Page 53 of Sinister Red
“Before you go, I have two questions for you.”
I take a deep breath and just nod. I’m not sure if I owe it to Red or myself, but either way, this is going to be the conversation I never wanted to have, and if I truly want to forget him and start to finally heal, then I need to force myself to have it.
“I need to know why.” Sam looks at me again briefly. “Why, after what was such a… what made you disappear?”
I search his profile for a few beats, then take another deep breath. “I was scared.”
“Scared?” Sam snorts, still so angry that I’m sure I’ll regret this later.
But I keep going. “Yes, I was scared. Afraid of so many things.”
“Funny how that never came up before, not once in a little over a goddamn year.”
“I… things were different.”
“Yeah, I got fucking locked up.”
“It wasn’t just that.” I shake my head and grip the strap of my purse tightly. “That was scary, sure, I’d never been in a situation like that before but— “
“You said you were going to try to help.”
I did. I was going to use all of my resources and try like hell to get Sammy and everyone else out, but my fear won and I ran instead. I abandoned the man I love, the man who had been abandoned, neglected, and all but forgotten most of his life. I did that to him and I’m not sure I can ever forgive myself for it.
“I don’t think there was anything I could have done that wasn’t already being tried.”
“So you just fucking left.” Sam clenches his jaw. “Quit talking to me, talking to anyone, and took off to another city to start over.” Those beautiful hazel eyes finally meet me head on and I swear all the air is sucked out of my lungs when they do. “I don’t believe for one second that the only reason you split was because I got locked up. I wouldn’t have asked you to wait for me, not after so many fucking years, but I also didn’t think you’d be such a goddamn coward when faced with something like that. So I want to knowwhy, Sofie. I want the real reason you left me.”
Anger and hurt, the instinct to protect and defend myself rise from the pit of my stomach, and even with tears streaming down my face, I hold Sam’s stare. “I would have waited for you. If things were different, I would have waited one hundred years or more for you. But things weren’t different and I had to do what I thought was right.” I take a shaky breath and try to compose myself a little. “I had every intention of helping, even tried a little while I was in Denver, but I couldn’t stay because… when I got the call about Conner, when I heard what happened to that sweet little boy who had already been through so much, it broke my heart, but it made me think. I thought about how you were locked up, how Conner felt like he had no choice but to do what he did, and how both of those things pointed back at the club. The Wulven Kings, in one way or another, were responsible for both of those things and I didn’t want them to be responsible for ruining my life either.”
Sam searches my face, his gaze moving over every inch in a way I can practically feel. “That’s not everything. There’s some truth there, but you’re still leaving something out, because you knew what you were getting into the day we fucking met and I find it hard to believe you would have stuck around as long as you did then split if it was just a matter of worrying about how the club was going to fuck up your life.”
Damn him for knowing me so well still.
And goddamn him for making me have this conversation right here, right now, in the midst of so much pain and heartache already.
“You’re right, but it wasn’t justmy lifeI had to think about anymore.”
The silence that stretches between us is deafening while I watch those words process in Red’s mind. And the second it does, something inside me cracks.
“I see.” His eyes well with tears but Sam doesn’t look away. “Figured any child of a bastard King born into the club would automatically mean what happened to Conner would happen to them. Figured they would end up like that, or end up like me, so you took off. Got it.”
I roll my lips between my teeth as I cry, trying like hell to get through this because it hurts so much. Sam knows me better than anyone still, and what he just said is, in essence, why I did what I did. It doesn’t make how I handled it right, but I still stand by the decision regardless of the outcome.
“I was just trying to protect our ba— “
“Do.Not.Say the fucking words.”
My mouth snaps shut as a tear rolls down Sam’s cheek.
Protecting our baby or not, this wasn’t how I wanted to tell him. I wasn’t ever going to tell him because there wasn’t much to tell and I figured not knowing was easier, and I guess that’s the only thing that makes me a coward. Deciding not to tell Sam that I was pregnant, that he was going to be a father, was scary, but the idea of telling him that neither of us were going to be parents after possibly doing that was even scarier.
I didn’t want to be a single parent off and on while he was running with the club, so I made the choice to be one full time so I knew, so there was never a question of whether or not it would happen. I didn’t want the club to ruin our baby the way it ruined Conner. I didn’t want to bring a child into the lifestyle despite knowing that Sam and I could have raised them to be better than that; smarter, safer, and protected. And when I woke up one day to discover I wasn’t pregnant anymore, I didn’t want to face Sam, to tell him all of that on top of the loss, so I chose not to tell him—or anyone else—anything.
Andthatis what makes me a coward.
Not wanting to protect my child and give them a better life. Not walking away from the man I love because I was afraid a life with him wouldn’t be that. The only thing that makes me a coward is keeping all of it from Sam because I couldn’t even handle it myself.
“Before you go…” His eyes linger on my face as another tear slips down over his freckled skin and disappears into his beard, then he turns back to the stare out the window. “I just have one more question for you.”
