?
That was a knife to the heart, a twist that I’d felt every day since.
The two of them took everything with them.
Every dream of having a family, a damn future with someone who gave half a shit about me.
“Rowan?” Jasmine’s soft voice broke through the wreckage of my thoughts as she dropped into the chair beside me. She tucked her blonde hair behind her ears, a frown on her face. “Sadie’s back.” It wasn’t a question. It was a reckoning.
I nodded. “Yep. Sadie’s back.”
She was always like that as a child, a teenager—darting around, lighting things up, and impossible to pin down. Like a firefly in human form—that’s what I had called her one night when she was stomping around outside looking for a goddamn possum that apparently had a broken leg.
Logan had been inside, so Sadie dragged me outside with her .
“You’re going to trip in the dark, you know?” I had muttered while she gripped onto my hand.
“I’m not scared of the dark. I’m looking for something,” she had said, not bothering to look at me.
I’d scoffed. “What, trouble?”
She had spun around suddenly, the torchlight catching her wild hair and eyes. “Maybe,” she said, grinning.
She had caught me off guard, and all I could do was mumble, “You look like a firefly.”
Sadie’s face had grown serious, and she blinked at me, frowning. “What?”
I’d shrugged, an attempt to shove off my words as nothing more than just a casual observation. “Just all lit up and wild. Won’t stay still.”
Sadie had tilted her head as though she was studying me. “Firefly, huh?”
A smirk had lifted the corners of my lips. “Yeah. Fitting. You boss people around, light everything up. Even when you shouldn’t.”
She had grinned then and darted off to search for the bloody possum.
Of course I had followed her, groaning even though I didn’t mean it. I couldn’t help but be drawn in by her warmth, her beauty, and her unpredictability.
She was fucking gorgeous back then. But now? Now, she’d just shown me exactly what I was missing. Her.
She shouldn’t have come back here.
It changed everything.
Every lie I’d told myself about moving on shattered the second she walked out that side door. Even through all that anger, all the hurt, she was still Sadie.
My Sadie.
Jazz twisted her hands in her lap, the tension palpable. It wasn’t just me Sadie had left all those years ago. It was her, too. Sadie and Logan were inseparable, but Jasmine became a huge part of their lives when she and her family arrived in town thirteen years beforehand.
I remembered the day. Sadie’s face had lit up when she talked about the new girl at school. I knew Sadie loved Logan, but once hormones got involved, having a male best friend could be difficult, I supposed.
Logan didn’t say as much, but I knew when he and Sadie had argued. He’d come home sulking and sit in his room for the rest of the night. The next day, it would be as if nothing had ever happened.
“Did you . . . talk to her? Did she say why she’s back?” Jasmine’s voice wavered.
Maybe she didn’t really want answers, just someone to say it out loud, so it felt real. That Sadie Cooper was back in Barrenridge.
I sighed, pressure mounting in my chest. I wished I had the answers she was looking for. Hell, I wished I had the answer I was looking for.
I rubbed a hand over the stubble on my jaw. “No, I didn’t speak to her,” I said, unable to look directly at her. “And no, she wasn’t exactly forthcoming about why she’s back, Jazz.” The words tumbled out harsher than I meant them, but I wasn’t going to sugarcoat the truth for her.
If Jazz wanted to know why Sadie was back, she could damn well ask Sadie herself and leave me the hell out of it.