The talk wasn’t immediate. I was frustrated and needed some time to dwell on his words.

“I’m going on a ride,” I told her calmly. It pained me to realize that this was the first time either of us had spoken to each other today.

Sarah looked at me thoughtfully.

Her head nodded. “I know. Be safe.”

“I will. Do you need anything?”

“Nah.” Her smile was faint but not defeated.

This time, I was only gone an hour.

Everything he’d said made sense, and I feared that he was right. But Sarah had chosen to put her foot down on the one major crux in my past.

I hadn’t even consulted the others about this yet: partly out of my own, personal conviction, but partly out of concern. For a few of the older club members, just being open to this could be a defining crossroads.

After all, Sarah’s father had forever changed the trajectory of the club. With his actions, they had lost some of their own, and that was the kind of lingering wound that time didn’t always heal.

It was a choice I was supposed to shield them from, to make so they didn’t have to.

But after everything Grizz had said, it made me wonder what was really important. I’d always told Sarah that I would move mountains for her.

But what happens now, now that she’s pointed at the goddamn mountain on which my entire fucking life is built?

I didn’t have an answer.

When I finally returned to the bar, I parked Scarlett in her usual, prominent spot and held my fingers around the handlebars. As I stared off into space, I savored the feeling of that worn, textured rubber against my skin. There wasn’t a thought in my goddamn head as I squeezed my fingerless gloves around the grips, tighter and tighter.

After what felt like ages had passed, I pulled myself from the bike with a dissatisfied grunt. There was no avoiding what I had to do…

I sauntered inside.

It didn’t take long to find Sarah. She was sitting in a booth with Kate, laughing about something until they spotted me on the approach.

“Sorry to interrupt, ladies,” I politely nodded to Kate. My eyes locked onto Sarah, who stiffened in her seat. “But you and I need to talk.”

They shared a knowing glance.

The hair on my neck bristled; goddammit, have the two of them been bitching about me? But I pushed that minor irritation down for the sake of being civil, and I helped Sarah up from the booth.

We walked quietly back towards our room, ignoring how the others around were trying to avoid looking at us.

I sat her down on our bed and closed the door behind us. When I turned around, I chose to stay standing, exhaling in exasperation as I ran a hand through my short, thick hair.

“How was your drive?”

I changed my mind, pulling up a chair.

“Refreshing. Just what I needed, but it didn’t offer me any major revelations.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

We sat in silence together for a moment, letting the tension in the air hang between us. I wanted nothing more than to push it all away, but she was asking too much of me.

While I struggled to dig out the appropriate words, Sarah lifted her face. She looked me in the eyes, her gaze quietly defiant.

“You know I can’t back down from this.”

“So much for diplomacy,” I grunted.

“It’s not like I’m asking you to do anything you’re incapable of, Hunter. If you really want to marry me, then I want you to make things right with my father. He’s all the family I have left, and that’s all there is to it.”

“You think I’m not aware of that?” I snarled. “You’re acting as if I don’t know what it feels like to be clinging to that last shred of family. I don’t have anybody left, Sarah, and you know it. At least you have your father. My mother’s long dead, my father’s long gone, and my sister…”

She held her tongue at that one.

“My sister is lost,” I remembered painfully. “After all that I did for her, and the strides I took to keep her safe, in the end it never mattered…”

Sarah’s defiance weakened, only a little.

I hadn’t brought up my older sister since we’d seen her last. For the longest time she had been my entire world, and I would never see her again. It was such a painfully traumatic memory for me that I barely even thought of her anymore.

In fact, I barely ever spoke her name.

“What happened with Hannah was terrible,” she replied sympathetically. “I’ve tried to be here for you since that all went down…”

“You’ve done great,” I replied sincerely.

“Thank you. But I was there when your last family member came back into your life. Please, Hunter… all I’m asking is that you try to be here for me as I do the same with mine.”

“My sister didn’t derail our lives,” I insisted. “She didn’t wreak complete havoc on your closest allies, drive you out of town, or take the only good thing in your life away from you.”

She stayed quiet as I narrowed my eyes.

“Jack Buchanan is my enemy, Sarah. As far as I’m concerned, he fucked up everything for me. I’ve spent the years since trying to build whatever I could out of the shattered pieces left in his wake. There hasn’t been a goddamn day in the last ten years that I haven’t cursed his fucking name…

“And that’s just me. Have you asked any of the club? He has done greater damage to the Devil’s Dragons than almost any of our other enemies. I keep saying this, but you’re not listening: you want me to rewrite the past with him? What if he was ever around the club again? He has bad blood with all of us, and I don’t know if I can guarantee his safety.”

“They wouldn’t dare,” she insisted.

