Chapter 7 - The Road Ahead
1637 Words
Sierra battled to get the words past her lips. Instead, she settled for a breathless,
"Tess."
"Sierra, what's wrong?"
"I... um... I..." She took a deep breath. "I left."
"Left where?" Sierra could practically hear the confusion on Tessa's face.
"I left him." She swallowed. "Jax, I mean."
A laugh sounded over the phone.
"Yeah right. You're joking, right?"
Sierra didn't answer.
“You're serious, aren't you?” Tessa asked.
Every trace of humour vanished from Tessa's voice with that one question.
Sierra looked toward the motel window.
“Yes.”
Silence stretched briefly between them. Sierra imagined it was difficult to picture her without Jax.
She still struggled with that realization herself.
“Okay,” Tessa said.
Just that.
Tessa didn't ask what happened.
She didn't ask why and she didn't push for details.
“I don't really know what I'm doing.”
“Good.”
Sierra blinked.
“Good?”
“Because whenever you think you know what you're doing, you usually end up chasing some lunatic across three provinces with a camera and a bad plan.”
Despite herself, Sierra smiled.
“That happened once.”
“Twice.”
“It was twice.”
“Exactly.”
The smile lingered.
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
Traffic moved somewhere beyond the motel walls.
A door closed in the distance.
Life continued around her while she sat on the edge of the bed, holding onto the conversation like a lifeline.
“I was thinking about coming back,” Sierra said quietly.
The response came so quickly she wondered if Tessa had been waiting years to hear it.
“Okay, of course.”
A small laugh escaped her.
“You didn't even let me finish.”
“I don't need to.”
“Tess.”
“Sierra.”
The familiar exchange eased some of the tension sitting between her shoulders.
“You still have a place here,” Tessa continued. “At the firm. With me. None of that changed.”
Emotion tightened Sierra's throat.
Tessa was always there.
Today was no different.
“I've missed it.”
“I know.”
Sierra could hear the smirk in Tessa's voice.
“I've missed you too, by the way.”
That earned another smile.
“I figured.”
“You should feel honoured. I don't hand out emotional honesty for free.”
“Clearly.”
“Usually people have to buy me coffee first.”
A brief quiet followed.
Then Tessa's voice softened.
“When are you leaving?”
Sierra glanced around the motel room.
The answer came easier than she expected.
“Now.”
Something warm settled inside her chest when she said it.
The feeling of having a direction again eased a small part of the pressure she had been carrying since the hospital.
And right now, that was enough.
“When can you get here?” Tessa asked.
“An hour or so.”
“Perfect.”
The conversation continued a little longer after that, drifting toward familiar territory neither of them realized they'd missed.
When the call finally ended, Sierra sat quietly for a moment with the phone still in her hand.
The room hadn't changed.
The grief remained.
The uncertainty remained too.
Yet something felt different.
She wasn't standing still anymore.
Sierra lowered the phone and stared at the dark screen before setting it aside.
The motel room remained exactly as it had been.
The narrow bed.
The faded curtains.
The faint hum of traffic filtering in through the window.
Nothing around her had changed.
Something inside her had. The pain and anxiety were still present in the knots that formed in her stomach, but Tessa was waiting.
She knew where she was going.
Drawing in a slow breath, Sierra pushed herself off the bed and reached for her bag.
A few minutes later, she stepped out of the motel room and locked the door behind her.
Morning air met her when she stepped outside, colder than expected, pulling a slow breath through her before she forced herself to keep moving. The parking lot already showed signs of life, a few people moving in and out of rooms, the world continuing without pause, and she would too.
She walked towards her car.
That was when she saw him.
Jax.
On his bike.
Parked near the entrance like he had been there long enough for the night to drain out of him completely. The machine sat still beneath him, but he didn’t carry any of its ease. Everything about him looked held together through restraint alone.
His helmet rested off to the side. Jacket unzipped. Hands low, close to the handlebars without gripping them. Like he had been sitting in the same moment for too long and hadn’t decided what to do with it yet.
His head lifted as soon as she came into view.
Sierra stopped before she meant to.
The space between them felt fixed, like it had already decided its shape.
Jax pushed off the bike slowly. He stepped toward her first, just a few paces, closing the distance without urgency. Then he stopped again, as if something in him caught up to what he was doing and pulled him back into place. He returned to the bike, leaning into it with one hand resting against the metal, grounding himself there instead of moving further.
“Ready to come home?” he asked quietly.
Sierra didn’t answer.
His eyes stayed on her, steady but worn.
“I gave you space,” he added after a moment, voice lower now. “But we need to talk.”
The words stirred a memory she refused to let free. Those exact words had left her lips countless times before when she thought that they could salvage their relationship. The answer was always "soon," and somehow soon never arrived.
Sierra tightened her grip around her car keys, needing that anchor to steady herself in place.
“I’m leaving,” she said.
Jax gave a shake of his head, like he didn't expect her answer.
“Where are you going?” She glanced at those golden eyes and sighed.
“It doesn't matter Jax, what we had, it's over, and it's been for a long time.”
Silence followed, heavier in its simplicity than anything either of them had said so far.
Sierra studied him properly then. The version of him standing there didn’t match the one she had built her life around. The man who used to take control of every situation, who always arrived first, who made decisions before anyone else had time to fall apart.
That version felt distant now.
“I asked you not to go that morning,” she said.
Jax exhaled slowly.
“I remember.”
Her fingers tightened again around her keys.
“I felt something was wrong.”
Something shifted in his expression at that, subtle but present, like the words reached a place he hadn’t prepared for.
“I know,” he said.
A car door slammed somewhere behind them. An engine started up. Life kept moving around them in ways that didn’t pause for what they were standing inside.
Sierra pushed her suitcase and bag into the back of her car before closing the door and looking back at him.
“I can’t go back,” she said.
Jax didn’t step forward again. He stayed where he was, one hand still resting against the bike.
“Why?” Jax looked around and then back at her. “Please don't leave me, we can work this out, things will change.”
The words should have softened something. They didn’t change anything between them.
Sierra shook her head once.
“You always say things like that but I have learned not to trust what you say anymore.” She shook her head. The last thing she wanted to do today was bare her feelings in a motel parking lot.
She watched as Jax struggled to find the words, even though she refused to listen to them any longer.
There wasn’t anything to add that wouldn’t make it worse or smaller than what it already was.
Jax looked at her for a long moment. Not trying to pull her back, not trying to win anything. Just standing inside what had already shifted beyond repair and not knowing how to exist inside it.
“Sierra,” he said again.
Her name stayed between them longer this time.
She held his gaze for a moment longer than she intended to.
Then she stepped back.
One step.
Then another.
Jax didn’t move toward her again.
That absence of action stayed louder than anything else he had said.
Sierra turned away.
The car door opened with a soft pull. The interior carried the faint smell of dust and worn leather, familiar in a way she didn’t want to think about for too long.
She closed the door after her and took a deep breath.
For a moment, she didn’t start the engine.
Behind her, Jax remained standing, still watching, still present in a space she was already leaving behind.
The scene felt all too familiar.
Sierra closed her eyes briefly, then started the car.
The engine broke the silence cleanly.
Jax shifted slightly, like instinct reached for movement before he stopped himself again, choosing stillness instead.
She didn’t look back.
The car rolled forward, leaving the motel behind, then the parking lot, then everything that had been holding its shape around her life.
Jax stayed where he was until the sound disappeared completely.
Only then did he lower his head slightly, one hand still resting on the bike, as if it was the only thing left in his reach that hadn’t moved away from him.
Sierra kept driving.
The road opened ahead without hesitation.
And this time, she followed it.
- Writer
