Motherfucker.

I blinked my eyes a few times in an effort to open them, while at the same time reaching for my phone. As the sunlight blinded me, I muttered, “Fuck.”

What fucking time was it anyway? Whoever was calling had better have a good fucking reason for waking me up.

Swiping my phone off the bedside table, I barked, “What?” and immediately regretted it when the headache I’d woken up with intensified

“Late night, brother?” King’s voice boomed through the phone. Fuck, could he talk any fucking louder?

“What time is it?”

“Time to get the fuck up.”

I slowly swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat on the edge. Cracking one eye open, I took note of the time blaring from the clock in the motel room. Almost seven.

I scrubbed my face. “Why are you calling me so fucking early?”

“We’ve got a situation here. Might need you to come home sooner than planned, so I wanted to see where you were at with everything down there.”

“Just getting started. What’s going on with the club?”

“Marx is fucking with us. He just drowned Sydney in cheap drugs. I need to find him fast before he kills our business, but the fucking feds are making that a little hard.”

Figuring out who was backing Marx was Storm’s top priority, but after we’d taken down the entire Sydney chapter of the Silver Hell MC, Detective Ryland had upped his surveillance of our club. In particular, he had eyes on King every minute of the day and also kept a close watch on Nitro, Devil, and me. Kick had managed to slip through his net somehow.

“I lost my tail on the way down here. They still all over you?”

“Can’t shake the fuckers. How long do you think you’re gonna need with your family?”

For the first time since I’d joined the club, I felt conflicted. My loyalties were divided. Letting King down was the last thing I wanted to do, but the unwavering certainty I’d felt for over a decade that I would never do that wasn’t there anymore. Truth be told, I’d been fighting this for around six months. The pull to my family had grown stronger, until I couldn’t ignore it any longer. Fucking shit up with the club like I’d been doing seemed to be my way of not facing it. At least that was Sully’s take on this shit. He’d wasted a lot of fucking breath on telling me to get my head out of my ass.

“Hyde,” King snapped when I didn’t answer him. “How long?”

“I don’t know. When you get to the point that you really need me, let me know. I’ll be there.”

“Yeah.” He paused for a beat. “How’s your kid?” The demanding tone he’d been using disappeared with his last question. This didn’t happen often, but I knew from experience that kids were a trigger for him. They brought out a side to him we hardly ever witnessed. I had to wonder whether having a kid of his own one day would soften him at all. I’d lay bets that it wouldn’t, but there were moments where I caught a glimpse of him that made me question that.

“Not sure yet. My wife’s playing hardball.”

“She won’t let you see your daughter?”

“Not yet, but she will. I’ll make sure of it.”

“I have no doubt, Jekyll.”

“Fuck you, brother,” I muttered. He liked to call me that when referencing my moods. He’d given me the name Hyde for the same reason, but his use of Jekyll as an alternative stemmed from an argument we’d had way back when. He’d been right during that argument, but I’d refused to budge. Every now and then he threw this name at me to remind me of what an asshole I was.

He chuckled. “You reckon she remembers what a prick you can be?”

I reached for the painkillers I’d dropped beside the bed the night before. “I was a different man back then.”

“So she has no idea what’s coming for her?”

My headache increased its efforts to destroy me, and my chest tightened as I listened to him. This conversation irritated me.

As I shook two pills out of the bottle, I snapped, “I’ve got shit to do, King. Are we done here?”

His easy mood disappeared as fast as it came. “Yeah.”

I exhaled my relief when the line went dead. I hadn’t told anyone about Tenille for a good fucking reason. Talking about her and Charlie stirred feelings I didn’t want to have to deal with.

I dropped my phone on the bed and grabbed the bottle of whisky that sat next to the bottle of painkillers. A moment later, I washed the two pills down. Before I screwed the cap back on the bottle, I guzzled enough whisky to get me through the morning. Fuck knew I was gonna need it.

* * *

“Where’s Craig?”

Tenille finished stirring the coffees she’d made us, threw the dirty spoon in the sink and slid my mug across the kitchen counter to me. Lifting her mug, she wrapped both hands around it and drank some while looking at me over the rim. As she placed the drink back down, she said, “He got called into work last minute. He’s on his way to Perth now.”

This news was the best thing I’d heard in a couple of days. Now she and I could start working through some shit. “Good.”

She eyed me silently for a few moments, and I wondered what thoughts ran through her mind. Tenille had never been an easy woman to read, but I’d usually managed to have some clue as to what she’d come out with next. Flying blind with her put me at a disadvantage. One I’d rather not have.

“Why did you leave, Aiden? And what’s the real reason you’re back?” All the fight she’d had the day before was gone. In its place, was a simple plea, and it seemed to me that she’d finally come to the place in our journey where she was ready to listen.

