Chapter 23 In Front of the Club
Diesel proposed the idea three months into Cain's recovery.
"You should say something. Publicly. Not because Wren needs the club's approval, she doesn't. But half this club watched you fall apart for eight months, watched what your mistake cost you.
There's something powerful in you standing up and owning it in front of the family that watched the whole thing happen. "
On a warm Saturday, at what had been billed as an ordinary cookout, Cain asked for everyone's attention, Wren standing beside him with no idea what was coming.
"Most of you know what happened eight months ago.
I cheated on my wife. I let this patch consume everything until I broke the best thing I ever had.
I'm not asking anybody to forgive me on Wren's behalf.
That's not anybody's decision but hers. What I am doing is telling all of you what I've been trying to prove to her privately for months.
I'm going to be a different kind of president going forward.
I'm delegating more. I'm setting boundaries I should have set years ago. "
He turned to face her directly, the whole club watching.
"Wren, I love you. I have never stopped, not for one day of the eight months you were gone.
I am going to spend whatever time you'll give me proving that love means something different now.
Not perfect. I'll never be perfect. But honest. Choosing you, actively, every day, instead of assuming you'd always just be there. "
The compound had gone silent, dozens of hardened bikers watching a vulnerability that ran entirely against the club's usual currency.Wren crossed the distance between them and took his face in both hands.
"I love you too. I never stopped either.
And I choose you, Cain Ryker. Not the president. Not the patch. You."
The cookout erupted. Cain pulled her into a careful embrace, mindful of his healing shoulder, and kissed her in front of the entire club, the first kiss they'd shared since the night everything fell apart.
Afterward, once the crowd had thinned and the fire pit burned low, Diesel found them still standing near where Cain had spoken, and pulled them both into a rough, unpracticed hug.
"I've known this man twenty-five years. Never seen him do anything harder than what he just did, standing up in front of all of us like that. I'm proud of you both."
"Couldn't have gotten here without you pushing," Cain told him. "Every step of it."
"That's what brothers are for." Diesel clapped him on the good shoulder, careful of the healing one. "Now go enjoy your night. You've earned this one, brother. Both of you have."
They stayed at the fire until well past midnight, Wren's head on Cain's shoulder, watching sparks lift into the dark, feeling, for the first time in over a year, like the worst of the road behind them had finally, truly ended.
In the days leading up to the cookout, Cain rehearsed what he wanted to say more times than he'd ever admit, pacing the porch late at night, trying out different openings and discarding most of them for sounding too rehearsed, too much like a man performing contrition rather than a man simply, finally telling the truth out loud in front of the people who'd watched him fail to tell it for eight long months.
He settled, in the end, on saying nothing scripted at all, trusting that if the words were true enough, they'd find their own way out when the moment actually arrived.
Tomas, the young prospect Cain had shoved to safety, stood at the edge of the gathered crowd during Cain's speech, and when Cain's eyes found his briefly during the address, something passed between them that needed no further words, a debt neither of them would ever fully speak of directly but that both of them understood completely, the specific bond between a man who'd chosen to bleed and a young man who'd spent every day since determined to become worth that choice.
Wren, in the days leading up to the cookout, found herself uncertain how to prepare for a moment she didn't yet know was coming, spending the week instead simply continuing the ordinary work of rebuilding, restocking shelves, checking in on Frank's early progress at the garage, unaware that Cain was quietly assembling, in his own private way, the courage to finally say everything out loud in front of the people who'd witnessed his worst chapter.
Reyna, watching from among the gathered crowd at the cookout, having driven out at Wren's invitation for the occasion, found herself unexpectedly moved by the whole scene, a world she'd initially regarded with wary skepticism revealing itself, in this particular moment, as capable of exactly the kind of accountability and tenderness she hadn't expected from a motorcycle club.
She would tell Wren later that evening, driving back toward Hollow Creek together, that she finally understood what Wren had been trying to describe all those months, the specific, complicated family this whole community actually was underneath its rough exterior.