Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Bash
“Jesus Christ, hold fuckin’ still,” Pete grumbled, threading the needle through my skin for what felt like the hundredth time. “This would go a lot faster if you quit tensing up every time I stick you.”
“Maybe I’d be able to stop tensing up if you weren’t so damn heavy-handed with that thing,” I shot back through clenched teeth. Pete stitched up members of the Kings for decades before Sandman joined the club. In fact, he’d done it so many times he could probably do it blindfolded.
Hattie sighed. “Would you both stop being mean to each other?”
I glanced over to where she was hovering, not liking how pale her face was. Every time her papaw pushed the thread through my skin, she’d flinch like she was the one in pain.
“It’s not that bad,” I lied, trying to ease her worry.
“Yeah. He’s just a big fuckin’ baby.” Pete grumbled.
She shot him a look that could have stripped paint. “Be nice papaw.” Then her narrowed eyes came to me. “And don’t you dare minimize this. You could have been killed.”
The anger in her voice made something twist in my gut. She was afraid. For me.
“There,” Pete announced, tying off the last stitch. “You’ll live, but you’re gonna be sore as hell for a few days.”
He reached behind him and came back with a clean white t-shirt, tossing it in my direction. “Here, crybaby.”
I caught the shirt one-handed, grateful for something clean to wear. The bullet had torn through my shirt when that fucker shot me.
“Don’t say I never gave you anything,”
“Thanks,” I said, standing up carefully. My shoulder protested the movement, but it wasn’t unbearable.
Pete grunted, already cleaning up his supplies. “Do me a favor, yeah?”
I nodded.
His eyes went to his granddaughter before coming back to me and narrowing. “Don’t make this a fuckin’ habit.”
I chanced a look at Hattie and my stomach turned. I hated seeing her upset, and I wasn’t the only one.
“I’ll do my best,” I promised as I pulled the clean shirt over my head, being careful not to aggravate the fresh stitches.
Pete grumbled something I couldn’t quite make out as he headed for the door.
The second he was out of sight, Hattie was moving. She crossed the kitchen in three strides and grabbed my good hand, her fingers wrapping around mine like a vice.
“We need to talk,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Please.”
I looked down at our joined hands, at the way her smaller fingers fit perfectly between mine. It’d been eight long agonizing years since I’d held her hand in mine, and my body remembered every single detail.
“Hattie—”
“Please,” she repeated, and the pleading note in her voice undid me completely.
I’d always been two steps behind this girl, willing to follow her wherever she went. And after all our years apart, that clearly hadn’t changed.
“Yeah, baby.” I nodded. “Lead the way.”
She tugged me toward the back door, through the mudroom and out into the humid Florida night. The air was thick with the scent of jasmine and Spanish moss, and somewhere in the distance, I could hear the lowing of cattle settling in for the night.
I felt like I was sixteen years old again.
“Come on,” she whispered, leading me across the yard to the old barn. The door was already cracked open, and she pushed it wider, pulling me inside.
This was where I’d first kissed her when we were thirteen. Where I’d told her I loved her for the first time. Where we’d made love on a blanket spread over fresh hay the night of our junior prom.
This place was us.
She let go of my hand and immediately started pacing, her movements agitated and restless. Back and forth across the dirt floor, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.
I leaned against a wooden post and watched her, my heart hammering against my ribs. I had a feeling I knew what this conversation was going to be about, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for it.
Finally, she stopped pacing and turned to face me. Even in the low light, I could see the tears gathering in her eyes, and it felt like someone had reached into my chest and squeezed my heart with a fist.
“Why did you break up with me?” she blurted. “You said you loved me. You said you’d never leave me. Then you just... threw me away.”
The hurt in her voice pierced right through my heart.
Fuck. I didn’t know what to say.
Blowing out a breath, I decided on the truth. “I’m sorry.” I said, the words feeling completely inadequate. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
“That’s not an answer,” she said, her voice rising. “I deserve to know why. After everything we were to each other, I deserve the truth.”
She was right. She deserved the truth, even if it destroyed me to give it to her.
I took a deep breath, trying to find the words to explain the choice that had haunted me every single day for the past eight years.
“After you won that competition at the fair,” I began, my voice rough. “When that record executive made you that offer–”
She nodded. “Yeah. What about it?”
“You hesitated. That man was handing you your dreams on a silver platter, and you hesitated.”
She scrunched her brows. “What?”
