Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
Which I really, really didn’t.
I slept at the club. Ate at the club. Cooked for the club. Shopped for the club. And if I wasn’t eating there, I was eating at Hansen and Macy’s, Hades and Freya’s or Jagger and Caroline’s place.
And when I was shopping, I was more often than not with one of them—the Old Ladies.
Old Lady... That’s what I was. Biker slang for going steady. But a lot more serious than that.
I understood that everyone was surprised that Swiss had declared that he had a woman. I was not sure if people were surprised by who he chose. No one judged me. No one made me feel unwelcome or out of place. Even though I was. No, from the beginning, every single member of the club made me feel like family.
Which made my deception all the more horrendous.
I’d almost told Swiss a hundred times. The longer I went without telling him, the harder it was to tell the truth.
He knew about Violet. He knew that I was estranged from her father. But he thought that estrangement was a formal, legal arrangement. I’d never lied outright to him, but he’d assumed that. And I’d let him. Swiss didn’t ask a whole lot about my past. He didn’t seem to care about what got me there, just the fact I was there.
Though I was infinitely curious, I never asked about his either. I wanted to know him. Desperately. I wanted to know him deeply and intimately, more deeply than anyone ever had. There was a lot underneath the muscle, the charm, the cheeky humor, the smoldering, sexual intensity… the danger. There was something dark. Something painful. I sensed it the more time I spent with him.
As much as I ached to know about his pain, there was no way for me to ask him without offering the same in return. It was unethical to demand to know about his past when I was keeping so much from him.
So I was living in a biker clubhouse and deeply, deeply in denial.
I was also making coffee at the cafe’ six days a week. And helping out in the kitchen. But as much as Julian seemed to be impressed by my cooking, he was very serious about who he let use the espresso machine. Him and me. That was it. No one else was ‘approved.’
Making coffee was meditative for me, but my heart was in the kitchen. And although Swiss constantly told me I didn’t have to cook for the club—which all of the members within hearing distance argued with, good naturedly, of course—I liked doing it. They appreciated everything I cooked for them. I was currently working through The Joy of Cooking. Kind of as an ode to Julia, and to my daughter who was currently sampling wonderful French food. And a French man I didn’t entirely approve of. But she was happy. She sounded it when she called. She spoke fast, telling me everything she was doing, asking every now and again about my ‘aunt.’ Luckily, I managed to change the subject quickly.
When I was making coffee, I let myself dream. About cooking. About opening a quaint little restaurant here in Garnett. Finding a house in the desert, making it my own. Making it ours. Mine and Swiss’s.
Although I knew that would only ever be just a dream.
I liked working.
Loved it, in fact.
I adored the bustle of the morning coffee rush. The quiet, first thing in the morning. The smell of freshly ground coffee. The weight of a tray of food as I took it from the kitchen to a table.
Loved speaking to people, smiling, laughing. I adored feeling tired at the end of the day, the ache of my feet. The sense of purpose.
I got lost in the rhythm of it all, my mind not straying to places I was avoiding—like the knowledge that Violet was due back in the country in a few months, and my three-month deadline was looming. That I’d have to leave this place. The mere thought of it had my stomach lurching, despite how much I missed my daughter and needed to see her. The logistics of seeing her and avoiding Preston were keeping me up at night, no matter how tired I was, no matter how tight Swiss’s arms were around me.
The lies I was telling weighed heavily too. I was falling deeper for this man every day, forming relationships with everyone in the club. And I was deceiving them. The walls were closing in on me, and I had no clue what to do. I had no one to ask for advice, despite how close I had been to telling Swiss everything multiple times.
And Macy and Freya, who seemed kind, capable and without any kind of judgment.
But I’d held back. Because I didn’t want them to think differently of me. Less of me. Didn’t want them to think I was some weak, spineless housewife who had no idea how the real world worked. Who had no idea how to file a fucking tax return or do anything a grown adult should know how to do because her husband had made sure of that. I felt more seen and known than I ever had in my life in so many ways here, yet I also felt more of an imposter than ever before. Sure, I’d been playing a part of the ‘perfect’ wife and mother all of my adult life. But that role had been crafted out of necessity. For my survival. And I’d never been around people that cared about me like this. I’d never wanted to tell the truth as much as I did now. The fear stopped me, though.