Chapter 16
kelsey
Me
Your dad’s built a life here. He’s the president of the Colorado chapter. We can’t just pretend that doesn’t change everything. We’re not the same people anymore, and I’m just not sure there’s room for—
“Everything okay?”
I jumped, my thumb hitting send before I could stop it, before I could delete the rambling thought that would definitely cause my daughters to panic.
Teddy stood behind me, still shirtless because apparently he was trying to kill me, his expression guarded in that way that meant he’d been standing behind me for longer than I’d realized.
My phone vibrated against my palm. Definitely Addie, reading my half-finished text and drawing conclusions that would require damage control I didn’t have energy for.
But I didn’t dare flip it over to check.
Not with Teddy standing so close, watching me with a look I couldn’t decipher.
Maybe he was waiting for me to discuss the text or acknowledge what I’d seen on the kutte.
Or maybe he was just hungry and wondering why I hadn’t started breakfast yet.
“Hey,” he said cautiously. “Wanna tell me what’s going on?”
“Nothing.” The word came out clipped, a little too high-pitched to be believable. “Just the girls seeing how we are.”
I forced a smile so stiff it felt like it might crack my face in half, really trying to drive home how absolutely unbothered I was.
His silence told me he wasn’t buying it. I could feel his eyes on me—eyes that had always seen straight through my bullshit, even when I’d perfected the performance for everyone else in my life.
I cleared my throat, scrambling for safer ground. “What did your mom want? Everything okay?”
“Yeah, she was just calling to ‘check in,’” he said with an eyeroll. “Pretty sure she’d recruited Piper to her cause. They were trying like hell to get Avery to say Aunt Kelsey.”
“Piper’s there? Like, right now?” I asked with a frown.
Teddy nodded. “Yeah, guess her blood pressure’s been elevated, and Dane didn’t want her on her feet or trying to keep up with an almost two-year-old this close to her due date, so they’re hanging out over there.”
“But the girls just texted that they were at the bakery with Piper,” I argued, the lack of sleep making me doubt myself.
“When’d they text you that?” he asked, confusion flickering across his face.
“Just now. Like, two minutes ago.” After scrolling up enough to hide my last text and all the ones sent in response, I held the phone up as if the timestamp would somehow clear things up.
Teddy’s brow furrowed as he read the texts. “Huh. Ma said the girls were up at the bakery with Dane when I asked to talk to them. Sounds like he’s got them managing the pick-up orders. Maybe they just wanted it to sound more exciting than it is.”
Piper was with Lucy. The girls were helping at the bakery. Everything was fine. Completely normal, everyday stuff that had nothing to do with whatever Teddy and I were currently navigating.
“That’s good. Make ‘em earn their keep.” I forced a chuckle before falling back into the role I knew how to play best. “I’ll grab you some coffee.”
Because that was what I did, I took care of things. Made everything look perfect on the outside, so I could convince myself I wasn’t falling apart inside.
Maybe if I tried hard enough, I could pretend that the separate lives we’d built still had room for each other. That the miles between Texas and Colorado could shrink to nothing. That a President’s patch didn’t mean what I knew it meant.
When I tried to step around him, Teddy moved into my path, blocking any escape route.
“You wanna tell me what’s really going on? You’ve been as jittery as a June bug since I walked out here.”
My spine stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Teddy sighed. “Back to the same fucking song and dance as before.”
I opened my mouth to protest, to offer some deflection about the weather or about needing to start breakfast, but he cut me off.
“How ‘bout this? I’ll start it off. You were holding my kutte.”
There it was. The conversation I’d been trying to avoid since the moment I’d seen the patches.
“I was just hanging it up. It must have fallen.”
Except it hadn’t fallen. We both knew that.
“You saw the patches.”
It wasn’t a question. I met his eyes, seeing the resignation there, the same inevitability I’d been feeling since I’d read that word. President.
I could pretend I didn’t know what he meant. Could play dumb, retreat, rinse and repeat. But I was so tired of running. So tired of pretending.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I saw them.”
The silence between us was so thick it was almost suffocating.
Through the windows, the morning sun was turning the snow-covered landscape into something almost painfully bright.
Beautiful and cold and so far removed from the messy reality of two people trying to figure out if there was anything left to salvage.
“Say something,” Teddy urged, his jaw flexing and tightening beneath his beard. “Anything. Yell at me. Tell me I should have mentioned it sooner. Just—don’t go quiet on me again.”
But what was there to say? That I’d been stupid enough to think these few days meant something? That I’d let myself hope for a future that geography made impossible?
“I should’ve seen it the first night,” I admitted, tracing a fingernail with the edge of my thumb. “When you showed up at the cabin expecting the girls. But I think I was too busy being mortified about the whole situation to really notice. And I guess I always assumed…”
I trailed off, unsure how to finish my sentence without revealing exactly how pathetic I’d been. How I’d been clinging to the fantasy that he was still adrift, still figuring things out, still possibly open to coming back to Texas. To me.
“Assumed what?” he asked quietly.
