Because, for once in my life, I’m going to fight this. I’m going to stand up for myself. This battle for freedom wasn’t ayear long. It’s been a decade, and I want my life back. I want mysoulback.
“She needs Gage to sign the divorce papers,” Leena fills her husband in. “It should only take a couple of days, right?”
The hope in her eyes kills me. Clearly, Leena doesn’t like the idea of having me there any better than her husband does, but since I’m family, her half-sister, she’s not going to turn me away. She always had a soft heart.
Wraith wraps his arm around his wife’s waist and hauls her into his side like she needs protecting from me. It’s just more of that sappy love shit that I’m so entirely over. I didn’t realize that coming back to Helena would be like butting in on everyone’s fucking honeymoons. What is wrong with The Riders and their women that they can’t just act normal and hate each other like everyone else I know?
“Maybe you could talk to him?” Leena suggests as she leans into Wraith’s side. She looks up at him, imploring him with her big hazel eyes.
Yuk. Gag me.
“Hell no.” Wraith shakes his head emphatically. “Gage isn’t gonna listen to reason. There’s enough bad blood between them to fill up a bathtub.”
“Thanks for the disgusting mental picture,” I say dryly before I hoist my duffel off my shoulder and set it on the couch. “Do you guys have some extra sheets?”
Leena sets a restraining hand on Wraith’s chest when he growls. The guy reminds me of her own personal attack dog. It’s slightly endearing, though it kills me to admit it.
“I’ll get them.”
After she scurries from the room, Wraith looks at me like I’m some kind of virus come to invade his cutesy little house. The damn thing is yellow with a red door. The inside has been completely redone. It’s very cottagey looking with whitewashed walls and hardwood floors. Too bad the leather couch doesn’t look nearly as homey as the rest of the place.
Neither does Wraith’s face.
“How long do you think you’ll be here?” He manages to sound civil, but I’m not fooled.
“I don’t know. It should only take me a couple days to get my lawyer to fax me another set of papers.”
Wraith stares at me blandly. “What happened to the last set?”
He’s tall but athletically built. Streamlined muscle with dark hair and eyes. His stature, even when he crosses his arms, makes me realize just how much bigger and more intimidating Gage really is.
“They were drowned in piss,” I spit, suddenly making a production of studying the floor so I don’t have to see the mocking gleam in Wraith’s eyes.
“Piss?”
Oh yeah. His voice is definitely dripping with humor. I shrug. “That’s right. Piss.”
“As in, Gage pissed on them?”
“As in Gage pissed on them.”
“He did what?” Leena scurries back into the room, a bundle of bedding in her arms. She eyes me funny, like there’s an impossibility to what I just said.
“He threw them onto the ground and pissed on them.”
Wraith snorts. “Can you blame the guy? You literally told the entire club that he beat you then you left. One year later you show up out of nowhere and ask for a divorce at Ethan’s christening? I’ll hand it to you, Ami, you have balls bigger than any of us.”
“Wraith,” Leena warns, even though there’s a smile plastered across her pretty face. “Isn’t it time for Abby’s walk?”
A few minutes of uncomfortable, oppressive silence ring through the house. Leena looks at Wraith. He stares back. She blinks. He blinks back.
“Yeah,” he finally says, and shuffles out of the room.
A few minutes later he returns, and a dog in a wheelchair—because it has to be a wheelchair given all the straps and the wheels and the way it’s fitted to the dog. I’ve never seen anything like it, at least not in person—appears behind him. Its eyes are filled with love, and if it could move its hind end, then that tail would be wagging like crazy.
My eyes flick to Leena’s face after Wraith and the dog go out. She slowly sets the sheets down on the couch before she sinks down to join them. She doesn’t invite me to sit. She doesn’t say anything reassuring or sisterly and I get it. Wraith was right. I’ve been gone for a year. I only bothered to contact Leena and Steph a few times, mostly when I wanted something. Like Gage’s full name, so I could get my lawyer to do up the papers.
Sister of the year, right over here. I’ll put the trophy right next to my auntie of the year award from earlier.
