Mornings, she was at the Owens Farm—helping with chores, tending to the greenhouse where all those homeopathic products were made. I would park my bike a quarter mile down the road and walk through the fields, staying low, keeping to the tree line. I would watch her through the greenhouse windowsas she worked alongside her sisters, her hands moving with practiced efficiency as she poured soap into molds or labeled jars of lotion.
She was quiet. Reserved. Even with Faith and Charity, there was a distance to her. A careful politeness that shouldn’t have been there.
Tuesdays and Saturdays, she worked at the Lawton Farmers’ Market with Charity. They would set up their booth early, the table covered in neatly arranged soaps, lotions, candles, and baked goods. Hope would smile at customers, her voice soft and sweet as she explained the benefits of lavender oil or the difference between goat’s milk soap and shea butter. But the smile never reached her eyes.
I could see it from where I sat on a bench across the market square, hidden behind a newspaper I wasn’t reading. There was a sadness in her eyes that seemed to swallow her whole. A heaviness that made her shoulders curve inward, almost as if she were trying to make herself smaller. Like she was trying to disappear.
The other days, she waitressed at the Lawton Diner near the interstate. I would watch from the parking lot, sitting on my bike with my helmet on, just another traveler passing through. She would move between tables with practiced grace, refilling coffee cups and taking orders, her white apron tied around her waist and her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
She was polite. Gentle. Patient with the truckers who lingered too long and the families with screaming kids. But she was hollow. I could see it in the way she moved, almost as if she were going through the motions, like she was present but not reallythere. Like some essential part of her had been carved out and left behind that night at the pond.
Or maybe behind the garage at the Diamondback clubhouse, when I’d walked away without looking back.
Shadow went about his days like nothing had happened. I would occasionally see him at the farm, working on his bike or talking with Joan on the porch. He didn’t look angry. Didn’t look like a man planning retribution. He looked... normal.
And that didn’t make any goddamn sense.
Ghost never showed up. Not once in two weeks. I had been bracing for it. Expecting him to roll into Lawton with Reaper and half the Golden Skulls, ready to drag me back to Tennessee and make me answer for what I had done. But he didn’t come.
Reaper didn’t come. No one came.
And Angel, the Diamondback brother who I caught kissing Hope behind that garage, stayed away from her completely. I had seen him at the clubhouse sometimes when I rode past at night, but he never went to the diner. Never showed up at the farmers’ market. Never stopped by the Owens Farm. He just backed off. Completely.
I should have been relieved. Should have been grateful that he wasn’t pursuing her anymore, that he stepped aside and left her alone.
But instead, I felt... conflicted. Because Hope deserved better than a man who had called her by another woman’s name. She deserved better than a widower who couldn’t let go of his dead wife. She deserved better than me.
Angel could have given her that. He could have given her a normal life with a man who wasn’t broken beyond repair.
But he walked away, and I didn’t know if that made me a selfish bastard for being glad, or a coward for not doing the same.
She confused me. Everything about her confused me.
The way she claimed me at the barbecue, reaching for my hand in front of everyone, even though I had just punched Angel and caused a scene. The way she had let me take her virginity while I whispered another woman’s name.
Why? Why would she do that? Why would she let me touch her, hold her, make love to her when she knew that I thought she was someone else?
I didn’t understand it. Didn’t understand her. And I sure as hell didn’t understand why her brothers weren’t tearing me apart for what I had done.
It was late afternoon on a Thursday when I finally made the call.
I was sitting on my bike in the diner parking lot, watching Hope through the window as she refilled a trucker’s coffee cup. The sun was starting to set, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink, and the parking lot was mostly empty except for a few semis and a couple of beat-up sedans.
I had been sitting there for over an hour, trying to work up the nerve to go inside. To walk through that door and ask her the question that had been eating me alive for two weeks.
Are you pregnant?But I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t make myself move. Because once I asked, once I knew the answer, everything would change. If she weren’t pregnant, I could walk away. Could go back to Tennessee and try to piece together what was left of my life. Could let her move on and find someone who deserved her.
But if she is...
I pulled my phone from my pocket and stared down at the screen, my thumb hovering over the contacts list. I needed help. Needed someone who could give me answers, or at least point me in the right direction. Someone who knew Hope. Who understood the Miller/Owens family and all the complicated history that came with it.
I scrolled through my contacts until I found her name.
Arianna Miller.
Ghost’s wife. A woman who had been through hell and come out the other side stronger for it. A woman who had been raised in a religious cult, rescued by the Golden Skulls, and adopted by Moonshine and Roxy Franks before marrying Ghost and giving him three daughters. A woman who knew what it was like to be broken and put back together.
I hit the call button before I could talk myself out of it, pressing the phone to my ear as it rang once, twice, three times.
