Dani

I was supposed to be studying. I was sitting in a coffee shop, my textbook open in front of me, notebook and pen ready. Normally I loved studying—I absorbed everything I was learning like a sponge. But today I was staring at my phone, which was sitting on the table next to my textbook. And when I wasn’t staring at my phone, I was watching the rain through the window.

That was the other thing I loved: rain. Lots and lots of rain, which made Portland the ideal city for me to live in right now. I didn’t miss Malibu, and I sure as hell didn’t miss Arizona. Being in Portland made me feel like I was on the other side of the world from McMurphy, and the Black Dog MC, and the girl I’d been.

I made myself glance at the textbook, turn a page or two. I was finishing my first semester in my vet tech course, and I’d spent many a long, lonely night with Animal Anatomy and Physiology: Basic Principles in the past four months. I’d slept with it on the bed next to me some nights in my small rented apartment. I carried it everywhere I went. And it felt good, really good, to love something like that. A textbook. Something that was mine alone, that I’d chosen, that was actually good for me instead of a disaster. Something that was going to take me where I had always wanted to go. I’d never had that until now.

I had the textbook. I had courses, which I was acing. I had a career I was excited about. I had classmates and professors, some of them quickly becoming friends. I had an apartment I’d chosen, with things I liked in it, in a city I had picked and that I loved. I had plenty of money, though everything I bought was modest, and I had plenty of time, finally, to think. I had a good life.

What I didn’t have was my husband.

That made me look at the phone again. I had talked to Cavan last night; we texted each other constantly. He always told me where he was, what he was doing. He was still my husband. What he wasn’t was here.

And I hated it.

It had been six months. Six long, painful months. It was important, he’d said, for me to take some time on my own. To explore who I was, who I wanted to be, the life I wanted. He didn’t want, he said, to feel like I was making decisions with him in mind instead of myself. Because I’d never yet made a decision only for myself, and it was about time I started.

So I’d started. It was painful, but it was good, because I’d learned a lot of things, mostly about myself. I remembered the way I’d felt staring in the dressing room mirror in Vegas, the empty black hole feeling, and I didn’t have that anymore. I knew who Dani Farraday was now; she had a closet of clothes she’d picked, and recipes she liked to cook, movies and TV shows she liked. I’d grown my hair again, not as long as before, but just past my shoulders. I could twist it up or leave it down as I wanted. When I looked in the mirror now, I looked like me.

I picked up the phone and scrolled back to the last time Cavan had texted me. He was in Colorado, somewhere in the Rockies. He’d spent two months in San Francisco, staying with Devon and Olivia and putting all his affairs to rights. He had all his money now. My husband was a billionaire—or technically a co-billionaire, since the estate he and Devon shared was worth a billion dollars. He’d even gone so far as to finally get his first credit card.

He was rich, which meant I was rich. I certainly had enough money in the bank, deposited directly without a word. I’d paid my school tuition, my rent, my textbooks. I’d also spent a month with my mother in L.A. before school started, and I’d paid all of her rent and her backlog of medical bills. I’d tried to buy her a house, but she wouldn’t let me. It’s too much, she said over and over. It’s too much.

She was worried about me, I knew. Everything had happened so fast, and she had never met Cavan. She was half afraid that Cavan would be unreliable, that he’d pull the rug from under us and leave us high and dry. My mother didn’t have much reason to trust men.

It didn’t help that once Cavan had his affairs in order, he’d packed a car and gone traveling—alone. I could see the questions in my mother’s worried expression. If you’re married, and he loves you, then why isn’t he living with you? Why is he gone? When is he coming back? It makes no sense. And it didn’t, unless you knew why he was doing it. Why he was leaving me alone.

You need time to become you, he told me, before we become us.

I hadn’t wanted to do it. With McMurphy off our backs, I wanted us to be us. Right now. I wanted to be his woman, despite my bold words while we were on the road. I pleaded with him, I argued with him, and we had at least one big fight, with me hanging up the phone in tears. But he wouldn’t change his mind. And it wasn’t until I’d spent that first month with my mother that my anger faded and I started to understand.

There was so much unfinished between my mother and me. So much we’d never said. I felt guilty about the horrible way I’d treated her, the selfish way I’d rebelled, and for leaving her to worry. She felt guilty about—as she saw it—not giving me a good enough life. We spent weeks talking, going through everything, healing and loving each other again. And I wanted Cavan there, but it wouldn’t have happened the same way with him there. It wouldn’t have been just Mom and me.

“Excuse me,” a man’s voice said.

I looked up. The man standing in front of my table was good-looking, with thick dark brown hair and glasses. He was wearing a navy pea coat and had nice eyes. He gave me a tentative smile.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “It looks like you’re studying, and I need to study, too.” He held up a textbook—economics. “I thought, if it’s okay with you, that maybe I could sit with you?”

I smiled back at him. The coffee shop wasn’t full; not even close. This happened from time to time, guys asking me out. Maybe I should have considered it, since the man I was married to was somewhere in Colorado. But when I looked at this guy, as nice as he was, and I thought about Cavan, the temptation never even crossed my mind. “Sorry,” I said to him. “I’m married.”

As most people did when I said this, the man glanced quickly at my left hand. I still wore my ring; I hadn’t taken it off since Cavan had put it on me before our wedding. “Oh,” he said. “Well, he’s very lucky. Nice to meet you.” He gave a nod and walked away.

I looked down at my textbook again, fighting back the sting. After I’d sorted things with my mother, I’d come here—to the school I wanted to attend, the city I wanted to be in. I’d found my own apartment. That had taken time, too—to set up my life. It was something I’d never done before, and I was happy I’d done it, and I was proud of myself.

