Chapter 26
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— Holden —
I rehearsed it on the drive.
Not the words — I’d never been good with words — but the facts. The clean line of them. There was a weekend rider. He went into my room by mistake. Glitch has the footage. I didn’t do it. I didn’t cheat on you. She slept with him. They were in my room.
That was enough. The facts would carry it.
The truck ate up the miles. Both hands on the wheel, windows cracked, cold air shoving through the cab.
I’d had the radio off for weeks. I turned it on now, some country station, and let it play.
I kept running the footage back in my head: the man stumbling in, walking out within an hour, going to the room next door.
The wrong room. That was all it had ever been.
I hadn’t done it.
I was going to tell her. She was going to understand. We were going to find our way back. Simple. Clean. The way it should be when the worst thing you’d been afraid of turns out to be a lie.
I knocked once. Heard her cross the floor and work the locks without so much as a who-is-it through the door. It swung open.
That was the first thing wrong. The flinch was the second — small, fast, gone before it could finish, and then her jaw set and her eyes cut away before she made them come back to mine.
“Bea — what the hell. You don’t open the door without looking. We’ve talked about—” I stopped. Her eyes were swollen. Not crying now — past it, or holding it back — but the evidence was in the redness around her lashes and the careful way she was holding her face together.
She stepped back from the threshold, arms folding tight across her chest like she was cold, and her place was never cold.
I came in. Shut the door behind me. Locked it. “Who upset you?” My voice came out lower than I meant it. “Was it a client? Somebody call with something heavy?”
She made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh.
I looked past her — scanned the living room, the kitchen through the archway, the hallway down to her office. Nobody. “Is somebody here? Did somebody come by—”
“You.” Her voice cracked. “You upset me, Holden. I know about the baby.”
I froze.
She pressed her lips together. Held herself very still. “I was there,” she said. “At the clubhouse. Earlier. I came to — it doesn’t matter why I came. I was in the main room. I heard you talking to her .”
The relief from earlier - the dumb feeling of a man on his way to put his life back together — was gone. I knew exactly what she’d heard. “You heard—”
“I heard you tell her you’d step up. That you’d take responsibility. Whatever it took.” She unfolded her arms and then folded them again, tighter. “And then I left.”
“Bea—”
“I drove home.” She was looking at her hands now.
“I sat in the car for twenty minutes before I could get out. And then I came inside and I—” She stopped.
Closed her eyes. Breath in, hold for three, breath out — the thing she taught her clients.
I’d heard her coach people through it over the phone from her kitchen table.
Seen her use it on herself after she hung up, eyes closed at the counter while she grounded herself.
“I thought about what it would have been like.”
“What would have been like?”
“Our children. I used to think about it. A little boy with your jaw and your serious face. A little girl with my hair.” She was crying now — not dramatic, not loud, just tears running down her face while she talked through them the way she did, refusing to let them stop her.
“I used to picture them in this apartment. Running down the hall. I’d moved the bookshelf in my head, did you know that?
To make room for a play area. I’d already rearranged the furniture for children we hadn’t made yet. ”
I couldn’t breathe.
“You’re having a baby with a stranger,” she said. “And I’m standing here rearranging furniture for imaginary children.”
“Bea.” I took a step toward her. She held up a hand and I stopped.
“That can still happen. All of it. Maybe not here,” I looked around her apartment.
“You know Colt and Lilac have a house on club grounds. Three bedrooms, a yard, the whole thing. We could have one like it. You could move the bookshelf wherever you wanted. Whatever you pictured — we can still have it.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You’re having a baby with her , Holden.
There will be a child. Your child. Do you know I’ve been waiting for you?
Every day for weeks. I’d hear a bike on the street and look up.
” Her voice broke properly for the first time.
She caught it, pulled it back. “Whatever I was waiting for, it’s not coming.
There’s a baby. There’s going to be a child.
There’s no version of this where I get you back. ”
“You were there,” I said. The horror of it was landing now, properly, fully. “At the clubhouse. You heard me say that.”
“Yes.”
“But you left.”
“Yes.” Sniffling, wiping her face with the heel of her hand. “Obviously.”
“You didn’t hear the rest.”
