“Sorry.”
“You’re not.” But she was almost smiling.
I set my plate aside. Fourteen months, and I still didn’t know how to sit in the same room as her without memorizing it. “Bea.”
She looked up.
“I’m still catching up to the fact that you’re here.” I said it plainly because I didn’t have a more elegant version. “Part of me’s braced for you to walk.”
She set her plate down too. Studied me. “I’m not going.”
“I know. I know you said—”
“Holden.” She shifted, turning toward me on the bed. “I’m here. Right now. Tonight.” Her hand came up and rested against my jaw, and I had to work not to close my eyes against it. “Do you trust that?”
“I do.” I held her gaze. “I just keep needing to look at you to be sure.”
“Then look.” Her thumb traced my cheekbone.
For a long moment neither of us moved. Outside the door the clubhouse had gone quiet — it was late enough that the loudest voices had either left or passed out. Just the low hum of the building.
“I need you to know something,” I said.
“Okay.”
I held her gaze. “That night. The worst part wasn’t Danny. I could have survived Danny. The worst part was waking up on that chair and thinking I’d cheated on you.”
She went very still.
“There’s never been anyone else, Bea. Not since the first day I laid eyes on you.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“The day you walked into the clubhouse to see Glitch. I knew then. I don’t know how to explain it — I just knew you were going to be my old lady, and I was going to wait however long it took to get there.”
“But, you were still—”
“No.” My voice was steady. “I’d been a fuck boy before you. Everyone at the club assumed I still was, and I let them. But from the day you walked in — not a club girl. Not a hangaround. Not a patch chaser. Not anyone.”
She was looking at me like she was rearranging fourteen months of memory.
“I thought you were still with them,” she said. “Right up until I said yes to you.”
“I know you did. I let you think it. I didn’t want you to feel cornered, didn’t want you saying yes because I’d spent all that time being a monk on your account. I wanted you to say yes because you wanted to.”
“Holden—”
“I waited. And then you said yes.” I shook my head. “Best fucking six months of my life, Bea. Biker domestic bliss. Everything I’d been holding out for.”
Her eyes were wet.
“And then the blackout happened. I woke up on that chair and it looked like I’d been exactly what everyone thought I was all along. That was what broke me.” I held her eyes. “Losing you. Becoming him.”
Her hand came up to my jaw and stayed there. She didn’t speak for a long moment. “I believe you,” she said finally.
“One more thing,” I said.
She waited.