But damn it, I was ready. I wanted my husband back.

The pain had changed over time. At first, in the fog of my confusion, being apart from him had felt like the end of the world. It had been mixed with panic—I’d woken up more than once in the middle of the night, certain he was with some other woman, forgetting about me. It had sometimes been mixed with anger, like the times we’d argued. It had sometimes been mixed with grief.

And now? Now it was an ache, throbbing deep in my chest day and night. During the times when I was happy, when I was proud of myself, I still had that ache. It never went away. And that, in itself, was a lesson.

Cavan wasn’t some passing fancy, for me. He never had been. He wanted me to take time, to be sure. That ache was the answer.

He was doing his own sorting. I knew because we talked about it all the time. He’d mended things with Devon and reconnected with Max. He’d become friends with both of their girlfriends. I’d been estranged from Mom for seven months, but he’d been estranged from Devon for ten years. They had their own healing to do, especially after the tragedy of their mother’s murder. And now Cavan was doing the traveling he’d always wanted, seeing the places he wanted to see. He was letting go of his guilt and his pain. It wasn’t just me that needed to search my soul.

My phone rang, and I jumped, my heart beating. It was Cavan, as if he was reading my mind.

“Dani,” he said when I answered.

For a second the world vanished, and there was only his voice, and everything made sense again. The ache hurt harder, became almost pleasure. No man would ever, ever make me feel the way Cavan Wilder did, just by saying my name.

“Hi,” I said.

“What are you doing?” I couldn’t hear anything else on his end of the line—no voices, no traffic. I wondered desperately where he was.

“I’m trying to study,” I said.

“Yeah? And why aren’t you succeeding?”

I only ever had the truth to give him. “Because I’m thinking about you. And fending off passes.”

There was a second of silence on the other end of the line, hot as white coals. “Well, that pisses me off,” he said.

“Then come home,” I shot back.

“What did you say to him?”

“That I’m married.” I looked down at my hand again. “What do you tell the women who make passes at you?”

“Dani, no one makes passes at me.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said. I could picture him—he sometimes sent me photos. He looked a little scruffy again, though not as scruffy as he’d been in the Black Dog. He still wore jeans and t-shirts, but he looked different—his face more open, more relaxed, though it contained some of the reserve he’d never get rid of. Instead of looking serious and mysterious, he looked like a guy who could walk into a bar and have every woman climbing over him in seconds. Which they probably did. Damn him. “Some cowgirl is probably eyeing you right now, getting ready to make her move,” I said.

“If she is, she’s going to be disappointed. I’m married, too.”

“Do you wear your ring?” I asked him.

“Of course I wear it.” The question seemed to puzzle him. “Where is this coming from, Dani?”

“I want you to come home,” I said. “It’s been six months. I know why you left, and in a way you were right. But six months later, I don’t know where you sleep every night. And I still don’t like it.”

He was quiet for a minute. “I sleep alone, sweetheart,” he said.

“You probably do.” I scrubbed my forehead, looking out at the rain. Even in my worst jealous mood, Cavan had never given me a reason to doubt him, just like I’d never given him a reason to doubt me. Deep down, I didn’t think he was fucking anyone. “But I don’t know it. I was leaning on you before—expecting you to fix everything. I see that now. But I’m not doing that anymore. I want you here, Cav. I just do. It’s driving me crazy.”

I wished I could see his face; I couldn’t read his silence. If I could see him, I could read what he was thinking. I knew his face so well. “Dani, I called for a reason,” he said.

Something about his tone made my spine go stiff. “What reason?”

“I have news about McMurphy.” He paused. “Baby, he’s dead.”

I blinked stupidly, wondering if I was losing my mind. “What?”

“The club was doing a deal,” Cavan said. “Automatic weapons. They were trying to get them over the border, and they got caught. Apparently, they started shooting. The cops fired back. Two dead. One was McMurphy.” It was his turn to listen to my silence. “I’m sorry, Dani.”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. I was sorry, too. For what, I had no idea. Maybe that McMurphy was dead. But then again, if he knew I was sorry, McMurphy would laugh at me from wherever he was. “He always said he wanted to live fast and die young,” I said.

“I know.”

I let out a breath. I’d spent a lot of time explaining the club life to my mother, and I didn’t tell anyone in Portland about my past at all. The people here saw the new Dani, the pretty young married woman who was training for a career. They had never seen the woman who had stood half-drunk in a parking lot at four in the morning, wearing smeared makeup and her only pair of heels, after making a lot of bad decisions. But Cavan had seen that woman, and he loved her anyway. Cavan knew the life. I never had to explain anything to him.

“This had nothing to do with the Lake of Fire?” I asked. “Or with me?”

“No.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“Ben,” my husband said. “Devon’s lawyer. It’s good info, Dani, from within the club. The fact is, McMurphy is gone.”

It was a door closing on my old life. Final, irreversible. Without McMurphy, there was no going back. I’d never wanted to, never considered it, but now I couldn’t. Not ever.

“Where are you right now?” Cavan asked me.

“In a coffee shop,” I replied.

“Go home,” he said. “Get some rest. Leave a key at the front desk.”

My heart, my stupid crazy heart, leapt in my chest. “Why?”

“Because I’m coming.”

I could barely get the word out. “When?”

“You’ll know when it happens,” he said. “Soon. Just be ready.”

I slammed the textbook closed, so loud the people at the tables near me turned to look. “Get here,” I said.

He laughed, the sound intimate in my ear, just for me. “I’ll get there,” he said. “Go home.”