Rock ends up calling one of the prospects to bring the van down and collect the few things I want to take up to the clubhouse.
“Leave it unlocked. You can trust them.”
“Of course I trust them.”
A warm smile turns up his lips and he curls his hand around the back of my neck, pulling me in for a deep kiss. He pulls away slowly and taps his bike. “Get on, baby.”
He doesn’t have to ask twice.
I hop on the back and wrap my arms around him, squeezing him tight with my legs as the bike roars to life. At the stop sign, he reaches back and pats my knee. Gentle reassurance that I’m still there. I hug him tighter and we take off.
I’m surprised by the hugs I get from everyone when we walk in the clubhouse together.
“First lady!” Murphy shouts as he runs over and picks me up. “You’re back,” he says, setting me down.
“I am.”
“For good,” Rock clarifies from behind me.
“For good,” I agree.
Wrath drops a kiss on the top of my head. “Missed you, sugar.”
He seems so sincere. I run my gaze over him and gasp. “Your cast is finally off!”
“Yup.”
I give him a hug, which after a second of hesitation, he returns.
Teller pipes up. “Glad to see you, Hope. Prez has been miserable without you.”
“Fuck off,” Rock growls.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Z calls as he steps out of the office. I get a quick hug from him too. “Told you everything would work out,” he whispers in my ear. “Glad you’re back.” He winks at me as he pulls away.
“Me too.”
“Where’s Trinity?” I ask.
“She ran out for some supplies. She was hoping she’d be back before you got here,” Wrath answers.
I quirk an eyebrow at Rock.
“I wasn’t fucking around. You were coming back with me one way or another.”
“I guess so.”
He leans down and whispers in my ear, “I mean everything I say to you.”
A shiver works through me.
“For fuck’s sake, take her upstairs already. We don’t need to see this,” Z groans.
Wrath flashes a dirty grin at me.
“Prospects should be back with her stuff soon. Tell them to leave it outside our door.”
Wrath’s eyebrows shoot up, but he nods. “Got it.”
I can’t believe how happy I am to see everyone. “Thanks, guys.”
Rock sweeps me into his arms and takes me upstairs. My throat closes when I see my things where I left them. “I figured you’d have my stuff packed in boxes down in the basement or something,” I say in a hoarse voice.
“Fuck no, baby. I knew we’d work through it eventually.”
“But what if I’d fallen into another eight-month depression or something? I missed you so much it physically hurt.”
He sets me down and cups my face with his hands. “I wouldn’t have let that happen.”
“You had eyes on me?”
“Here and there.”
Awareness flares in my love-soaked brain. “You had Z text Lilly when we were at Goodwill, didn’t you?”
One corner of his mouth lifts in a sly smirk. “Maybe. Can’t say I was happy you needed another man to help you do something I should’ve been doing for you.”
“You mean Alex? He’s a nice guy. And it’s okay. I think I needed to do that without you. Having you help me get rid of our things… of Clay’s things, would have felt weird.”
“Fair enough. He didn’t have to ask you out, though.”
It’s not fair, but the peeved look on his face sends me into a fit of giggles. “You heard about that too, huh? God, Lilly has a big mouth.”
Rock’s grumble sends heat streaking through my belly.
“You know I turned him down, right?”
“I heard,” he says, a little less cocky. “Why?”
I can’t stop fiddling with my hands and I can’t meet his eyes. “You know why.”
“I need to hear you say it.” His low, gravelly voice flows through me like water.
“Because I love you and there’s no one else for me.”
I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing Hope say she loves me.
Still, there’re things we need to talk about.
I’m not sure how to bring up the one topic that’s been eating away at me most. But all of a sudden, I don’t have to.
Hope’s gasp lifts me out of my thoughts. She’s standing by her lounge chair, staring down at the wedding album I left sitting there. The sonogram picture is tucked inside but still poking out enough to be obvious.
Now she knows I know.
Her eyes skip to me and she shakes her head. “Rock?”
Closing the distance between us, I take her hands in mine and pull her down on the chair. She picks up the album and sets it in her lap.
“You left it here, doll. I—”
“No, it’s okay.”
Her hand runs back and forth over the cover, but she doesn’t open it. Her teeth sink into her lower lip. Finally, her fingers pluck out the little black-and-white picture. She stares at it for a while before opening her mouth. “You saw this?”
