Unbeautifully (Undeniable, #2)(67)

Hawk’s face twisted with doubt. “You sure about that, dude? I mean, if that’s true, why did you leave in the first place?”

Yeah, he was f*cking sure, what the f*ck was Hawk think—

Fuck.

Brother had a point. He’d left so she’d have a better life, one without secrets and bad memories and…him.

Would he have come back? For his kid? For her?

Yeah. Yeah, he f*cking would have.

As it was, Hawk only knew half the story. He didn’t have a clue that Danny had killed Nikki. No one knew except him and Danny.

Oh, f*ck.

Cox knew Nikki was dead. And if what Hawk said was true, that the boys had figured his shit out, then…

He glanced over to where Cox was sitting, Kami on his lap, trying to eat around her.

He stared at his friend until Cox looked up and caught his gaze.

And yeah, Cox knew. The motherf*cker had figured it out. From the looks of it, he wasn’t happy with him either.

Feeling sick, Ripper stood up quickly, causing his chair to scrape loudly against the floor. The entire table of brothers, their old ladies, their kids…all looked up at him and the room went uncomfortably silent.

He felt his brothers’ eyes on him, felt the tension emanating from all around the table, and knew Hawk had been right. With the exception of a few people, the ones who didn’t know yet, no one was happy with him.

Maybe he should have cared about that. Cared that his brothers, his only family, men he’d worked side by side with for years, killed for, and nearly died protecting, thought he was a piece of f*cking garbage. But he didn’t.

He only had eyes for one person.

And she was refusing to look at him.

He never should have left.

But it was done. He couldn’t take it back and he couldn’t make it right. There was nothing he could do except add it to his long list of mistakes.

He cleared his throat. “I’m out,” he said.

Dorothy smiled up at him. “See you soon?”

Everyone else looked away.

“Sure,” he muttered.

And left.

? ? ?

Ripper was leaving.

Again.

And I felt like I was dying.

Again.

My stomach started churning and my body grew clammy.

This couldn’t happen.

This couldn’t happen again.

He couldn’t leave.

He couldn’t leave me, again.

“I gotta go to the bathroom,” I whispered to ZZ and quickly stood up, painfully aware of Hawk’s knowing eyes on me.

As soon as I’d cleared the kitchen, I broke into a run, racing down the hallway, through the front room, and slammed through the front door, stumbling out into the sunlight.

Ripper was already on his bike, stopped at the gate, punching in the code.

As if he could sense me there, he paused and turned.

And my heart broke for the millionth time since prom night.

It was all there, everything he was feeling, everything I needed to know, written all over his face.

He loved me.

And he hated me.

I stood there for a long time, long after the dust his Harley kicked up in his wake had settled.

I lost something that day, a piece of me that’s still out there, standing in that parking lot, staring after the man I loved.

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

—Robert Frost

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Life goes on.

If there is nothing else in this world you can count on, you can count on that.

Life will go on.

With or without you.

Before you, after you, all around you, life has always done just that.

Gone on.

After Ripper left, life went on. The world didn’t stop turning, the sun didn’t forget its nightly duty to set in the west and rise again each morning in the east. The seasons still came and went. Everything, everyone, continued on.

Even me.

When my father and Eva came home from their honeymoon, it was back to business as usual only my father was home a lot more. Things settled.

And life just kept going.

Danny D. got married.

Cage had a girlfriend, a waitress from town, for an entire week.

Kami got pregnant and nine months later gave birth to her and Cox’s second son, Diesel. Tegen graduated from high school. Not even twenty-four hours after her graduation ceremony, she was on a plane San Francisco bound where she’d gotten a full scholarship to San Francisco State University and an internship at a small newspaper. She didn’t come back for Christmas, or spring break, or the following summer.

Bucket was arrested, carted off to jail out of state on assault charges.

Then Dorothy got pregnant.

Jase didn’t leave his wife. Other than Dorothy, no one was surprised.

Hawk left. Went nomad like Ripper, and never came back.

Anger, one of two prospects, eighteen years old, and half Native American, was patched in. From what I knew of him, like Dirty he too had been aptly nicknamed. Mostly, I tried to avoid him and his temper tantrums.

And through it all, Ripper would periodically appear. He’d show up out of the blue, stay for a day or two, and then just as randomly, he’d disappear again.

We never spoke. We barely looked at each other. But there were times when not looking was as unbearable as holding my breath for too long and so I’d give in and I’d look. And every time I did, he was looking back at me.