Chapter 4 #3
The heat and what my lungs had done that morning made the trunk harder than it should have been, and I refused to call anybody.
Ryder had loaded that trunk a hundred times.
He had a system for it, hard things low and flat things upright, and he had taught it to me on a Sunday with a beer in his hand, and my arms wouldn’t do it.
I moved his tools, his blanket, the tie-downs, and the emergency water onto the driveway, forced the second suitcase under the hinge, and put both hands on the lid until it latched.
The house door stood open behind me on rooms I had never once locked against anybody on this compound.
A motorcycle stopped at the end of the drive. Ryder swung off with the route folder strapped behind him and took in the open house, the Civic, the suitcases.
“Did you come back to stop me?” I kept both hands on the trunk. One honest sentence would do it. I hated the hope, and I gave him the chance anyway.
Ryder looked at the suitcases. “Bear needs the county route files. The south road isn’t clear. The highway’s twenty-five minutes out once you’re through the gate, so stay on it.”
He knew which road I would take, and I hadn’t known I was leaving when I woke up. “You serviced my car, filled the tank, put a refill in the glove compartment, and emptied the account before she ever knocked. When did you settle on me as the one who had to go?”
“The house belongs to the club.” Men crossed the inner road behind him while he kept his voice low enough to keep the fundraiser guests from hearing it. “Jess can’t stay where she is, and the baby needs somewhere secure.”
“Then give them your bunk and sleep in the fucking yard.” I slammed the trunk.
I wanted the skillet, the pans, the mixer, and the man standing in front of me, and wanting him after he had chosen someone else was worse than any of it.
“You don’t get to hand her my home because she has something I don’t. ”
His attention dropped to the inhaler in my pocket. “This isn’t about your asthma.”
“You told me you got tired of arranging your life around whether I could breathe, and now she has your healthy baby and I have a prepared car. Don’t rewrite it because you don’t like hearing it back.
” I opened the driver’s door and faced him across the roof.
“If something happens to me on that road, are you coming after me, or are you staying here with her?”
He had lied about the marriage, the money, the house, and every absence I had filed under club work. His answer still took long enough to make me hate myself for waiting on it. “Jess and the baby are my priority.”
I locked the door and backed toward the inner road.
Leah came running from the clubhouse the second she saw the car move, June behind her, Tessa cutting across the grass from the old garage.
I couldn’t stop. If Leah put her arms around me I would tell her what he’d said about my lungs, and I couldn’t watch her understand that I had defended him in front of her the day before.
The first gunshot came from beyond the south fence.
The next burst hit metal near the main gate, and something went up past the tree line and put dirt and smoke over the road.
The prospect at the inner barrier dropped behind the concrete block and shouted into his radio while two motorcycles cut across in front of me.
“Turn around!” Jax came out of the guard building with his gun drawn and his arm pointed back at the houses. “Bear’s closing the compound. Get inside!”
“Open the gate.” I put the window down far enough for him to hear me while another round struck beyond the fence. “I was already leaving.”
“Nobody leaves during a live perimeter hit.” Jax kept himself between the Civic and the outer road. “Not you, not the woman by the garage, not a brother. Turn it around, Eden.”
Ryder reached us before the steel started moving.
He gripped the top of the open window, looked at the smoke above the trees, then tracked past me to where a prospect was hurrying Jess out of the old garage, where the gate crew had put her when the shooting started.
“Bear’s holding the east row. The house is your assignment. Go back and lock the doors.”
The husband I trusted would have gotten in the passenger seat and told me everything.
The man beside my car had planned to put me on the other side of that fence, and the attack had taken away the only outcome his lie was built to produce.
“Tell me now. You made sure I could leave, and now I can’t. Is Jess carrying your baby?”
Ryder looked through my windshield at the road he couldn’t put between us. He could have ended it there. His jaw set, and he turned from the road to Jess. “Yes. She and the baby stay under my protection until Bear opens the gate.”
“Then find somewhere for both of you to sleep.” I put the window up until he had to let go of it, turned the Civic in the road, and drove back toward the house at ten miles an hour with the gate swinging shut in my mirror.
It took eleven seconds. I counted them. The last thing to disappear behind the steel was the county road, empty and white with dust, running east toward everywhere I was not going to be.