Chapter Eleven #3
I file it away for later because right now my world is Sophie turning toward the door with her shoulders straight and her heart cracked in front of me.
“I’m going home,” she says again.
This time, I don’t tell her no.
I hate myself for it.
I also know if I cage her now, I become the kind of man she has spent the last couple days saving other women from.
“Then I’m escorting you,” I say.
Her eyes lift. “You just said…”
“I said we postpone the wedding. I did not say I stop protecting you.”
“That is exactly the kind of sentence that makes me want to scream.”
“Then scream in your car.”
“I’m taking my own car.”
“I know.”
Her eyes narrow, suspicious of the concession.
I hold up one hand before she can cut me with that look. “Not because I decide where you go. Because somebody just sent a photo of your dad, and I don’t want you alone on the road. Take your car. I ride behind you.”
She breathes hard.
Then nods once.
A compromise.
A poor one.
The only one we can manage without tearing more skin off each other.
The room behind us shifts before either of us can say another word.
I hear Becki before I see her. Not because she is loud, but because Royal says her name in a tone I have never heard from him before.
Careful.
Almost pleading.
“Becki.”
She steps out from the edge of the hallway with one hand on her stomach and the other pressed against the wall like she needs it to stay upright. Her face is pale. Too pale. The sharpness she usually wears like lipstick has cracked wide open, and underneath it’s fear.
Not for herself.
For Sophie.
For the baby inside her.
For some old ghost I already know by name.
My stomach drops.
No.
Not now.
Not this.
Sophie turns, her anger still hot on her face. “Becki?”
Becki looks at me first.
Her eyes are huge.
Wet.
Sorry.
I give my head one small shake.
Don’t.
Royal moves toward her. “Love.”
Becki’s mouth trembles. “I can’t.”
The room goes still.
Sophie looks between us. “Can’t what?”
Becki’s hand tightens over her stomach. “I’m sorry.”
Sophie’s anger falters, replaced by confusion. “Why are you apologizing to me?”
Becki looks at me again.
This time, I don’t shake my head.
I just stare at her, because every version of this ends bloody now. Maybe not with fists. Maybe not with bodies. But something is about to bleed.
Becki’s voice breaks. “Because he lied to you.”
Sophie goes very still.
Not soft.
Not confused anymore.
Still.
The kind of still that comes before a horse bolts or a woman decides which part of a man’s heart to cut first.
“Who lied to me?” she asks.
Becki closes her eyes.
Royal reaches her side and puts a hand near her back, not touching until she leans into it. That is the only reason I don’t tell him to get her out of here. Becki is shaking now, and whatever this confession costs Sophie, it’s costing Becki too.
“I’m sorry,” Becki whispers. “I thought I could keep it buried because it was old and ugly and before you, but then all this started happening. Pearly Gates. Missing girls. Cider. Secrets. Babies.” Her hand spreads over her belly.
“And now I’m carrying this one, and I keep thinking if I keep lying, God will take this baby from me too. ”
Sophie’s face drains.
My chest locks.
Becki looks at her.
“We did lose a baby,” she says. “Me and Legend. A long time ago.”
The words hit the room and kill every sound in it.
Sophie doesn’t move.
No one does.
Even Cornbread is silent near the clubhouse bar.
I hear my own blood in my ears. Old grief crawls up from the place I buried it, mean and familiar.
A baby that never got a name out loud. A mistake wrapped in youth and anger and all the ways people hurt each other when they don’t know how to love.
Becki and me were fire and gasoline back then, and what burned out of us left scars neither one of us knew how to talk about.
Sophie looks at me.
Not Becki.
Me.
Her voice is soft when she asks, “Is that true?”
I could lie.
I have already done that.
Not with words maybe. Not straight to her face.
But omission is a lie with nicer shoes, and I know it.
I knew it every time Becki’s name came up.
Every time Sophie asked if there was anything else she needed to know about the past. Every time I told myself it was buried, that it belonged to before, that dragging it up would only hurt people who had already bled enough.
I look at the woman I love.
“Yes.”
Her face changes.
I have seen Sophie angry. I have seen her afraid. I have seen her stand in front of men twice her size and make them look away first.
I have never seen her look at me like this.
Like I just made her feel stupid for trusting me.
“You lied to me,” she says.
“Soph.”
“Did you lie to me?”
I force the answer out. “Yes.”
Becki makes a broken sound. “Sophie, I’m so sorry.”
Sophie doesn’t look away from me. “No. Don’t you apologize for his lie.”
Royal’s jaw tightens, but he says nothing.
Good.
This ain’t his wound to handle.
Sophie steps toward me. “You stood there and told me you couldn’t marry me because I kept something from you.”
My throat works.
“That’s different.”
The second the words leave my mouth, I know they are wrong.
Sophie laughs once.
It’s small.
Sharp.
Devastated.
“Different?”
I close my eyes for half a second. “That ain’t what I mean.”
“No, I think that is exactly what you mean.” Her voice rises now, and good. Let it. Let her be loud. Let her be furious. I deserve every bit of it. “My secret is betrayal because it involves my father. Your secret is different because it involves your past.”
