He Chose Her. I Left Carrying His Heir. novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Locked Out

Cade freezes her cards, Tawny turns up in his shirt, and Ruby leaves in her father's old truck, which dies on Route 9 at night.

I was folding my second pile of jeans into a duffel when Cade's bike came up the driveway.

I had walked the four miles home from the clubhouse with my heels in my hand.

Floyd's words had walked every mile with me: A Chitwood baby belongs to the Kings.

I had put the test in a sock at the bottom of the duffel, under the jeans, where no Chitwood would think to look.

He took the porch steps two at a time and stopped in the bedroom doorway with his helmet still on his arm.

"Put that down," he said.

"No." I zipped the bag halfway.

"You're making a scene over a photo."

"I made it over fifty people and a gas tank."

He set the helmet on the dresser and breathed out through his nose, which was what he did before he decided to be kind.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. Tawny was a mistake. It's finished. I'll tell her tonight."

"She was sitting on your bike this morning."

"Because I was angry at myself. Ruby, look at me."

I looked at him.

He had the same eyes he'd had on our wedding day, brown and steady, and I had believed them for eight years.

"Who sent you that picture?" he said.

"You don't get to ask me that."

"Somebody's trying to wreck us."

"You did that on your own," I said.

His jaw tightened, and the kind voice went out of him.

"Where do you think you're going? You don't have a job that pays. The house is in the club's name. The truck's insured under me."

"I work at the clinic."

"That's a Kings cousin's clinic, and you know what he'll say when I call him."

I stared at him.

He took my phone off the bed before I could reach it and tapped the screen twice.

Then he held it up so I could read it.

The bank app said: Account access suspended.

"I'll turn it back on when you're home and sensible," he said. "Sunday. Church is at noon. Come to church and apologize in front of the men."

"Apologize," I said.

"You walked out on the president in front of the club."

I took my phone out of his hand, and he let me.

"Then you're going to need a lot of men," I said.

The doorbell rang before he could answer.

He went to it, and I followed him down the hall because I wanted to see who had the nerve.

Tawny stood on the porch.

She was wearing a grey Rust Kings sweatshirt that hung down past her hips.

It was Cade's sweatshirt, the one that had been on the back of our bedroom chair on Thursday.

"Ruby," she said, "I can explain."

Across the street, The neighbor from the corner house had stopped watering her roses.

Two kids on bikes had stopped at the end of the driveway.

"Take it off," I said.

"What?"

"The sweatshirt. It's mine to wash, and it's mine to put in a box. Take it off."

"Ruby, don't," Cade said behind me.

"You don't want the whole street watching?" I said, loudly. "Then maybe don't send her to my door in your clothes."

Tawny's face went red.

She looked at him, and he didn't look at her.

I saw that, and I saw her see it.

"I didn't send her," Cade said.

"Nobody sent her," Tawny said, suddenly sharp. "I came because I wanted to say it to your face. I'm not sorry the way you want me to be."

That surprised me, and I almost admired it.

"Then you're not a friend and you're not a liar," I said. "You're just a woman in my husband's sweatshirt. Go home."

She pulled it over her head right there on the porch, in a thin tank top, and threw it at his chest.

Then she walked down the driveway with her chin up, past the kids and the staring roses, and got on the back of a bike I hadn't noticed idling at the curb.

The man riding it didn't look at me.

Cade stood holding the sweatshirt.

"Satisfied?" he said.

"Not even close," I said.

I got my duffel and my father's old keys from the hook by the door.

The truck was an '04 Ford with a cracked dash that my dad had left me, and it had been in the garage since the spring.

It was registered in my name.

Cade didn't know that, because he'd never once looked at the title.

"Sunday," he said from the porch as I backed out. "Or I come and get you."

I drove west with the windows down.

By the time I hit Route 9, the sun had gone and the truck had started to cough.

The temperature needle climbed, and then the dash lights went out one by one.

I coasted onto the gravel shoulder in the middle of nowhere and sat with both hands on the wheel.

I had forty dollars in my wallet and a phone that couldn't call a tow truck on any account I owned.

I put my hand on my stomach, where nothing showed yet.

"Okay," I said out loud to nobody. "Okay."

Then headlights came up behind me, and an engine slowed.

A big tow truck pulled in ahead with its amber lights going, and a man got out with a chain over his shoulder.

He was tall, with a dark beard going grey and grease on both forearms.

He stopped well back from my window and kept his hands where I could see them.

"Looks like you cooked her," he said. "Radiator, probably. You hurt?"

"No."

"Anybody coming for you?"

"No."

He looked at the duffel on the passenger seat, and then at my face.

"Whose wife are you?" he asked.

"Nobody's," I said.

His eyes dropped to my left hand on the wheel, to the pale band of skin where my ring had been, and stayed there.

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