The Runaway MC Princess

Chapter 06

ANDY

For hours, I stayed on the highway, travelling faster than the posted speed, but I was hoping the miles would help me forget the humiliation from my failed marriage and the fear I felt with those bikers earlier.

I glanced in the mirror again, but this time, instead of looking for bike headlights, I focused on everything I owned piled in the back seat.

There was just one duffle bag of clothes in the back. Beside it were a small toiletry bag, my laptop, and a few personal things I couldn’t leave behind.

That was it.

After three years of marriage, everything that mattered to me fit in the back of a Jeep. It was only at this moment that I realized I was no better off than I was the night I ran away from the club and my family with nothing more than a backpack.

That night, I was eighteen and desperate, drowning in grief because of the secrets that the club wanted buried and my family's acceptance of my father's affair that cut as sharply as any betrayal. I left because staying meant losing pieces of myself, and I would never support a mistress moving into my mother's place within the club so quickly after she was laid into the ground.

I spent years convincing myself that I had moved on and up, but seeing the few scraps of possessions and the faint indent on my ring finger, I realized I was only ever lying to myself.

I had been a fool all this time. But that stops now.

Eventually, I was too tired to keep driving, so I stopped at a roadside motel just outside a small town and pulled into the parking lot.

Inside, I dropped my bag on the floor and stood there.

The room was small, with a double bed, a single chair in the corner, and a bathroom barely bigger than a closet.

I guessed the most valuable thing in the room was the old TV sitting on the dresser across from the bed.

It’s strange how, at your lowest, a rundown motel can feel more peaceful than the house I shared with assumed loved ones.

I showered until the water turned cold.

After I got out, I wrapped myself in the thin motel towel and sat on the edge of the bed.

My mind returned to Gideon.

I kept telling myself that he just wasn’t an affectionate man. I told myself the big age gap meant we were just in different places, but that he still loved me.

I had spent three years shrinking myself to fit the emotional distance Gideon gave me, just as my mother had spent years shrinking herself to survive my father.

Before Gideon, I used to think my father was a hero, that he could do no wrong. That was until I saw him with Lily; she was just a club girl, but seemed to be my father's favourite, so much so that he stopped coming home at night. Choosing to stay at the compound instead of our family home.

I thought I did the right thing by telling my mother, but she went crazy, and when my father refused to give in to her ultimatum, we found her body the next morning. Scratch that, I found her body the next morning because no one else cared to check on her. After we buried her and Lily moved into my father's house, I left. Unable to bear it any longer. But in running, I met another man I lied to myself about, all over again.

Just like I saw with my mother and my father’s distance, I learned the hard way that Gideon wasn’t just distant or busy with work. But unlike my mother, realizing this almost brought me peace.

I refused to be like her. Begging a man to give me a chance. A man should beg for me and my forgiveness. Not the other way around.

I watched my father's affair unravel my mother, and it killed her. That will never happen to me.

If Gideon didn’t love me, that was okay. You can end marriages with respect and honesty, but neither of the men that I once looked up to chose that path. They were both determined to break the women who cherished them.

Looking back, I realized Gideon didn’t marry me out of love. I really don’t understand why he did, honestly. Was it out of obligation from that night we slept together? Did I mistake responsibility for love this entire marriage?

No, it was never about being honourable. I think he knew it would look bad for a twenty-nine-year-old police officer to sleep with a drunk, drugged eighteen-year-old.

I picked up my phone and read Colt’s message again.

My thumb hovered over his name.

I hadn’t forgiven them. Not Colt or our younger brother, Linc, not my father, not any of the club members who always seemed to fall silent whenever my mother or I entered a room.

They all knew the betrayals: how my father paraded his club wh*re around the clubhouse while Mom was still alive, how the club shut their mouths and looked the other way when she started to break, how they acted like loyalty to him was more important than doing what was right. Not one of them stood up for her, or for me when I tried to speak the truth. They protected their President. They picked their side, and I wouldn’t forget it. But if I wanted a life of my own, I had to stop running from the one I left behind.

He answered on the first ring.

"Andy?" Colt's voice was older than I remembered.

My eyes stung, and it caught me off guard. I knew calling him might be a mistake. I kept going anyway.

"Hey, Colt." The words came out unsteady.

"Are you okay?" His voice softened immediately.

"No." I looked toward the dark motel window. "But I'm going to be. Until then, I’m coming home."

He didn't ask where I'd been or what happened because I suspected he already knew, somehow.

"I understand, Andy. I’ll get things ready for your arrival."

I closed my eyes. "I’m tired, Colt."

"Then come home. I’ll take care of everything, and I’ll see you soon, Andy." Colt's voice gentled even further.

After we hung up, I lay down.

Tomorrow, I'd drive my Jeep straight into the life I'd abandoned. I wasn't sure if I'd find forgiveness, or even a place that still felt like home, but the thought of facing the people I left behind made my hands tremble on the steering wheel. I wasn’t sure if this was the smartest decision, but regardless, I was going back.

You can’t run away from the ghosts locked away in your guilt; you have to face them head-on before you can start anew. I missed that step, and because of it, I was living the same life as my mother had, but I wouldn’t sacrifice myself the way she had; if I wanted to be free of it all, I needed to go home one last time.