“You ready to…whoa,” Noah says, poking his head in the bedroom as his eyes greedily travel the length of my body. “Jesus, baby.”
I hold my hands out and twirl for him. “You like?”
“Yeah,” he answers, giving me a hint of a smile but it’s nowhere near the reaction I’m used to from him. “I’ll go start the truck.”
“Noah, wait.”
“What?”
I cross the room to him and reach for his hand. “I love you.”
Our eyes meet and the pain shining back at me dishes up a whole new layer of heartbreak. Seeing my usually playful and confident man look so lost kills me. He sighs, pulling me into his arms and squeezing me hard as he presses his lips to my forehead and just when I think he’s going to say it back, he releases me and takes my hand again.
“Come on. We’re gonna miss dinner if we don’t hurry up.”
I nod, biting my lips as tears sting my eyes again. There’s never been a time in our life together when Noah hasn’t said those three words back to me and the implication of their disappearance terrifies me. But I need to put on a good face and get through tonight before I deal with that.
He holds my hand as we walk out of the house to the truck and instead of letting me climb in on his side, he walks me around to the passenger seat and opens the door for me. When he gets behind the wheel, he doesn’t hold his hand out for me to slide across the seat like I usually do and my heart is aching too much to even try it. God, what if he stopped me? I don’t think I could take it. We ride in silence to the clubhouse and with each mile that passes, I feel like he slips away from me a little bit more and I have no idea how to stop it.
When we pull into the clubhouse parking lot, I scan the lot and I’m transported back in time seven years. It looks almost exactly like it did before but when I look again, I notice picnic tables where a boxing ring used to be and a playground where they used to have a stage for girls to dance for them. The guys are all outside and there are a few girls here but they’re not the same kind of girls who hung around the club before.
“What do you think?” Noah asks and I turn to him with a smile.
“Looks promising.”
He nods as he pulls the truck into a spot, turns it off, and jumps out without another word. I drop my head, sucking in a breath as I mentally prepare myself to act like I’m perfectly okay right now when it feels like my soul is being ripped in two. I know what it’s like to live without Noah and now that he’s back, I don’t want to experience that ever again.
My door opens and my head jerks up as Noah holds his hand out to me. I take it, watching him warily as he slings his arm over my shoulders and kisses the side of my head. His silence is the worst torture I’ve ever been through and that’s saying something. I want to scream at him to talk to me, yell at me… anything other than this but I know it wouldn’t do any good. Besides, we have an audience now.
“Kady!” Blaze calls, walking over to us with a beer in his hand. He and Noah exchange nods before he turns to me. “Do you think I could have a minute with you?”
I nod, peeking up at Noah but he’s staring at the bonfire roaring in the fire pit. “Sure.”
Blaze motions for me to follow him and Noah releases me before heading off to join the other guys. I watch him for a moment, wondering what I can do to fix this, before turning to Blaze and forcing a smile to my face.
“Everything okay?” he asks and I nod.
“Yeah. What’s up?”
He glances back at Noah and sighs. “Listen, Kady… it’s probably not my place to say anything but I remember what the two of you were like back then and I can see that something is not okay right now.”
I nod with a sigh.
That’s the understatement of the year.
“Just give it time, okay? What the two of you are going through…” He shakes his head and something about the pain in his eyes makes me think he understands exactly what Noah and I are dealing with. “It’s a lot and more than enough to break most couples up but I can confidently say y’all are not most couples. You can get through this.”
“Thank you for that,” I whisper, feeling a little better about the situation. He’s right. What Noah and I are going through is a lot for anyone to handle. “Now, what did you want to talk to me about?”
He glances down at the pavement before meeting my eyes. “I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“For the way everything went down back then. For being a shitty president and not looking out for you and Henn the way I should have. Him getting locked up was one of the big things that pushed me to change this club and I think if you give us a chance, you’ll see that we’re a real family now but I understand if you can’t do that.”
“Hey,” I whisper, shrugging my shoulder. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
Nodding, he takes a sip of his beer. “Yeah, you are.”
“And honestly, it’s in the past. I spent a very long time being angry at everyone but I don’t want to be that person anymore. I just want to move forward.”
“That sounds like a damn good plan to me,” he answers, looking relieved as he smiles at me and I can see how much my forgiveness meant to him. It’s another sign that this club and its members really have changed for the better.
* * * *
My eyes burn and I fight back a yawn as I stare at the paper on the clipboard in my hand and write down the hourly stats for one of our critical patients. My stomach churns but I know I won’t be able to eat anything. I haven’t done a whole lot of eating or sleeping since Noah and I left the clubhouse two days ago. We’ve just been tiptoeing around each other for the past forty-eight hours with barely any interaction. I don’t even know what he’s still doing at the cabin if he’s this checked out of our relationship. Unless he’s just there because he feels like he has to be to protect me from Oliver. If that’s the case, though, he can beat it. I’m perfectly capable of protecting myself, just the same way I have for the past six years, and if I’m not, I could always call Blaze. He gave me his cell number and the number of every guy in the club before he left the party the other night, telling me that if I ever needed anything, all I had to do was pick up the phone.
“Kady!”
I whip around to look at Hannah as she stands in the doorway of the back room, her hands on her hips and an irritated look on her face. “What?”
“I’ve been trying to talk to you for like five minutes but you’re so damn zoned out. What’s going on with you?”
“I’m sorry, Han,” I sigh, setting my clipboard down on the table. Her brows knit together in concern.
“What’s up, babe? You’re really out of it lately.”
Tears fill my eyes before I can stop them and I clamp my hand over my mouth. God, the last thing I need to do is cry at work. Hannah blinks in surprise before rushing over to me and wrapping her arms around me.
“Kady, you’re scaring me,” she whispers, an ache in her voice and I shake my head. Ugh. This is so stupid. Fuck Noah for making me feel like this instead of just talking to me.