“I thought—” I stopped, swallowing hard against the lump forming in my throat. “When Addie mentioned you were in Colorado, I thought you were just helping out the chapter. I thought it was temporary.”
“And now?”
“Now I know it’s not temporary.” The words came out barely above a whisper. “You’re not just passing through. You’re… you’re president,” I said finally, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. “That’s not exactly a position you can just walk away from.”
“No,” he agreed, his tone carefully neutral. “It ain’t.”
“That’s good, though,” I heard myself saying, the words automatic, rehearsed. The same voice I’d used when the girls had gotten into their first-choice colleges, and I’d been dying at the thought of them leaving. “You always wanted to follow in Wolverine’s footsteps. Run your own chapter.”
“Don’t do that.” His hand came up like he was going to touch my face, then dropped. “Don’t go all fucking polite on me now.”
“What? I can’t be supportive? I can’t tell you that you deserve a fresh start somewhere that doesn’t—” I mashed my lips together, trying to mask the sudden quiver.
“Somewhere that doesn’t what?” His eyes searched mine, looking for something I wasn’t sure I could give him.
“Somewhere that doesn’t remind you of everything we lost,” I whispered.
Teddy rubbed the back of his neck like he was about to say something terrible and probably necessary and wanted to avoid it. “That what you think this is? That I chose Colorado over you? That I left to get away from everything we had in Texas?”
“Isn’t it?” I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the flannel and the fire crackling behind me.
“Hell no.” He stepped closer, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact. “Colorado chapter was damn near wiped out after that shit with the Sons of Death MC, remember?”
I nodded. How could I forget a war that had lasted almost two decades?
A war that had put a target on not just the back of every SPMC biker, but family members as well.
The Sons of Death had ruthlessly gunned down Ol’ Ladies and children in their front yards, decimating entire clubs before moving onto the next like a fucking plague.
I’d homeschooled the kids for over a year, sick to my stomach every time the phone rang. Had every club in the country not banded together in the eleventh hour, Teddy and his entire family would have been wiped out.
“Bear and I made a few runs up here, helping them rebuild. Liked the mountains. Liked the club. Irish—the pres at the time—offered me a spot right after…” He trailed off, but I could fill in the blanks.
Right after everything went to hell.
“Thought—Christ, Kels, I thought maybe we could start over here. Away from the house, from the memories, from everything that hurt too much to look at. Came out here to get things ready. Was gonna surprise you with it, this whole new life where we could be different. Where we could heal.”
“But I asked for a divorce before you could tell me.”
“Yeah.” His voice was rough, like the word was being dragged across gravel. “After that, went nomad for a while. Couldn’t settle anywhere. Kept riding, hoping maybe if I went far enough, fast enough, I could outrun it all.”
But you couldn’t outrun grief. I had the gym membership to prove it.
“Irish didn’t give up easily. Chapter needed stability, needed someone who understood both the old ways and the new direction the MC was heading when he decided to step down.
So I came back. Took over. Built something here because.
..” He paused, his Adam’s apple bobbing in a hard swallow.
“Because there was nothing left for me in Texas.”
Nothing left. The words cut deep, even though I knew he didn’t mean them the way they sounded. He meant the house, the town, the life we’d built. Not me. At least, I hoped that was what he meant.
My phone buzzed again on the counter, and I snatched it up, desperate for the distraction.
Addie
Will you please tell us what’s going on?
Did you have a fight?
Sky
room for WHAT??
are you two ok???
Addie
Why won’t you answer???
Sky
mom!
mother!
madre!
talk to us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Addie
You’re not giving up, are you?
For a moment, the edges of the screen blurred, the letters swimming.
Teddy cleared his throat, voice soft. “You wanna talk about it?”
No, I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to go back to the person I was before I got out of bed, someone who looked at snow and saw a metaphor for fresh starts and second chances.
But a fresh start required knowing what you wanted to start fresh toward. And I had no idea what that looked like with five hundred miles and a whole ass club between us.
I shook my head, just once. “No,” I whispered, because what I wanted to say would sound insane out loud.
It feels like every part of you that’s thriving in Colorado is another part that has no use for me.
I’m so proud of you, it hurts.
I want you to ask me to stay.
But that wasn’t how any of this worked. It wasn’t how we’d ever worked.
That was the price of admission—what I’d signed up for when I fell in love with him at fifteen. Being with Teddy Riggs meant always coming second to the club, always being kept at arm’s length from the parts of his life that really mattered.
I’d just forgotten during the past few days.
I took a shaky breath and tried to steady my voice. “I’m happy for you,” I said. “I am. You finally got your own club. Your own life. I hope you—” My voice cracked. “I hope you get everything you want.”
He frowned, like I’d said something in another language. “Then why do you sound like you’re about to cry?”
Maybe it was because I’d always thought that if he ever found happiness, it would be with me. Maybe it was because the thought of him moving on without me felt like losing Levi all over again.
A different kind of grief, but just as sharp. Just as permanent.
I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t find the words to explain that watching him build a beautiful, full life felt like proof of what I’d long suspected—that he was better off without me dragging him down.