He chuckled but then got serious as he said, "Because this life's dangerous, Sara. Every time I ride out with those guys there's areal chance I don't come back, and the thought of you sitting at home waiting for a phone call telling you I'm dead somewhere on the side of the road makes me sick." His thumb stopped moving on my hip. "And when club conflicts spill over they don't stay inside the club. They reach the people connected to us. If someone figured out you were mine, you'd become a target, and I couldn't stomach that."
"So you pushed me away," I said.
"I was too scared to pull you close." He tightened his arm around me. "But I talked to Fox earlier today, about Mandy… Losing her killed him."
The mention of Mandy's name made fear seep into my muscles, and I clenched my jaw to avoid trembling. Garret didn't notice, or if he did he read it as the cool air settling over my bare skin.
"That man has been dead inside for four years," Garret continued, "sitting in his own shop with a bottle on his knee while somebody else runs his club. He loved her more than anything and losing her gutted him, and watching that made me realize I was heading down the same road. Loving you from a distance and pretending it was enough was making me miserable, Sara. I don't want to end up where Fox is."
Every word he said carved deeper into the guilt that was already eating me alive. Fox was grieving a wife whose murderer sat at his table and drank his whiskey and called himself a brother. I was the only person who knew that but I was too scared to tell anyone. Meanwhile, Garret was this tough guy who never shared his feelings about anything and he was admitting to being afraid.
Him—afraid.
I was a real coward.
"I want to keep things between us quiet for a while though," Garret said. "The feud with the Locusts is getting uglier by the day and I need to get the club behind me before we go public. Once things settle down and I've got the backing, we can stop sneaking around and tell Fox. But until then, nobody can know."
"Garret," I said quietly, like for some reason I knew Tony would hear me all the way from town and come hunting. "What if the Black Locusts didn't kill Mandy?"
Garret shushed me, then turned my head to look at him. "Sara, we don't have to talk about any of that tonight, okay?"
"But what if someone else?—"
"Hey." He shifted onto his side and his hand found my face, cupping my cheek. His eyes were soft and tired and he pressed his lips to my forehead and held them there. "I don't want to talk club business right now. I've been talking club business every day for four years and tonight I don't want any of it. Tonight I want to hold you and listen to the water and fall asleep next to you. Can we do that?"
All Garret wanted was to ignore the facts he'd been facing for years, and I wanted to finally admit them. But as if the hand of fate had reached down and touched my tongue, fear shut me down. I couldn't say another word.
"Okay," I whispered. "Alright."
His arm pulled me tighter against his chest and his breathing deepened within minutes, slowing into the long steady rhythm of real sleep. His grip on my hip loosened and his face went slack, more peaceful than I'd seen him in a long time, and then light snoring rumbled his chest.
For a long time I stayed pressed against him, listening to his heartbeat and memorizing the feel of his arm around me, because I didn't know when I'd feel it again.
When his breathing told me he was fully under, my body slid carefully from under his arm. My clothes were scattered across the gravel and I gathered them piece by piece, pulling on my jeans and my top while my hands shook. His phone was still buried in his jeans pocket, which I pulled out and turned to silent. Then I typed up a quick message letting him know why I wasn't here.
Sara: 12:14 AM: I'm so sorry I had to leave. Danny called and I couldn't stay. I'll think about everything you said tonight. Please don't be upset with me.
I shoved his phone back into his pocket and put his clothing in a neat pile right beside him, then covered him gently with the second blanket. After I was dressed, I walked quietly to my dirtbike parked along the tree line to the north, and started pushing it across the dirt track toward the road.
When I was far enough away that the bike raring to life wouldn’t wake him, I climbed on and kicked it to life. The road opened up ahead of me and the darkness swallowed me and the tears that started streaming down my cheeks.
He'd given me everything I'd ever wanted tonight, and I was riding away from it because the truth I was carrying would destroy him, and the man who held that truth over me would kill us both before he'd let it come to light.
And all of that was without mentioning anything about Kip.
What would Garret do when Tony told him I had his baby in secret?
24
GARRET
Something crawled across my neck and my hand swatted it before my eyes opened. My fingers came away covered in bug guts, and when my vision adjusted to the pale gray light breaking over the tree line my body registered the chill. I'd fallen asleep on the ground and slept the whole night.
The blanket was damp with dew and my skin was prickling with goosebumps, covered in grass seed and stray leaves, and the spot beside me where Sara had been was empty. My phone chirped, so I dug it out of my pants pocket and noticed the screen showed 5% battery and one message.
The frustration flared for a second as I read her message telling me she couldn't stay, but it fizzled out as I sat up and let myself wake up a bit. I couldn't blame her for taking off. Her father was dying, her brothers needed her, and I dumped a whole lot on her plate last night she wasn’t prepared for. That was a lot to carry back to a house full of people who didn't know about us.
The river was cold enough to make my teeth clench when I waded in to wash off. My hands scrubbed the grass and dirt frommy skin and the water pulled the fog from my head, and by the time my boots were on and the blankets were rolled and shoved in the saddlebag, my chest felt looser than it had in months.
