Chapter 12 Ghosts of Yesterday
The Story He Never Told
For three days after the rally, I barely slept.
I tried.
God knew I tried.
But every time I closed my eyes, Tommy's warning returned.
Refusing the club has consequences.
Simple words.
Yet they carried enough weight to poison every quiet moment.
The Steel Vipers had always been part of my past.
A chapter I'd survived.
A mistake I'd escaped.
Now it felt like that chapter was trying to reopen.
And this time, Elliot was caught in the middle.
That was the part I couldn't stop thinking about.
Not myself.
Him.
Always him.
Because before Elliot, consequences only belonged to me.
Bad decisions hurt me.
Old enemies came after me.
Past mistakes followed me.
Fine.
I could live with that.
I'd earned most of it.
But Elliot?
Elliot hadn't chosen any of this.
Yet somehow my life kept spilling into his.
The realization sat like a stone in my chest.
Heavy.
Permanent.
By Wednesday afternoon, I was officially impossible to be around.
Not that anyone needed to tell me.
I already knew.
Customers repeated questions because I wasn't listening.
Paperwork piled up untouched.
A simple repair that should have taken thirty minutes stretched into nearly two hours.
Even coffee wasn't helping.
And coffee always helped.
The garage office door opened.
I didn't look up.
I already knew who it was.
The soft footsteps gave him away.
A second later, a fresh cup of coffee appeared beside me.
Silence followed.
Then more silence.
I continued staring at the paperwork.
Pretending to work.
Pretending being the important word.
Eventually Elliot spoke.
"You've been avoiding me."
Straight to the point.
I almost smiled.
The kid had learned a few things.
"I've been busy."
Lie.
Terrible lie.
The kind that insulted everyone's intelligence.
Elliot didn't even react.
"Okay."
That got my attention.
I looked up.
He stood across from the desk with his arms folded.
Calm.
Patient.
Dangerously patient.
The expression reminded me of someone preparing for a difficult conversation.
Wonderful.
Exactly what I needed.
"What?"
His eyebrows lifted.
"What what?"
"That look."
"What look?"
"The one that says you're about to make my life difficult."
A smile tugged at his mouth.
"Maybe your life deserves to be difficult."
I snorted.
Fair.
Annoyingly fair.
Elliot moved closer.
Not enough to crowd me.
Enough to make the distance feel intentional.
"You haven't slept."
I opened my mouth.
He continued.
"You've barely eaten."
Another point.
Unfortunately.
"And every time your phone rings, you look like you're expecting bad news."
The accuracy of the observation irritated me.
Mostly because he was right.
Again.
Silence settled between us.
Then Elliot sighed.
The sound felt strangely sad.
Not frustrated.
Concerned.
That somehow felt worse.
"Talk to me."
The request landed heavily.
Because he wasn't demanding answers.
He was offering help.
The difference mattered.
More than I wanted it to.
For several seconds, I stared at the desk.
At the paperwork.
At anything except him.
Because looking at Elliot made honesty harder.
Not easier.
The truth carried consequences.
And lately consequences seemed to follow me everywhere.
"Elliot."
My voice sounded rough.
Tired.
"Some things don't get better when you talk about them."
The answer would've worked on most people.
Not him.
Not anymore.
"That's not true."
I laughed softly.
Humorless.
"Depends on the thing."
"No."
His voice remained gentle.
Steady.
Certain.
The same certainty he'd shown every time I tried pushing him away.
Every time I'd convinced myself he deserved better.
The memory tightened something inside my chest.
Because despite everything, he was still here.
Still choosing me.
The realization felt dangerous.
Beautiful.
Terrifying.
"I know you're scared."
The words froze me.
Not because they were wrong.
Because they were right.
Painfully right.
For a moment neither of us moved.
The office felt suddenly smaller.
Quieter.
The afternoon sunlight stretching across the floor.
Dust floating through golden beams.
Everything ordinary.
Everything changing.
Finally, I leaned back in the chair.
Exhaustion settling heavily across my shoulders.
Maybe I was tired.
Tired of carrying things alone.
Tired of pretending.
Tired of treating every painful memory like a secret.
The realization surprised me.
Almost as much as what happened next.
"His name was Ben."
The words escaped before I could stop them.
Elliot remained completely still.
Listening.
Waiting.
Not interrupting.
Just listening.
The way he always did.
"My brother."
The office seemed to grow quieter.
Even the garage noise faded.
Leaving only memory.
Ben.
I hadn't spoken his name aloud in months.
Maybe longer.
The sound felt strange.
Familiar.
Painful.
"He was twenty."
The memories arrived immediately.
Bright.
Sharp.
Unwelcome.
A grin.
A motorcycle.
