Unbeloved Read Free Page A

couldn’t.
    Leaving him meant losing the security he provided me. I’d lose the apartment he paid for in town, and my only source of income: my position at the clubhouse.
    So as I made nice at a barbeque I had no interest in attending, I matched his happy expression, hoping from this distance that it would appear genuine, and that unlike Eva, he wouldn’t see through my facade.
    I shouldn ’t have been worried. As usual, Jase was oblivious to my wants and needs, only ever focused on his own. So much so that he was unaware of my biggest secret yet.
    The secret I carried inside my belly.
    Unbeknownst to Jase or to anyone other than myself, the life growing inside me was not a product of my relationship with Jase. It was the result of an affair with another member of the Hell’s Horsemen. It had begun as a drunken slipup, a night of much-needed comfort spent in the arms of another, but over time had become something else entirely. Even years later, it was still something I’d never quite known how to process, could never truly comprehend, but at the same time . . . I’d eventually begun to depend on it. Need it, even.
    The other man provided me with an outlet nothing else in my life allowed me. When I was with him, I was never consumed with feelings of inadequacy, fearing that every move I made was being compared to another woman. With him, I felt almost free.
    Turning away from Jase, I squeezed my eyes shut, easily envisioning him , a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, as stoic and as silent as ever.
    The dark to Jase’s light, James “Hawk” Young’s skin held a duskier undertone, his features were more striking, almost otherworldly. Even without the additional height of his Mohawk, he was taller than Jase, larger with bulky muscles and an overall stature that could very easily be construed as intimidating.
    At first, I too had been intimidated by Hawk. After our first night together he’d come to me again, wanting more. When I’d refused him, he’d threatened to tell Jase what we’d done. Terrified of losing the only man I’d ever loved, I’d agreed.
    And i n the end, I’d been the furthest thing from intimidated.
    In the end . . . I’d been in love with two men.
    It was yet another mistake I’d made.
    B ut even as I thought those very words, I could hear Hawk, his voice uncommonly deep, his expression forever firm as he stared down at me and said, “There ain’t no such thing as mistakes, Dorothy. There’s only shit that happens and shit that don’t.”
    I s wallowed back a threatening sob, furiously blinking back my quickly gathering tears. No matter what Hawk thought, I knew in my heart what we had done was wrong. Hawk had betrayed the bonds of the brotherhood, and I had betrayed Jase by allowing another man into my bed. Even worse, I had allowed Jase to believe that the baby inside me was his.
    But w hat choice did I have? If I admitted my sins, I would lose everything. As it was, I’d already lost Hawk.
    I could still see him, the joyous expression on his face when I’d told him I was pregnant. And then the pain that had shattered his joy when I’d told him the baby wasn’t his.
    Hawk had known the admission for what it truly was, a b ald-faced lie stoked by fear in the addled mind of a confused woman. But even knowing this, he hadn’t put up a fight. Instead, he’d left.
    I didn ’t blame him for leaving, for choosing life as a nomad over continuing to live a life full of lies and secrets. I just hadn’t realized how drastically my life would change with his absence. I hadn’t realized how much I had come to depend on him, and in turn, how much I would miss him.
    G ood God, what was wrong with me? Almost thirty-seven years old with a grown child and pregnant with another, yet in many ways I was still a child myself. I was without purpose, always unsure of myself and my feelings, giving love away as easily as breathing, all while flitting and flailing aimlessly through my life . .