“Holy shit!” She shouts again as she pulls away from me. “You look so much better.” She smiles at me, and I can’t help but smile back at who was once my best friend.
“Yeah, you’re back. I think I was trying to say that last time before I passed out.”
She scrunches her nose at me again. “It was dumb, I shouldn’t have left in the first place. Apparently, I had some shit going on.” She nods over to the yard where I see both MCs and the families hanging around.
Fuck.
“Mom!” The small boy shouts from across the yard. Axe walks with him across to where we stand and to where Ella is and then hugs her. He kisses her forehead.
“Mom?” I ask her and she shrugs.
“What can I say, shit happens?”
“There is so much truth to that.”
“Jagger.”
“Cute name.” She laughs along with me.
“So, you and Ro…” She asks me and I can feel the blush as she laughs out loud, rolling my eyesm and just like that it feels like nothing has changed between the two of us, even though every fucking thing has changed.
“It just kind of happened.”
“I mean, you always said that you had a thing for bikers.” I just pray that she doesn’t remember the other thing that I said about bikers, or really a particular biker, in that same breath.
“I said a lot of dumb things back then.”
“We all made mistakes.”
I hope you can keep that same sentiments later on.
I laugh with Ella as she tells me the story of her and Axe getting back together. When she mentions her dad, her eyes mist over, and I want to hug her, but I feel like if I hug her that all of my secrets will spill out of me.
We’re standing in the kitchen of Caroline and Ash’s house. We’re interrupted as we are catching [most of the way] up when someone calls her outside. I follow her most of the way out of the house but stop at the backdoor.
Caroline walks over to me in the kitchen, she’s standing just on the opposite side of the back door, just out of sight of everyone outside. I don’t know her very well, but I do feel as if every single thing that she does is strategic. “You know the other night; I thought you looked familiar. How do I know you?”
“Maybe from pictures, Ella and I were close before she took off.”
“No, I don’t think that’s it.” She starts to turn around before she gasps and looks back at me.
“What?”
“Oh my God!” She actually gasps but keeping her voice low enough so no one else can hear her. “You didn’t know I saw you.”
“What?”
“Actually, I saw you twice.”
“What?” I feel like a goddamn parrot, but there’s no way that she could put all of that together.
“Well, kind of saw you twice. I saw you pickhimup once. Or really, I saw your car. I remembered it because we ended up staring at it for what half an hour before we could leave.” She pauses, but I know as soon as she stresses the wordhimand insinuating what happened afterwards that she actually does fucking know. “I know it was your car because—” She stops as Ella stops the story and starts to walk back into the house. Caroline grabs a hold of my arm and pulls me through the kitchen, down the hallway, through the living room, then upstairs and down another hallway. Shoving me into a bathroom and she shuts the door behind us, looking at me. “I know it was your car because after we had found out, Ash had left to go get Ella to tell her what was going on with him. I went to go check on him and the same car was there. I left because I knew he had company and what kind of company it was.” She smirks as she gives me and exaggerated version of bedroom eyes. “But the next morning, I saw him walking you out to the car.”
My eyes widen as I look back to her and panic sets in. “Please don’t tell her.”
She sighs as she looks conflicted about the whole situation.
“Caroline, it just kind of happened…” She rolls her eyes. “Okay, that’s not exactly true. I may have lied a little bit to him in the beginning.”