A kid who laughed too loud and trusted too easily.
A kid who thought I hung the moon.
I swallowed hard.
"He followed me everywhere growing up."
A faint smile appeared despite everything.
"He used to steal my jackets."
Elliot smiled softly.
Not because the story was happy.
Because he could picture it.
The realization helped.
More than expected.
I looked toward the window.
Toward the sunlight.
Toward the past.
"When I joined the Vipers, he wanted in too."
The smile disappeared.
So did mine.
The office suddenly felt colder.
"He thought it was freedom."
The confession came quietly.
"Brotherhood."
"Adventure."
I laughed again.
The sound broke apart halfway through.
"The usual bullshit."
Elliot didn't comment.
Didn't judge.
Didn't rush me.
God.
I loved him for that.
The realization slipped through before I could stop it.
Then stayed.
Comfortably.
Certain.
I continued speaking.
Because stopping felt impossible now.
"I told myself he'd make his own choices."
The words sounded bitter.
"That he was an adult."
"That it wasn't my responsibility."
The guilt returned.
Familiar.
Heavy.
Old.
Like carrying concrete in my chest.
The next words hurt.
They always did.
"One night, a deal went bad."
Silence.
Then more silence.
The kind that stretched forever.
I stared at the desk.
Unable to look at him.
Unable to look anywhere.
Because the memory remained too vivid.
Too alive.
"We weren't supposed to be there."
The confession felt like dragging broken glass through my throat.
"But we were."
My hands clenched automatically.
The same way they always did.
Years later.
Still.
"There was a gun."
The office vanished.
Replaced by flashing lights.
Blood.
Sirens.
Regret.
A lifetime of regret.
My voice dropped lower.
Almost a whisper.
"Ben died before the ambulance arrived."
The words settled heavily between us.
Permanent.
Unchangeable.
True.
For several seconds, nothing existed.
No garage.
No office.
No present.
Only grief.
Then Elliot moved.
Not dramatically.
Not quickly.
Just enough.
A hand settling over mine.
Warm.
Steady.
Real.
The contact nearly broke me.
Because nobody had touched that memory before.
Nobody.
Not like this.
Not without judgment.
Not without advice.
Not without trying to fix it.
Elliot simply sat beside me.
Sharing the weight.
And somehow that felt infinitely harder.
I laughed softly.
A broken sound.
"After that, I started noticing a pattern."
His fingers tightened slightly.
Encouraging.
Patient.
I hated how much I needed that.
"Everyone I care about gets hurt."
The belief emerged before I could stop it.
The same belief that haunted every relationship.
Every friendship.
Every attachment.
The prison I'd built for myself.
"My mother left."
I stared at the floor.
"The club destroyed half the people I grew up with."
Another bitter laugh.
"And Ben died because he wanted to be like me."
The words landed harder than everything else.
Because they were the real wound.
The one beneath all the others.
The one I'd never escaped.
I finally looked at Elliot.
Really looked at him.
His eyes shone with emotion.
Not pity.
Never pity.
Understanding.
Compassion.
Love.
The sight terrified me.
Because I knew exactly what came next.
The reason I'd been distant.
The reason I'd barely slept.
The reason Tommy's warning haunted me.
"I thought if I stayed alone, nobody else could get hurt."
The confession echoed through the office.
Raw.
Honest.
Final.
My throat tightened.
The truth sitting exposed between us.
Ugly and vulnerable.
"I genuinely believed that."
The words came quieter now.
More fragile.
Then I looked directly into the eyes of the man I loved.
And finally admitted the thing I'd been too afraid to say aloud.
"That's why I keep trying to push you away."
Silence followed.
Heavy.
Meaningful.
Because for the first time, Elliot wasn't hearing the version of the story I'd told everyone else.
The tough version.
The simplified version.
The lie.
This was the truth.
The story I never told.
The wound I'd carried alone for years.
And now it belonged to both of us.
More Than a Mistake
For a long time after Jaxon finished talking, neither of us spoke.
The garage office remained quiet around us.
Afternoon sunlight stretched across the floor.
Somewhere beyond the walls, tools clinked and engines hummed.
Normal sounds.
Ordinary sounds.
Yet nothing felt ordinary anymore.
Because Jaxon had finally trusted me with the part of himself he kept hidden from everyone else.
The grief.
The guilt.
The fear.
I looked at him sitting beside me and felt my heart ache.
Not because he was broken.
Because he'd spent so many years believing he deserved to be.
The realization felt unbearable.
His gaze remained fixed on the floor.
Like he couldn't quite bring himself to look at me after everything he'd confessed.
As if he expected judgment.
Or disappointment.
Or pity.
The fact that he expected any of those things made my chest hurt.