Chapter 21 #3
Jax took the route keys off Ryder and set them beside the patch. “You ran a source I didn’t know existed and kept an operation off my board. I spent six days of lockdown hunting a leak while the Road Captain was the one feeding this compound false information.”
“I did.”
“Don’t agree like it closes the subject. The next man who thinks being scared makes him smarter than the table can look at what happened to you.”
Leah let go of my hand and stood. “When Eden couldn’t breathe, she was embarrassed to need help.
She lay on that floor worrying Jess would think Ryder finally had proof his wife was too much work.
If any man repeats this as Ryder frightening her for her own good, I’ll correct you once.
After that Eden won’t need to threaten your truck, because I will. ”
June stood up beside her. “This club ran on Eden’s work while Ryder told the room she was replaceable.
Fundraisers, lockdown meals, records, every unpaid hour that looked easy because a woman made it look easy.
That ends. Civilian work gets requested, priced, and paid.
Nobody offers Eden’s time, her kitchen, or her name because she’s married to a member. ”
Tessa waited until June sat down. “I watched her come back from that hospital and thought you were worried about Jess bleeding. I thought you had enough concern in you for one woman and you’d picked the healthy one.
Eden kept asking us not to make Jess the target.
She protected the woman you hired. I don’t have a better sentence than that and I don’t think you deserve one. ”
Bear read the rest — oversight, repair duty, independent counsel and relocation for Jess, full financial disclosure, the house transfer, monthly review. Men spoke after that, some angry about the club, some ashamed they had called an officer’s affair private business.
When Bear opened the floor to me I stood where I was and left the middle of it empty.
“I’m not leaving this compound,” I said. “I didn’t leave my husband, the women, or this club. He lied because he was certain I’d disappear and come back when he called. I stayed, and that’s the only part of this summer that was mine.”
The mask made my voice flatter and further off than I wanted, so I said the rest slowly.
“There’s a story going around this property that he did something ugly to save me and it worked.
Every one of you has heard it. Some of you have said it.
I want it dead in this room. For six days every person in this building watched me become his widow while my husband was alive and standing in the yard, and not one of you crossed to my porch to say what he was doing made no sense.
The women came. Gage said it to his face.
The rest of you decided a man’s affair was his own business and let me carry it in front of you. ”
Nobody looked away. I made myself go on.
“Wade’s right that this room leaks and he’s right that paper takes the roof off.
I lived five years under that roof. It was made out of everybody agreeing not to write anything down, and it was warm, and I liked it.
Then a man told me a company owned my house and I had nothing in my hand to hold up against him. So take the roof off. I want it off.”
“Nobody gives Ryder information about me. Nobody asks him to approve anything about my health, my house, or my business. Nobody treats him as my spokesman. If you need an answer from me, you ask me, and if I tell you no, you don’t walk across the yard and get a different one.
I don’t need any of you to hate him. I need you to stop making his fear louder than my answer.
He may get a patch back one day. He doesn’t get authority over me, and if somebody forgets that, I’ll deal with the person who forgot before I deal with him. ”
“Do you want membership or compound access changed beyond the suspension and the house terms?” Bear asked.
“No. I want my life to stay where I put it.” I looked at Ryder, because he had once believed loving me let him pick my road. “He’s the one who lives somewhere else.”
He collected nothing off that table. Men moved enough to let him through and none of them followed.
He stopped at the threshold, because a prospect had put a hand up and asked Jax who was approving the evening route.
Jax gave him a name. Ryder took the answer without turning around and went out into the yard.
Tessa brought me water and shoved the empty chair away from the place where he had stood.
Gage asked Bear for a copy of the family policy to read with Leah.
Men came to me directly after that, about kitchen access, the fundraiser records, the repair schedule, and every question was ordinary enough to hurt.
They had always known how to ask me. His authority had only made it more convenient not to.
The mask came off damp along the edge and I folded it into my pocket.
June’s monitor never crossed the line I set.
On the table, between Bear’s hands and the sealed photograph, the Road Captain patch lay with four cut threads hanging off it, and nobody put anything down on top of it for the rest of the afternoon.