“Yes.”
She taps the album. “You looked through this?”
I’m not sure where she’s going with her questions, but I plan to be one hundred percent honest. “Yes. You were a beautiful bride.”
Her face hardens into an expression I’ve never seen on Hope before. My girl is always so soft and sweet, but now… she’s downright tormented.
“I was miserable.”
Holy. Fuck.
The shock must be written all over my face. “Not about Clay.” She taps the album. “We weren’t ready to get married. I’d just finished law school. I wasn’t sure if I’d passed the bar yet—there’s a few months between when you take the exam and—well, it’s not important. I couldn’t find a job. If you don’t have something lined up after graduation, it’s pretty much impossible to find a job until after you get admitted.”
She’s babbling, stalling probably, but I’ve got enough patience to wait and let her get it all out.
I’ll wait forever for this woman.
“Clay was waiting to sit for his licensing exams. He had a job but wasn’t making a lot of money yet. We lived in this shitty one-bedroom apartment over in Ironworks. Anyway. I was on the pill, and even though I know I can be flighty, I never missed it.” She looks me in the eye.
Obviously, someone challenged her on this at some point.
“Okay.”
“There was a problem. My doctor switched me, and the new one made me so sick. I was either bleeding, cramping, or throwing up for like a month until they switched me to something else. Then I had this nasty kidney infection. Everyone knows if you’re on antibiotics, you have to use a backup. It’s like Being a Woman 101 or something. Crap, I think the pharmacist reminded me.” She shakes her head. “I forgot. I started getting sick again, but I thought it was from the new prescription. Turned out I was pregnant.”
She stops, and I wrap my arm around her waist, hugging her tight. “It’s okay, doll. I’m right here.” She sniffles a little and I get up to bring her a box of tissues.
“I told you how useless my mother was after my dad died?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, around my third year of law school is when she got remarried. All of a sudden, she wanted to play mom again. So I humored her. Clay encouraged me to try and fix our relationship. He grew up in foster care and kept reminding me I was lucky to have a mother. I felt guilty and I tried, even though I knew it was a mistake.”
I have a hard time swallowing because I almost feel like I did something similar to her.
“So besides Clay, my mother was the first person I told. I was twenty-fucking-five years old. Not exactly the end of the world for me to be pregnant, other than the fact that Clay and I had no idea how we were going to afford a kid. I thought she’d be happy.”
“She wasn’t?”
“No. She went berserk. Everything has always been about her, and this was no different. She was ‘too young’ to be a grandmother. She was so embarrassed to have such a ‘slut’ for a daughter. Mind you, Clay and I had been together for more than five years by this point. But she acted like I needed to have a fucking paternity test to know who the father was.”
Seeing Hope so angry pisses me off. It’s unnatural on her.
“She insisted I have an abortion. She wouldn’t let it drop.”
Christ, I don’t even know what to say to that. “What did Clay say about it?”
Hope looks at me like I’m nuts. “I never told him that. He would have lost his shit. As freaked out as we were about the financial aspect of it, we were excited about the baby. He was thrilled to have a family of his own.
“When my mother finally understood I was keeping the baby, she insisted we had to get married right away. She went behind my back and got Clay on board with her plan. He thought it would be a good mother-daughter thing to bond over wedding stuff. I knew we were eventually going to get married, so I had no good reason to say no or back out of it without hurting his feelings.” She stops and takes a deep breath.
“But it couldn’t just be a quickie courthouse ceremony. Oh no. She drove me nuts.” She slaps her hand on the photo album, then flips it open to the first page. “I can’t look at any of these pictures without remembering how unhappy I was that day.”
Jesus Christ. “I’m so sorry.”
“I was so stressed out. So sick all day. I kept throwing up. My mother had me so ashamed. I didn’t tell anyone else I was pregnant. Clay must have told his sister at some point. I don’t know. But Sophie, Mara, Lilly—I never told them.”
“Baby, you had nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I know. I knew it then too, but I couldn’t help it. Mara was going through her own stuff with her ex. They were close to getting a divorce. So I felt really bad about all the wedding stuff I threw at her all of a sudden. I’m sure one of them suspected, since I had to run in the bathroom to puke every five minutes.”