“Try them,” I laughed. “If you haven’t already, tell them. Tell them that you’re demanding they swallow their fury and tolerate keeping their guns holstered around the bastard who almost destroyed the club. That they respect me offering the olive branch to the most successful murderer of our people that we’ve ever had. So, let me be crystal clear about something here: even if I did agree to this – and that’s a huge fucking ‘if’ – I’m not going to be the fucker to tell them that.”

“You’re the club president,” she stubbornly replied. “Hunter, you can do anything. Or are you telling me that you’re not man enough to convince them that it’s for the best?”

What a fucking low blow.

I refused to bite at that one.

“It’s your goddamn problem to deal with,” I told her. “You brought this thing upon us, so if this happens… it’s your responsibility to make everything right by them.”

Sarah scoffed, turning her head away. I was holding back my anger over this, but the fact that she refused to see fucking reason was starting to really get on my goddamn nerves.

As if I wouldn’t hear it, she muttered under her breath: “You just don’t understand.”

I snapped at her, harder than I meant to. “Go on, Sarah. What don’t I understand? Because here are a few things you don’t understand…

“You can’t always get what you fucking want. You’re acting as if I’m trying to get in your way just for the hell of it! If I tell you something can’t happen, especially something you’re so bent out of shape over, chances are that I’ve got a goddamn good reason for it!” I rose up from the chair, barely containing my rage. “Sarah, I have to make sacrifices! I have to consider factors beyond you! The needs and wants of other people, especially a trigger-happy motorcycle club, can sometimes be more goddamn important than your own!

“So, go on, Sarah. Why don’t you tell me what I don’t fucking understand? Because I have tried… no, I have goddamn struggled to make it clear to you from the start why this will never work…”

She was holding back tears.

If my head were a goddamn ship, my anger would be the mighty, rising sails. But one look at that tearful face and those sails were slashed, the fury pouring straight out.

The force behind my anger died in her eyes.

I sat next to her on the bed. Irrationally, I struggled to stay angry, but I could already feel how weak my spirit was.

I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t stay mad at her.

Instead, I pulled her into my arms. She shuddered against me, holding back her tears with everything that she had.

Minutes passed as I held her like that, feeling her body slowly slacken against mine. Only a woman like her could ever drive me this insane, yet rip the momentum out of my temper with a simple glance.

I loved it and I hated it.

As I held her close, something clicked in my head...

But I held the thought on the tip of my tongue until we finally pulled away, gazing sorrowfully into each other’s eyes. She looked defeated. Her last little sparks of happiness were fading away in those quiet eyes of hers.

I whispered her name.

“Sarah…”

As I pushed a knuckle against her cheek, drying the moisture from along her eyes, she held the sides of my hand with hers.

“Babe,” I pressed her now, “Why on earth are you pushing so hard for this now? Your dad hasn’t come up in ages…”

She looked at me, sweet and forlorn.

Her gaze fell to the rock against her fingers. I’d proposed to her a few months back, at the end of our last harrowing adventure together. It had made me the happiest goddamn man alive when she said yes, and helped me start to move past the greatest tragedy of my recent life.

“I want Daddy to walk me down the aisle.”

Everything else seemed to stop.

THAT was what this came down to?

THAT was why she was fighting so hard?

“Sweetheart…” I shook my head in confusion. “You want your sheriff father…” The words were so ludicrous that I could barely speak them. “Are you telling me that you want the man who never condoned us, the man who went out of his way to keep us apart and succeeded…”

I struggled with the very thought.

“You want that man at our wedding?”

Sarah nodded softly.

I turned away, trying to process this.

“Hunter, you two are the most important men in my life…” She softly palmed my cheek, pulling my face back towards her. “On the most important day of my life, I need you there – both of you. Do you understand now?”

My thoughts were a total fucking mess. Part of me couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but the rest knew this had been inevitable all along. I tried to make sense of the storm in my head.

But that was my problem.

This one was hers…

I struggled to make peace among the clashing thoughts in my skull. If this was that important to her… if it meant that much to her…

I grunted. “It’s not going to be easy.”

She smiled cautiously, studying my gaze. “Hunter… since when have we ever been easy?”

Huh. She had me there…

“This is difficult for you. I know that it is. I’m not asking you to bend the world for me, Hunter. What he did to us drove us apart, and I thought I’d never see you again…

“I’m just asking you to try.”

I gazed into her eyes for the longest time.

Sarah Buchanan was the shining light of my goddamn life, and she always had been. For ten long, painful years the only thing that had kept me pushing forward was my distant memory of her, and of our time together. For all the shitty hands I had been dealt in this miserable desert, one day I pulled a blackjack and our lives collided once again…

“Conquer this with me,” she pressed her lips to mine. “Let us face this last thing together…”

I nodded gravely.

“Okay, Sarah… I’ll try.”

Her eyes took me in. “You mean it?”

“Yes,” I felt myself give in. “I’ll do it for you.”