The MC President's Forsaken Wife

Chapter 7

Zara

Leaving the hospital should feel like a way bigger deal than it actually does.

I think part of me expects some grand sensation when the pale-yellow hospital gown is folded away for the last time, and Jade helps me ease into soft leggings and a loose sweater that smells faintly like my old laundry soap.

That scent makes me feel as though some part of the woman I was has traveled here through my clothing, and is waiting to see what I will do with her.

But the leaving isn’t grand.

It’s careful and it’s slow.

A hand pressed to my stomach when the stitches tug a bit as I move, a breath held through the shallow ache, Jade’s steady palm at my elbow even though she pretends not to hover.

“You good?” she asks, those incredible green eyes missing exactly nothing.

I nod, though the truth is more complicated than that. Because my body is still weak, still a bit tender, still marked by everything that’s happened to it.

But there’s a difference between being fragile and being finished.

And I’m beginning to understand that I’m only one of those things.

“I’m good, Jade. Thanks.”

And of course there’s no one waiting by the door, no husband pacing the hallway, no last-minute arrival with regret written across his face.

Once upon a much-hoped-for fairy tale, that would have hurt so badly, I might have mistaken it for proof that love was still alive in me.

Now, I only reach down to pick up my bag, but Jade snatches it from the floor before I get within three feet of the handles.

“I can carry that,” I protest. “It’s not heavy at all.”

“I know,” she replies with a toss of her flame-red hair, already striding for the door on her sky-high heeled boots. “But I’m still not letting you.”

Outside, the fall air is colder than I expect, sharp enough to make me inhale carefully, and the first breath of it feels like something clean moving through me.

I look up at the clear blue sky, close my eyes, and when I open them, I see Mayhem.

He’s leaning against his truck, muscular arms crossed over his massive chest, his square jaw tight. Looking like every bad decision he’s ever made is smoldering just beneath his skin, waiting for permission to come roaring out.

When he sees me, all that violence in him stills into something quieter.

He doesn’t come over to meet me; he just opens the passenger door as I approach, takes the bag from his wife.

“Hey, Zarabug,” he says, his voice rough, his dark eyes watchful. “You doin’ OK?”

That nickname—given to me when Mayhem was eight and I was four, and I bugged him by constantly following him around—almost undoes me.

Almost.

But I’ve cried enough over men who don’t know what to do with love. And my brother’s love, badly spoken and half-feral as it is, doesn’t require tears to prove I understand it.

In so many ways, his fierce and dangerous love for me is the purest thing I’ve ever known.

“Hey, Mayhem,” I say, swallowing the lump of emotion in my throat. “I’m alright.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Really.”

He helps me into the truck with huge hands that are gentler than anyone would believe if they had only ever seen him in a fight. Jade somehow clambers into the back in her tight skirt, and the three of us pull away from the hospital without ceremony.

I don’t look behind me.

There’s nothing there that I want to bring with me.

The city moves past the window in a blur of busy streets and morning light.

I sit very still, one hand resting low against my abdomen, feeling the tender proof that I was opened and put back together. That death came close enough to touch and still, somehow, didn’t keep me.

“We goin’ to the clubhouse?” Mayhem asks. “You want to get your stuff?”

“Yes, please,” I say. “Then the lawyer’s office.”

“Got it.”

The Grinning Skulls’ clubhouse rises at the edge of the industrial district, low and dark and familiar, the ten-foot-high front gates opening before we even stop.

Something about driving through them sends a strange ache through me—not grief, not nostalgia—but the pull of an old belonging that I had tried to trade for a marriage that never became a home.

Inside, the air smells like beer and coffee, leather and old wood.

And for one suspended second it’s ten years ago, and I’m eighteen again, and I’m still Zara Callahan.

I’m standing in a dark corner, and I’ve just spotted Knox McVale for the very first time in my life.

He’s all silvery-blond hair, icy-blue eyes, and ferocious, tattooed strength. He’s four years older than me, and I can’t seem to take my eyes off of him.

Back then, he’d just joined the Night Howlers, but this was before the rivalry between the Skulls and the Howlers had started up. Knox and Mayhem had gone to school together, played on the same football team, and were hanging out pretty often. He’d come to my Dad’s club, play pool with my brother, drink and flirt with everyone.

Well.

Everyone except me.

I shake my head to clear the memory, and look around again.

“Is Dad here?” I ask Mayhem.

“Nope.” He shrugs, his muscles ripping under his black leather cut. “He’s out of town on business and will be back later tonight.”

I nod, and don’t ask. In my whole life, I’ve never pressed my father, my brother, or my husband for club details.

I’ve known my place forever… and that place is not at the table.

Mayhem takes me to the back office, where my things are in my Dad’s safe.

He sets everything on the desk in front of me: cash bundled in envelopes, jewelry boxes that hold things I can barely remember, my passport…

…and the divorce papers lying on top like they were always meant to be the thing I pick up first.

I stare at them for a moment. They don’t frighten me, they don’t hurt me. They’re just paper.

They’re a way out made visible.

Mayhem watches me from the doorway. “Knox comes askin’ for that s**t back, he gets told to leave.”

“He won’t ask.”

“No,” he says, and there’s something darkly satisfied in his voice. “He won’t.”

I take the papers carefully, sliding them into an empty folder.

The cash goes into my duffel bag, and so do all the velvet boxes. Not because I care about the jewelry, but because it’s mine.

And I’m done leaving pieces of myself in places where Knox can decide whether they matter.

Mayhem and I leave the clubhouse together to drive to the lawyer, Jade staying behind to start her waitressing shift.

Traffic moves slowly, and I watch the city open around us. People crossing streets, shop doors propped open, strangers carrying coffee. Lives unfolding without knowing that mine has just split cleanly into before and after.

Mayhem glances over once. “You want me to come in with you?”

“No, thanks,” I say softly. “I need to do this by myself.”

He nods once, and that’s all.