Page 12 of Smoke

What stayed with me most was Smoke. I knew what he was capable of and always had. I married the vice president of a one-percent motorcycle club with my eyes open, but somewhere in the years since our divorce I'd stopped believing I still belonged on the protected side of his violence. But Smoke hadn't. He moved the second that man touched me, fast and controlled, without looking around to see who might approve. Five years after our divorce, some part of him still reacted to danger around me as though the legal end of the marriage had never altered the line he'd drawn.

That forced me to admit something I had been avoiding since I saw him again at the hospital. I still loved him, and maybe I always had. The realization didn't feel romantic so much as inconvenient considering the life I'd built specifically to prove I could be fine without him.

I stood at the sink rinsing a glass that had already been clean for several minutes while Smoke gave me the space to come down from the day. Years ago, he would've checked my wrist again, asked whether I was sure I was fine and probably decided I needed to sit down. Now he trusted me when I said I was okay. It was a small change, but I was starting to understand how much of a marriage was made from small things.

"You're going to wear a hole in that glass."

I looked down and turned off the faucet. Smoke leaned against the opposite counter with a beer in one hand, his cut over the back of a chair.

"Can we talk?"

His expression sharpened, but he only nodded, and we sat at the same dining table where we had once eaten dinner, paid bills and spent too many nights talking around the problem instead of about it. I didn't want another version of that conversation.

"When I left, I wasn't trying to make you choose between me and the club."

Smoke rested his forearms on the table. "I thought you were."

"I know. I wanted the club to stop being the answer to everything, not because I thought you should leave. I knew who you were when I married you. But by the end, every time something came up, I already knew where I'd fall on the list."

His jaw tightened, but he let me finish without defending himself. "I stopped asking you to stay home because I hated hearing why you couldn't. I stopped telling you I was angry because we'd had the same fight so many times I could've argued both sides by myself. Then when I finally left, part of me still expected you to stop me."

Smoke looked down at his hands. "You told me you were done, Beth. I thought stopping you would've been me refusing to hear you."

"I was done with the marriage we had. I wasn't done loving you."

The words sat between us without becoming an accusation.

Smoke leaned back slightly. "I knew you wanted something I wasn't giving you. I just thought you wanted a different man, and I wasn't going to promise to leave the club or turn into somebody I couldn't be."

"I never wanted that. I wanted to know there were times when I could come first too."

He nodded once, and the regret in his face was quiet rather than theatrical. "Yeah. I get that now, and I should've fucking got it then. I should've asked what you meant instead of deciding I knew. I expected you to understand everything because you'd understood for years, and that's on me."

That meant more than a grovel ever could've. I hadn't needed Smoke to apologize for being a biker or for loving the men he called brothers. I needed him to see that loyalty to them hadn't canceled the promises he made to me.

"I should've said things better too," I admitted. "By the end, I was so angry that everything came out like a demand."

"You were angry for a reason."

"So were you."

A faint smile touched my mouth. "We were really good at being married until we weren't."

"We were good at a lot of it."

That brought back the parts I'd spent years refusing to romanticise, including long drives, terrible dinners, mornings when Smoke appeared at my office with coffee because he happened to be nearby, sex in places we shouldn't have had it and nights at the clubhouse when everybody knew the VP was leaving with me.

The marriage hadn't been a mistake. That was why losing it had hurt so much. I ran my thumb along the grain of the table. "What happens if we try again and nothing really changes?"

Smoke took his time before answering. "Then we don't lie about it. If something mattered enough that you needed me there, you'd tell me. I'd tell you when the club needs me instead of disappearing into it and expecting you to understand. And I wouldn't get to decide I know what you need just because I used to."

"You make that sound easy."

"It'd probably be a pain in the ass."

I laughed.

Smoke reached across the table and took my hand. "I do want another chance, Beth…if that's where you were going with this."