Page 32 of Slaughter
I shook my head, even though he couldn’t see me. “I can’t marry her, Quinton. I’m already married.”
“No, brother,” Digger said quietly, his voice gentle but firm. “You’re not. You’re widowed.”
His words hit me like a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs.
Widowed.Not married. Not Julie’s husband anymore. Just a man whose wife was dead and buried six feet under Tennessee soil.
I pressed the heel of my hand against my chest, trying to ease the ache that had taken up permanent residence there, but it didn’t help. Nothing helped.
“Chapman?” Digger’s voice was soft now, concerned. “You still with me?”
“Yeah,” I rasped, my voice barely above a whisper. “I’m here.”
“Look, I know this is hard. I know you’re still grievin’. But you gotta face facts, brother. Julie’s gone. And Hope—Hope is real. She’s alive. And if you got her pregnant, you’re gonna have to step up and do right by her. You know that, right?”
I sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. “I know.”
“Good. Now get some sleep. Figure out your next move in the mornin’. And, Chapman?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t do anythin’ stupid. You’ve already got enough shit to deal with.”
The line went dead, and I sat there in the silence of the motel room, staring at the phone in my hand.
Widowed.The word echoed in my mind, relentless and unforgiving. I wasn’t married anymore. I was a widower. A single father. A man who had abandoned his newborn daughter and run halfway across the country to escape the pain of losing his wife. And now I had slept with another woman. A woman I’d called Julie’s name, a woman I had taken without protection, a woman who was the sister of a former club brother and under the protection of an allied MC.
I was so fucked.
I lay back on the bed, staring up at the water-stained ceiling, and tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do. But all I could see was Hope’s face. The way she’d looked at me behind that garage, her eyes wide and devastated, like I had ripped her heart out and crushed it beneath my boot. And maybe I had.
Maybe that was exactly what I had done.
Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the window in its frame, and I closed my eyes against the sting of tears I refused to let fall.
I was a widower. Not a husband. Not Julie’s anymore. Just a broken man who’d made a mistake he didn’t know how to fix.And somewhere in Lawton, Hope Owens was probably crying herself to sleep, wondering why the man who had touched her like she was sacred had walked away like she was nothing.
I didn’t sleep that night; I just lay there in the darkness, listening to the wind, and wondered if I would ever be able to look her in the eye again.
Chapter Thirteen
Slaughter
Two weeks.
I had been hiding in Medicine Park for two goddamn weeks, watching Hope Owens from the shadows like some kind of stalker. I told myself I was waiting for the right moment, waiting for Shadow to calm down, waiting for Ghost to show up demanding my head, waiting for Reaper to arrive with the full weight of the Golden Skulls behind him.
But they never came.
And that confused the hell out of me.
I had rented the motel room indefinitely, paying cash week by week to the clerk who had stopped asking questions after the first three days. The room had become a home away from home. A place to sleep when exhaustion finally dragged me under, a place to shower and change clothes before heading back out into the night.
Because that was when I went to Lawton. At night. When the darkness could hide me and the streets were quiet enough that I could move unseen.
I watched her. God help me, I couldn’t stop watching her.
Her life was simple. Predictable. Almost painfully ordinary in a way that made my chest ache with something I couldn’t name.
