Archer let out a long exhale. “Fuck, Poet. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“How about the truth,” I clipped.
“It’s not for me to tell,” he said.
“Coward.”
His jaw clenched. “He’s my brother. I won’t betray him. He’ll tell you, or he won’t. It’s for him to decide, not me.”
“Bandit and Ripper. Guess you won’t tell me how you got those road names, hmm?”
When he continued to stare at me without saying a word, I knew.
It’s bad.
“He was never going to tell me any of it, was he?” I asked, my voice so soft I wondered if I’d even said the words aloud.
“He’s not that man anymore,” Archer said. “Neither of us are the men we used to be. Please remember that when you talk to him.”
“I don’t think I truly know him at all, do I?”
Without waiting for a reply, I marched up to the apartment—the apartment I shared with a man I didn’t know.
A man whose baby I was carrying.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The Apartment
The door to the apartment opened and Brooks—Ripper—a stranger—came inside.
He looked at me as he slowly closed the door.
I was on the bed, curled up in a blanket. I hadn’t moved for hours, and I hadn’t answered my phone despite the several missed texts and calls. Some from Wyn. Some from Hadley.
Only one text from Brooks.
On my way home.
Home. To this apartment we shared, where we’d begun to build a life together.
He set the keys down onto the counter, the sound of it clanging in the otherwise silent room.
“Welcome home,Ripper,” I drawled.
A muscle in his jaw ticked.
“I’m sure Archer filled you in already,” I said. “So why don’t you tell me everything you’ve been hiding from me.”
“I haven’t hidden anything from you,” he said as he took off his cowboy hat and hung it on the hook by the door.
“No?” I asked with a raise of my brows.
“I don’t belong to a motorcycle club anymore. That part of my life is over. It’s been over for years. Why would I tell you about that shit now? Have you told me everything about your past? All of it?”
“Oh, so that’s how this is going to go? You’re going to fire back the questions at me like we’re the same? You’re going to try and pretend that my past is as shadowy and tarnished as yours?”
“You already know I went to prison. You know I did time for something I didn’t do. You know I walked away from that life and never looked back. What else do you need to know?”