I moved my hand to hers and held it. Surprisingly, she let me. Trying to figure out where to start to answer her question took me a minute. I had to get this right if I had any hope of convincing her to give me what I wanted. I wasn’t opposed to being more forceful if I had to, but things would be a lot easier if she came around willingly.

“Do you remember the times I came home from work with blood on my shirt? You used to ask me why, and I used to—”

“You used to avoid my questions and try to distract me with sex. Yeah, I remember.”

“Did you ever wonder what the hell I was keeping from you?”

I expected her to throw something snarky back at me, but she didn’t. Instead, she pulled her hand from mine and said, “At first, yes, but by then we weren’t in a good place. We were both keeping so much from each other and just trying to get through the day. I did anything to avoid an argument with you, including turning a blind eye to whatever you were getting up to outside of work.”

“The blood on my clothes was from work, Tee.”

She blinked a couple of times, but other than that, she gave no other reaction that what I’d said shocked her. Tenille had seen a lot in her life as a teen, so I knew not much surprised her, but I’d expected more than what she was giving me. Hell, some nights after work, I’d come home almost soaked in blood.

When she didn’t say anything, I demanded, “Did you hear what I said?” No way was she not going to take this in. By the time I was finished, she would have some idea of what Shane Gibson was capable of.

“Yes, but I’m not sure where you’re going with this. I asked you two questions, and this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with those.”

“This has every-fucking-thing to do with those questions.” It suddenly felt like we were back where we were fourteen years ago. Snapping and snarling at each other, and not getting anywhere. “Look, I didn’t come back here to argue with you—”

She cut me off, her eyes flashing with that wild anger I knew all too well. “I don’t know what you expected then, Aiden. You don’t get to walk out on your family and come back years later to smiles and fucking gratitude.”

Fuck it. I’d been trying to ease her into it, but I could see that wasn’t going to work. She appeared closed off to any talk of what Gibson had me doing. Maybe shocking her would be the only way. “Gibson made threats against our family to get me to leave.” She blanched at that, but didn’t say anything, so I kept going. “He demanded I fake my death and leave town. The fire was his idea, not mine. Fuck, none of it was my idea or what I wanted. I tried to find another way, but there wasn’t anything else he would agree to.”

“Why would he ask you to do something like that? It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“The Gibson you know is not the one I knew. He didn’t build his business by smart decisions alone; he used ruthless tactics, and he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty to make money. I was the person he called on to help him do that.”

She swallowed hard a couple of times. “What kind of threats did he make against us?”

“The cops obviously had something on me about what I’d done for him, and he knew it. He threatened to hurt you and Charlotte if I didn’t leave and also if I ever came back. That’s why I’ve stayed away. But I never stopped caring about you and Charlie. And like I told you yesterday, I always made sure you were both okay.”

She sat back in her chair and ran her fingers through her hair the way she used to when she was nervous. “Jesus, Aiden. I don’t know…. This doesn’t even sound like something Gibson would do.”

“Does it sound like something I would have done?”

“No.”

“Well there’s your answer. I did do it, and only because he taught me to.”

She frowned. “What do you mean he taught you to?”

“I’m fairly sure that he always intended for me to do his dirty work. He took Brad and me out shooting from about the age of fifteen, and he also made sure we knew how to fight. At the time, I thought he was the kind of dad I would have loved to have, but now I see that he wanted us familiar with guns and able to handle ourselves. He encouraged the darker side of me, Tee.”

“So, what, you just happily did all this stuff for him?”

I kept my irritation in check and reminded myself that she had every right to ask these questions. “What I’m trying to say is that I did shit for Gibson that led to him forcing me out of town. And yes, I’m not a good man, Tee. I’m not the man you thought I was, but neither is he. That’s what I need you to understand here.”

She moved off the stool she sat on and commenced pacing her small kitchen. I didn’t speak again because I wanted to give her the space to process this new information. Even when the silence became deafening, I kept my mouth shut.

Finally, she met my gaze again. “I’m finding it hard to believe all this, but I can’t think that you’d make something up like this just so I’d believe you didn’t want to leave me.”

I heard the confusion in her voice and knew I’d succeeded in helping move her closer to the truth. She wasn’t quite there yet, though, so I needed to do a little more work.

“Do you remember your twenty-third birthday?”

Her eyes narrowed as she thought back to that day. Nodding slowly, she said, “Yeah, kind of. Why?”

“You worked that day, and while you were at work, flowers were delivered. The note said—”

Her memory kicked in and surprise flickered across her face. “Holy fuck, I didn’t even put it together. They were from you.”

Moving to where she stood, I ran my finger lightly down her cheek as I nodded. “Yeah, they were from me.”