“I knew you were going to shut him down. That’s why I asked him to give you the night to think about it.” I ran my good hand through my hair, frustrated by how impossible this was to explain.
“You would have chosen me over your dreams, and I couldn’t live with that.”
“So, you made the choice for me,” she said flatly.
Didn’t she get it? “I did what was best for you,” I growled. “I tore my heart out so that you would be happy. Because I loved you too much to hold you back.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks. Seeing her cry had always been my kryptonite, the one thing that could bring me to my knees faster than anything else in the world.
“Please, baby,” I begged, taking a step toward her. “Don’t cry.”
But my words seemed to have the opposite effect. She sobbed harder, her whole body shaking with the force of her grief.
Fuck. I did this.
“You’re so fucking stupid, Weston Basham,” she said, her voice full of rage as she started dashing the wetness off her face.
I took a step back, caught off guard by the venom in her tone. I’d forgotten about her temper, about how fierce she could be when she was pissed. She’d always been small and sweet, but when she was pushed too far, she became a force of nature.
Hattie squared her shoulders and faced me head-on, every inch of her vibrating with fury.
“Yes. I loved singing,” she said, her voice steadily growing louder as she got angrier.
“I loved performing and writing songs and all of it. But you know what? It didn’t hold a candle to what I felt for you.”
Her words were like a punch to the balls, each one more devastating than the last.
“We were supposed to get married,” she continued, her voice breaking again. “We were going to have a house full of babies and grow old together. We had plans, Weston. We had our whole lives mapped out. TOGETHER!”
I swallowed around the knot in my throat. “I wanted you to have your dreams, baby,” I said desperately, reaching for her.
She stepped back, shaking her head from side to side. All the fight seemed to leave her at once, and she deflated like a balloon with the air let out.
“You were my dream,” she whispered, brokenly. “You and the club and Granny Jean and Papaw Pete. The family I found here after I lost my parents—that was my dream, Weston.”
My brows shot up.
No. I shook my head. She’d lost her parents, and then I’d... fuck. I’d made her lose her family all over again.
I’d been trying to give her the world, but I’d taken away the only thing that really mattered to her. I’d done the one thing that was sure to send her running.
I pushed off from the post and went to her, my legs unsteady beneath me. When I reached her, I cupped her face in my hands, wiping away her tears with my thumbs.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Hattie,” I said, the words coming from the deepest part of my soul. “I didn’t realize—God, I’m such an idiot. I thought I was setting you free, but I was just being a selfish bastard who couldn’t handle the thought of you resenting me when you realized what you’d given up.”
She leaned into my touch, her eyes fluttering closed. “Never,” she whispered.
“Letting you go was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” I confessed, pouring out my heart to her. “Breaking up with you nearly killed me. I never stopped loving you, not for a single day.”
She opened her eyes.
“Seeing you on TV,” I said, my voice cracking. “Watching you smile at that cocksucker the way you used to smile at me—it destroyed me. Every interview, every appearance, every goddamn time they showed you two together, it felt like I was dying all over again.”
“Then why didn’t you fight for me?” she whispered. “Why didn’t you come after me?”
I dropped my hands from her face and took a step back, suddenly unable to look at her.
“Because I thought you were better off without me,” I said simply. “You became everything I always knew you could be. You’re successful, you’ve got money and fame and everything anyone could ever want. I can’t compete with that.”
That was God's honest truth. I’d thought about going after her a million times, but I never could go through with it. She had the world in her hand.
She was quiet for a long moment. “You really don’t get it, do you?” she said.
I looked up at her, confused.
“All that success, all that money and fame—none of it means anything without someone to share it with,” she said. “I’ve spent the last eight years feeling like I was living someone else’s life, going through the motions of being happy while my heart was back here in Odin with you.”
My breath caught in my throat.
“I never loved Shawn,” she continued. “Not the way I loved you.”
The hope that had been building in my chest threatened to choke me.
“Hattie—”
“I’m not done,” she said, holding up a hand. “You broke my heart, Weston. You shattered me into a million pieces and left me to put myself back together. But seeing you tonight, thinking I might lose you forever—it made me realize something.”
I waited, hardly daring to breathe.
“I never stopped loving you either,” she whispered. “I tried. God knows I tried. But you can’t stop loving your other half, no matter how much they hurt you.”
The words hung between us.
“What are you saying?”
She took a step toward me, closing the distance between us.
“I’m saying I forgive you,” she said simply. “I’m saying I understand why you did what you did, even if I think you’re an asshole for doing it and you better never do it again.”