Goddamn, Z had her pegged. This story makes it clear just how much she worries about everyone else’s feelings but her own. As her man, I need to do a better job protecting her. “What happened after the wedding?”
Her mouth turns up and her eyes go distant. “We scraped together some money and went to Montreal for four days. It was actually a really nice honeymoon.” The smile fades to something I can only describe as anguish. “I lost the baby two days after we got back.”
Motherfuck. I can’t stand hearing all the bad shit my girl’s been through. Never said a word to me, either. I feel so fucking useless, like I should have done something for her even though I didn’t even know her at the time. I can’t help but notice how she hid important shit from Clay too. Maybe if she’d shared this with him, he might have stood up to Hope’s mother. Saved my girl from so much misery.
I need Hope to understand there won’t be any more secrets between us.
She’s quiet for a while but keeps staring at the sonogram picture. “My mother didn’t come to the hospital that time either. All she said was it was a shame she wasted so much money on the wedding when it turned out not to be necessary after all.”
I’ve never hurt a woman in my life, but Hope’s mother? I want to hunt this bitch down and kill her.
“I cut ties with her after that. Told Clay it wasn’t going to work, without giving him too many awful details. We spoke on the phone here and there, she came to Clay’s funeral, but other than that, I kept away from her.”
“Until I made you call her?”
She looks up at me finally, a sad smile stretched across her face. Her hand reaches up and rubs my cheek. “You didn’t know.”
Everything falls into place in that moment. Her running away when she can’t cope. Her lack of confidence. How hard it is for her to open up and trust. She’s basically been rejected by her own mother her whole life.
“I wish you had told me.”
She shrugs. “I’m not good at sharing my feelings, Rock. It’s really hard for me to let people in. You’re the first person to ever know so much of me. You’re unstoppable.”
I’m probably a complete asshole, but I really like the way she says that.
“You still should have told me. No more, Hope. If something bothers you—no matter how small you think it is—I want to hear about it. There won’t be secrets between us.”
“It was so far in the past. Female trouble. No man wants to hear about—”
I cut that shit off quick. “I’m your man. I want to know anything and everything about you.”
Her lips quirk into a brief smile. “When we met, I told you how much you freaked me out. Even then, I felt like you knew too much about me. I made such a big deal out of how I had a good marriage and would never cheat on my husband. I didn’t want you to think we had some shotgun wedding… I don’t know.”
“Honey, I never would have thought that about you. I just wish you had told me so I hadn’t pushed you into calling that bitch.”
“It was too painful. I’d get sick every time I remembered that whole time period. I was so mad at myself for not standing up to her sooner. I thought I’d dealt with it and put it behind me.” Her bright-green eyes, shiny with unshed tears, meet mine. “Then losing our baby the way I did? Rock, something must be really wrong with me. I feel so defective.”
“Hope, you’re the closest to perfection I’ve ever known. You heard the doctor. We can try when you’re ready. They’ll watch you like a hawk.”
She shifts closer to me so our thighs are touching, and I wrap my arm around her. “I just know you’d be such a good father,” she murmurs. “And I want to be able to give you that.”
My chest tightens with the feeling that I’m meant to take care of this wonderfully strong yet fragile woman. Beyond that, I admire her. Even though she’s had so many awful things happen in her life, it hasn’t turned her into a bitter person. She’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. “We’ll figure it out together. I promise.”
She pulls away. “Thank you for always being so patient and understanding with me.”
The sweet, earnest way she expresses herself twists me. Cupping her chin, I stare into her green eyes and explain how things will be from now on. “Love you. And I do understand, but no more running away when you’re overwhelmed. No more pushing each other away. This is it. I need you—all of you—and you’re going to give yourself to me completely.”
Tears tumble down her cheeks, but I keep going. “We have no choice but to take what life throws at us. Good and bad. You’ve had so much bad, baby doll. More than your share. But what we have is good, and I’ll do whatever it takes to give you the best for as long as I’m alive.”
“I need you too.”
I’m so happy to hear her admit it. “We need each other,” I clarify because it’s the absolute truth. “Every part of me is yours, Hope. There isn’t another person in this world who owns me the way you do.”
Her arms band around my middle so tight she knocks me into the arm of the chair, but I hold on to her just as hard.
I’m never letting her go again.