“Hmm?”
“Can I ask you something and get an honest answer?”
“Since when have you ever asked permission?” I asked, pulling away slightly so I could look down and see her facial expressions.
“I’m going to ask anyway,” she laughed. “But I’m just giving you advanced warning that I want honesty.”
“That’s the Rachel I’ve come to know and tolerate,” I grinned at her and then pulled her back closer. “Ask away.”
“How did you find me? Honestly. When I left, you were adamant that you were letting me go. You seemed so sure that we had no future. So what made you start looking for me to begin with, and how did you pull it off?”
“I never stopped looking for you if we’re being honest,” I said, sighing heavily. “I rang the Gellers pretty much daily. That prick threatened to put a restraining order on me at one point.”
“They never told me.”
“I’m not surprised. They said you were better off without me. And then when you left theirs, they wouldn’t tell me where you had gone. I figured you were on your way back.”
“Why?” she asked quietly, her fingers tracing my tattoos again.
“Because that’s what we did. You ran, I chased, you came back. I guess I was just holding onto the belief that we were starting the same toxic cycle all over again and you would come back to me. And then Vienna got the letters. He didn’t want to show me them to start with, but he let me read Bee’s before she did so…”
“Yeah… I figured she would need someone to read it to her. I wasn’t thinking of that when I wrote it. I just needed her to know I didn’t abandon her, and that I loved her. I still love her.”
“She knows, Rachel,” I promised, kissing the top of her head.
“I hope so.” She paused for a second and then said softly. “I’m sorry I didn’t write to you.”
“It’s okay. I understand why you didn’t. And it was a reality check for me. It made me realise that I had pushed you too far, and this time you really weren’t coming back home. That was the moment I decided to really let you go.”
“So what changed?”
“I thought about you every day. The good times and definitely the bad times. I obsessed over all the things I should have done differently. And then I remembered the argument we had after we stormed the Rough Riders' clubhouse. We were in the garden, and I was mocking your ridiculous saying about two negatives, not making a positive.”
“And I said two people can make a positive,” she whispered.
“Two people who didn’t think about the consequences. I didn’t want to believe it. I never thought you would hide a pregnancy from me, no matter what was happening. I spent weeks in denial. And then I went to collect Jenna from the hospital.”
“Okay…” she murmured with a frown. I reached out to smooth the lines on her forehead, placing a small kiss on her nose before answering.
“She had ridden on the back of Shark’s bike, but the doctor put her on bed rest, so Shark asked if I would bring a car to take her home. As I was waiting for them, I saw the doctor you had seen after the fire. He recognised me and asked how you were doing, then offered his condolences. I asked why, and he said he just assumed that because you hadn’t attended your follow up appointment, or any other appointments… And then he stopped talking when he saw the look on my face. He gave me some bullshit about doctor/patient confidentiality and scurried away. That’s when I pulled Hacksaw off all club duties and told him to focus solely on you.”
“And he found me,” she said with some lingering bitterness.
“Not quite,” I laughed.
This time she was the one to pull away, frowning again as she looked up at me. “What do you mean?”
“You did good. You did really fucking good. Hacksaw was stumped. All of his leads came to a dead end. We knew you were back in the UK, but after getting off the boat, we couldn’t find you anywhere. It’s like you disappeared off the face of the Earth. We saw you in Liverpool, and then nothing.”
“What changed?”
“You did.”
“I did?” She breathed, her eyes widening with shock.
“You did so good, so fucking good,” I chucked, shaking my head. “And then you went to get your tattoo removed.”
She stiffened in my arms at that, and I began stroking up and down her back to relax her.