The card had read Happy birthday. It’s time to move on and live again. If you fall, I’ll be there. It referenced a sappy quote that I’d found about six months after we started dating. She’d been going through some shit with her family, and I’d told her if she fell, I’d be there for her. She’d made fun of me for it because she hadn’t thought a dickhead like me would say something like that. She was right; they weren’t words I would have ever said, but I’d been young, dumb, and in love, so I’d gone out of my way to impress her. It’d worked. After she’d made fun, she’d fallen harder for me and gave up her virginity about a month later.

She stared up at me, seemingly lost in her memories. A moment later, a tear slid down her cheek. Only one, but I’d never known Tenille to be a crier, so this was significant. “It took me so long to get over you. Even after I married Craig, I still wasn’t over you,” she whispered, her voice full of raw emotion. “I loved you so damn much, but we were in such a bad place, and I hadn’t said all the things I wanted to say to you. I hated that the most. I really fucking hated that the last time I saw you, I yelled at you for being a fucking asshole to me, because even though that was true, I still loved you, and I’d wished that the last thing you ever heard me say was I love you.”

I nodded, not taking my eyes off hers for even a second. “I knew you loved me. I never cared when you called me an asshole, because at least you were still communicating with me. There were months after Charlie was born that I doubted we’d ever make it out of that black hole. I’ll never forget that first huge fight we had when you started to find yourself again. It was one of the best fucking days of my life, because I knew I was getting you back.”

Her breaths came faster. “I’m sorry that I fucked it all up back then.”

I gripped her cheek and shook my head. “No, you have nothing to apologise for, Tee. You had no control over that depression, and when you worked out what it was, you did everything in your power to fight it. So don’t you ever fucking apologise for it again.”

She placed her hand on mine as another tear fell. “Where have you been living all this time? What have you been doing?”

My chest squeezed with regret and hatred towards Gibson. He’d taken this woman from me. And everything we might have been able to build together. I fought the urge to kiss her. It wasn’t that I was still in love with her—I’d had to find a way to move past that over the years—but the familiarity I felt pulled me towards wanting a taste of her again. I knew she felt it too by the way she was looking at me. Maybe we never got over our first love, regardless of what we went through with them.

I let my hand fall away from her and took a step back. While I would always think of her as my wife, she wasn’t mine anymore, and I needed to remember that. I wouldn’t drag her through any further heartache with me. “I moved to Sydney.”

We sat talking for close to two hours. I filled her in on what I’d been doing with my life since she’d last seen me. Not that there was much to tell, because mostly I’d been taking care of club shit and doing anything to avoid thinking about the way my life had turned out. Those things involved drinking and sex—two things I was sure Tenille wouldn’t want to hear about, so I did my best to steer the conversation away from me, to her and Charlie.

Our conversation would have lasted longer, but I received a call from King. Excusing myself, I went outside to take the call. I knew instantly that something was up. King’s hard tone gave that away. “Hyde, need you back here now. Sorry, brother. Got a situation that calls for you.”

“What?”

“Jacko was killed last night. And when I say killed, I mean fucking executed. I need you to help me figure out who it was because Kick’s dealing with baby stuff, and Nitro and Devil are busy with other shit. And at this point, you’re the only other person I trust for this job.”

“Fuck,” I muttered. Not because this would drag me away from Charlie and Tenille, but because it was just one thing after another with the club. And, fuck… Jacko. We hadn’t been close, but I’d always liked him. “Give me an hour to leave. I’ll tie up some shit here first.” That’d put me back in Sydney by ten tonight, maybe earlier depending on traffic.

“Call me when you get back.” With that, he ended the call.

“Everything okay?”

I turned to find Tenille watching me hesitantly. Her new acceptance of me seemed a little shaky. I’d need to get back to Melbourne soon so I could strengthen that.

“No, some club business has come up. I need to go home and sort it out.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, and I sensed her retreat. “Okay.”

“I’ll be back as soon as it’s dealt with. I want time with Charlie. I figure me going home will give you a chance to talk with her and help prepare her for seeing me.”

Taking a deep breath, she nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”

I stepped closer to her. “You’re not going to change your mind on this, are you?” Not that I would let her, but I wanted her to be comfortable with it.

She shook her head. “No. But it’s complicated, you know? I’ve gotta get Craig on board with it, too. And God knows how Charlie will take the news. I’m just worried, is all.”

I stopped myself from telling her that if Craig had a problem with it, I’d settle that fast. Taking shit slowly wasn’t how I usually ran my life, but on this occasion it was called for. “I’ll give you my number. Keep me updated.”

We exchanged numbers and I gave her my address before leaving her to head back to the motel so I could grab my gear and make the trip home. Disappointment that I hadn’t had any time with Charlie sat heavy in my gut, but it was a feeling I was old friends with, so I simply carried it with me like I always did.