When I returned, Sarah was in a room with Kate. One of the guys told me that Grizz’s gal had been under the weather; it seemed to me that Sarah had decided to distract herself by tending to her.

I hoped Kate might talk some sense into her, if she decided to confide in the woman.

When Sarah finally left the room an hour after I’d gotten back, that had apparently not been the case. My pregnant lover didn’t apologize for her earlier ridiculousness, and her attitude had become one of distant civility.

Even if Kate had hardened Sarah’s resolve and made things that much worse, I didn’t hold it against the girl. Sure, she didn’t have all the facts. Her advice was based off of Sarah’s account, and Sarah would never have presented my reasoning in a favorable light. But it seemed natural to me that Kate didn’t want to risk alienating the only other woman in these parts, and if she saw some easy way to endear herself…

It was basic human psychology.

But whatever happened in that room lingered beyond the day. Her attitude hadn’t budged an inch by the following morning, nor the next…

I couldn’t believe that Sarah was still clinging to this doomed notion in her head. Her father and I were bitter enemies and always had been. How could she possibly think this was going to work?

Didn’t she care how much this hurt?

How bad of a position she put me in?

It went without saying that her sex drive had basically disappeared. The tension hung in the air between us as the days started rolling past, like tumbleweeds caught on a stiff breeze.

We had fallen into a routine of acting our parts, neither of us willing to compromise on this wedge between us that was starting to grow…

Despite the emotional distance, Sarah and I never once stopped caring for one another.

I still cooked her breakfast; I still massaged her feet and tended to her needs. At her request, I’d rush out the door to satisfy whatever fleeting food cravings she expressed.

For her part, Sarah rubbed my shoulders when I was stressed over club activities, without me ever having to ask. When we silently lay in bed together at night, neither of us willing to start a fight with the other, she still ran her fingertips endearingly along her favorite muscles in my strong build. Sarah never challenged me in front of the others, nor caused any trouble.

But I could see how the others looked at us. My club brothers had begun averting their eyes as either of us walked past. They were increasingly awkward when Sarah and I wound up in a room at the same time, politely ignoring one another. The discomfort was painted on their faces; no matter how hard they might try, my men could hide nothing from me.

None of them dared to say it.

But they knew that something was wrong.

One day came, at least a week after our bitter little confrontation, when someone finally tugged at the jagged edge of our quiet, stubborn tension. It wasn’t exactly a shocker who wound up being the one to break the silence…

Sarah and I had our backs to each other in the main bar area. She was sitting at a high top table and taking a rest as I sat at the counter, going over some club documents and checklists.

Grizz was leaning nearby.

I didn’t even have to look up to feel the weight of his attention. When silently ignoring his gaze finally became too much to bear, I looked up.

“You can speak, you know.”

His eyes shifted from me to Sarah.

“I am merely watching.”

Grizz was starting to piss me off. For the first time in distant memory, I didn’t have the patience for that stoic, expressionless mask of a face.

“Watching what, Grizz?”

My quiet, right-hand man silently adjusted his relaxed lean against the support beam. He was such a usually peaceful man that I was surprised to see mounting discontent in his eyes.

“This is wrong, and you both know it.”

I sighed.

Briefly giving up on my work, I stood up from my stool in mounting irritation. Out of the corner of my eye, I faintly noticed Sarah shifting in her seat towards him; she looked just as displeased.

“Fine, Grizz,” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You have my attention. Make it good.”

“Do you really want my advice?”

“I know that I always value and respect your opinion,” I told him, crossing my arms. “You’ve got something to say? Just say it.”

Grizz looked me firmly in the eyes.

Then he turned to Sarah.

“You two are being deeply foolish.”

The handful of club members in there with us cleared out in a goddamn heartbeat, not wanting to be present for whatever came next.

Partly, I was stunned. He hadn’t hesitated to call me out on shit before, but this was the first time, in the many years we’d known each other, that I’d ever heard him describe me that way.

Sarah merely turned away, annoyed.

I scratched the back of my neck.

“Foolish, huh?”

Grizz nodded once. “Bordering on naïve.”

Anyone else, and I’d have probably flown off the handle for the blatant disrespect. But I knew Grizz like he was my own flesh-and-blood. There was no way he’d try to stir me up unless he had a rock-solid reason.

I looked back at Sarah and she turned to me. She and I shared an expressionless glance.

“Alright,” I grunted, turning back to him. “Fill me in, then. Help me see what you see, because clearly I’m fucking missing something here.”

Grizz smiled approvingly.

“I thought perhaps you might react poorly.”

“Go on with it,” Sarah impatiently demanded.

It was nice for us to finally agree again.

My unspoken vice president paused, choosing his words. It was one of my favorite qualities about him – beyond reliable and highly loyal, he was one of the few people I’d met who always thought before they spoke.

It made me listen every time he did.

“Whatever is going on with the two of you, is between the two of you,” he replied calmly. “Yet, I cannot idly stand by and watch you both unravel everything you’ve spent so long rebuilding.”

“We aren’t unraveling anything,” I insisted.

Grizz ignored that, seemingly unconvinced.

“Hunter, Sarah…”

His pale, collected eyes blinked between us.

“I consider the pair of you my dearest, most beloved friends in this world. I’ve seen firsthand how you are both so much better together than you are apart. There is no reason for this strife; we face no threats or looming dangers. Yet, so much of your time since the reunion has been built upon wanton disaster, lurching from one outside catastrophe to another. It makes me truly wonder if you require chaos to function together now.”

That struck home. I averted my gaze.

Grizz waited, but neither of us spoke.

With a heavy sigh, I was the first to look to the other. After a few seconds, Sarah finally lifted her gaze. She quietly watched me with saddened eyes, and I gave her a despondent smile.

Something quietly passed between our eyes.

Knowing our powerfully intuitive friend, I don’t think either of us would have been remotely surprised if he’d admitted to physically seeing whatever our pained souls told one another.

That amusing suspicion was given weight by the fact that Grizz immediately continued sharing his thoughts without another second’s hesitation.

“It pains me to say this, but it must be made clear: you have both proven to each other that, no matter the risk or the disagreement, your love for one another forces you to stay aligned under pressure. You can fight, and you can try to turn your backs on each other, but your bond is so strong that you always force it to somehow work. This is a rare strength, one that I feel is rarely tested in others, but you are far more complicated people, leading far more complicated lives...”

My fiancée and I smiled.

He wasn’t wrong, and we knew it.

“But that strength is with the imminent threat of untold danger, to yourselves, to the rest of us, and to innocent lives. That excuse is gone. Now we see what happens when there is no crisis to avert and no criminal to fight.”

His gaze hardened.

“My advice is this: if you two cannot make your relationship work in an era of peace, then there is inevitable doom on the horizon.”

The words hit me like a goddamn train.

Sarah was the first to respond, saying exactly what I was thinking.

“You think we thrive only when threatened.”

“I know you thrive only when threatened,” he responded with cooled conviction. “The trial that you face now is to learn how to blossom without a battle to ride into.”

He pulled away from the beam.

“I have work to do,” he told us dismissively. “Reflect on what I’ve said. Figure out whatever this problem is, and move on.”

He cast one last look our way.

“You’re both better than this.”

Then he left the two of us alone in the bar, distantly looking at each other. Between us hung the unspoken frays of our relationship, ripping further apart by the day…