“It was grief. A very personal grief.”
“And mine isn’t?”
The words cut.
I have no answer.
She comes closer, and every man in the room has enough sense to stay dead quiet.
“You postponed our wedding because I didn’t tell you I suspected my father might be tied to Pearly Gates trafficking girls. You said I closed a door between us.” Her eyes shine, but she doesn’t let the tears fall. “What do you call this, Legend?”
I stand there.
President of the Kings.
Son of Legendary Mike.
Man with blood on his hands and a woman’s heart in front of me.
And I have no damn answer that doesn’t make me look like the hypocrite I am.
“It was before you,” I say, hating the weakness of it.
“So was my father’s sin.”
“That’s not the same.”
“Why? Because yours hurts?”
My jaw tightens.
She sees it and laughs again, bitter this time.
“God, you arrogant man.”
Becki starts crying then. Not pretty crying.
Not quiet tears. She folds into Royal’s side, one hand still over her belly, the other covering her mouth like she can shove the confession back in.
Royal wraps around her with terrifying gentleness, his eyes on me like he would gladly kill me if Becki asked and maybe even if she did not.
Sophie looks at Royal. Her anger flickers toward him for half a breath, not because he caused the wound, but because he stands beside the woman holding it.
“Did you know?” she asks him.
Royal’s face doesn’t move. “Not the truth. Not until now.”
Becki sobs before he can say more. “He knew I was scared. He knew there was something old and ugly. He didn’t know what.
” She looks at Sophie, wrecked and trembling.
“I thought if I kept it secret, I could keep this one. I know that sounds crazy. I know it does. But I was scared, and I couldn’t keep carrying it.
Not with you standing there getting punished for doing the same thing we all do around here. Hide the ugly until it grows teeth.”
No one moves.
Because she is right.
That is the worst part.
Sophie turns to Becki, and for a second, the fury leaves her face. “You are not going to lose your baby because Legend lied.”
Becki shakes her head, crying harder. “You don’t know that.”
“No,” Sophie says, voice breaking now. “I don’t. But I know secrets don’t protect babies. They only poison the rooms they’re born into.”
That lands in me like a bullet.
Then Sophie turns back to me.
And the softness is gone.
“How is what you did different from what I did?”
I stare at her.
The honest answer is that it ain’t.
The selfish answer is that mine was mine and hers threatened the club.
The cruel answer is that I trusted my own silence more than hers.
I pick the worst answer because pride is a stupid thing and mine has survived too long.
“It doesn’t matter.”
The room seems to suck in a breath.
Sophie blinks.
Once.
Twice.
Then every bit of heartbreak on her face hardens into something colder.
“It doesn’t matter,” she repeats.
“Sophie.”
“No.” She steps back. “No, don’t you dare say my name like that now.”
I reach for her.
She jerks away before I touch her.
That hurts.
I deserve it.
“You don’t get to measure my honesty with one hand and hide your own behind your back,” she says. “You don’t get to stand there and act like postponing our wedding is some noble decision about trust when you have been carrying a grave between us and calling it the past.”
Becki sobs harder.
Royal murmurs something against her hair.
Amelia stands near Derby, face pale and stricken, like she is watching another woman’s love turn into a battlefield and wondering if all roads end the same way.
Derby’s expression is grim.
He knows.
Hell, all of them know.
I have lost control of this room.
Worse.
I have lost the right to claim I had it.
Sophie grabs her phone from the table. Her hand shakes, but her voice doesn’t. She looks at Becki, and some of the anger eases. “Take care of yourself.”
Becki is crying too hard to answer.
Sophie looks at Royal. “Take care of her.”
Royal nods once, solemn as death.
Then Sophie looks back at me.
My almost-wife.
My heart.
The woman I just hurt because I was too proud to see my lie standing beside hers.
“I need to think somewhere that is mine,” she says. “And I need to ask my father what the hell he paid for before someone else decides the answer with a gun.”
Then she walks past me.
Not around me.
Past me.
Like I’m no longer the wall she trusts to hold.
Amelia looks from Sophie to me, then to the phone in my hand. She understands enough. Her face crumples with guilt.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
Sophie turns to her immediately. “No.”
“But if I had not come here…”
“No.” Sophie crosses the room and takes Amelia’s hands. “Don’t take blame for rot that was buried before you ever reached that road.”
Amelia’s eyes fill.
Derby looks at me over their heads.
He knows this fracture is bigger than tonight.
I look back at him. “Get Amelia home. Keep August close. Nobody sees them without my say.”
Derby nods. “Done.”
Amelia looks at Sophie. “Are you okay?”
Sophie smiles.
It’s the most heartbreaking lie in the room.
“I will be.”
Then she lets go and walks toward the door.
I follow.
Because I love her.
Because I’m furious with her.
Because our wedding is postponed and our enemies are watching her gate.
Because the woman I planned to marry is going home to Paradise Falls with a secret finally out between us and a hundred more still waiting in the dark.
Outside, the Kentucky sky has turned the bruised color of late afternoon storm clouds.
Sophie steps into it without looking back.
I don’t know if following her is enough.