She looked at me. Her jaw worked. She didn’t want to ask, and she was going to.
“What rest?”
“She said it wasn’t me.”
Bea stared at me.
“Joanne — the woman. After you left. She looked at me and said I wasn’t the man she’d been with.
Different height, different hair, different accent.
She described him — tattoos I don’t have, a Southern drawl I’ve never had.
She remembered him enough to know it wasn’t me.
” I made myself slow down. “Glitch pulled all the footage from that night. A weekend rider came in with her — both of them drunk, hanging on each other, laughing too loud. He was staying in the room next to mine. Handful had left my door open and they stumbled into mine by mistake. You can see them come in. You can see them leave. You can see him go to his actual room next door afterward. I was in the chair the whole time. I never moved.”
I watched her face as the words landed. One at a time.
“The baby isn’t mine,” I continued. “I didn’t cheat on you. I never touched her. I was unconscious in a chair while two strangers used my room because Handful left the door unlatched.”
She didn’t speak. Her arms unfolded. Her hands dropped to her sides. She looked at me like she’d been hit with too much at once and her face hadn’t caught up yet.
“You can watch the footage,” I said. “Glitch will show you. It’s all there.”
The silence lasted a long time.
“Okay,” she said.
I waited.
“Okay. You didn’t cheat.”
She wasn’t looking at me the way I’d expected. “Bea—”
“That’s not why we’re not together, Holden.”
The words took a moment to land.
She looked at me then. Really looked — eye to eye, no flinching, the way she did when she was about to tell a client something they weren’t going to want to hear.
“Danny died,” she said. “And you didn’t call me.
You didn’t come to me. You drank yourself past the point of consciousness — alone, in a room, in the dark.
” She paused. “You shut me out of the worst night of your life. And then you came to my door the next morning and ended things before I could say a single thing.”
I didn’t speak.
“I wanted to help you,” she said. “I was there . I held you that night. I stayed until you were asleep. I was ready to come back — and you locked a door I didn’t even know you were closing.”
She paused. Eyes down for a moment. She wasn’t done.
“The cheating gave it a shape. A clean line of fault. He cheated, it’s over, that’s why. It covered over something harder to name.” She looked at her hands for a moment, then back at me. “But that wasn’t the wound, Holden. The wound was that when you were drowning, I wasn’t who you called.”
She paused for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter.
“Do you know what I do for a living, Holden? I sit with people on the worst day of their lives. I help them carry things they can’t carry alone.
That’s my whole job. That’s the one thing I know how to do.
And when the worst night of your life came, you locked yourself in a room with a bottle and you didn’t call me.
Me, Holden. Me . I’m a therapist. I would have come.
I would have sat with you all night. And you wouldn’t let me. ”
There was no defending it. She was right.
My legs gave in. Not dramatic — just a slow buckle, the kind that happens when you’ve been holding yourself up too long and someone finally tells you to stop. I went down. Both knees on the floor in front of her.
“Bea—”
“Holden.”
“I’m sorry.” It came out wrong. Too quiet.
I tried again. “I’m sorry, Bea. I’m sorry.
I shouldn’t have shut you out. I shouldn’t have come to your door the next morning.
I shouldn’t have made the choice for both of us.
I was a coward. I knew you’d come and I knew if you came I’d have to deal with it.
So I closed the door first. So I wouldn’t have to. ”
She didn’t move.
“I want you back.” My voice broke on it and I let it.
“I want you back, Bea. I’ll do anything.
Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. I’ll go to therapy.
I’ll go to meetings every night of the week.
I’ll move out of the clubhouse. I’ll sleep on your floor.
I’ll never close another door on you in my life.
I’ll be the man I should have been that morning.
Just, please. Tell me what you need. Tell me what to do. ”
I was crying now. I hadn’t cried in front of her since the night she’d held me in my room after Danny. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I’m so fucking sorry, Bea. Please.” I’d never said please to anyone like that in my life.
She’d been right there the whole time. Now she just looked down at me — not the counselor look, not the careful one. Just Bea, looking at the man at her feet. Then she put her hand on the top of my head. Light. Brief. Like she was patting a dog. “Get up,” she said. Quiet. “Holden. Get up.”
I got up.