The Biker Who Drove Her Away novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Annie's Baby Daddy

Boone and two Riders arrive at dawn at Rafe's garage; Annie says she is keeping her baby, her name and her father's Triumph, and the club group chat posts her photo on Rafe's bike.

Three motorcycles came up the gravel behind the garage at six in the morning, and I knew the sound of every one.

I had slept on a couch above a repair bay in a town forty minutes from my own.

Rafe had given me his flannel shirt, a blanket, and the only bed in the place, and he had said he would take the floor.

I had not let him.

So the bed stayed empty, and we had both ended up on the couch, with a coat rack between us, not talking.

Now he was already at the window, one hand flat on the glass.

"It's Boone," he said. "And two of his guys."

He said the name like it cost him something.

I put on my father's jacket and stood up, which took two tries.

"Stay up here," Rafe said.

"No."

He looked at me, and then he nodded once and went down the stairs ahead of me.

The bay door was open, and the morning was cold and gray.

Boone sat on his bike in the middle of the yard with his vest on and his sunglasses pushed up in his hair.

Behind him were two Riders, the club's vice president and a nineteen-year-old prospect holding a phone sideways.

"Morning, sweetheart," Boone said, as if I had come down to breakfast. "Get your things. We're going home."

"I'm not going home."

"You slept at a man's place. Seven months pregnant. In his shirt."

He let that sit.

He knew how to talk so a prospect would remember it word for word.

"I slept on a couch," I said. "I'd guess Krista slept in my bed."

The vice president looked at his boots.

Boone's jaw moved.

"Krista is a friend of this club."

"She is pregnant with your baby, and she wore your jacket to my kitchen table at Thanksgiving. I'm not stupid, Boone. I was just polite."

I hadn't been sure until I said it.

I had seen her hand drift to her stomach at the rally, three times.

I saw his face change, just for a second.

I had been right.

It hurt more than the microphone had.

"Annie." He lowered his voice. "Let's not do this in front of Lanier's customers."

There were no customers.

There was a dog asleep by the air compressor, and a man who didn't look at Boone once.

I noticed that.

In fifteen years I had never heard Boone speak Rafe's name, and now he spoke it like a dare, and Rafe still kept his eyes on the gravel.

It was strange, and I had no room for strange yet.

"I'm only going to say this once," I said, loud enough for the prospect's phone. "I'm keeping this baby. I'm keeping my name on her. And I'm taking back my father's Triumph."

Boone laughed.

"The Bonneville? That bike's been in my shop for eleven years."

"It's in your shop. It's titled to Walt Gerrity's daughter. That's me."

"Then come and get it. Mama will side with me, you know that."

I thought of his mother, June, who had taught me to can peaches, and I didn't answer.

He settled his sunglasses back down. "Come to the shop, Annie, and ask me nicely. Bring a lawyer if you can find one with no money."

The prospect snorted.

I took a step off the porch.

Rafe moved at the same moment, and then stopped himself.

I saw his hand open and close at his side.

"Boone," Rafe said, quietly.

It was the first thing he had said.

Boone turned his whole head, slowly, toward the man who had been his best friend in a different life.

"Don't," Boone said. "You don't get to talk to me, Rafe. You left. Keep that in your head."

Rafe went completely still.

That was twice in one morning that I'd seen him take a hit without lifting a hand.

"Your keys, your truck and your accounts are yours," I told my husband. "That's fine. The rest of what's mine, I'm coming for."

"You do that."

He kicked the bike over and the other two followed him.

The prospect was last, and he stayed a second too long with the phone up.

Then he hit the gas and was gone.

I stood in the yard until the engines were out of earshot.

My hands were shaking, and the baby kicked once, hard, under my ribs.

"You okay?" Rafe said.

"Not at all."

He nearly smiled.

"Good answer."

I started up the stairs to find the water, and he came behind me with one hand hovering at my back, not touching.

At the top, my phone buzzed on the arm of the couch.

It was an old one with a cracked screen, and it was the only thing I had that was truly mine.

Fourteen messages.

All of them were from women in the Riders' wives' group, and all of them were the same picture.

It was me, in the dark, on the back of a black Harley, with my arms around Rafe Lanier's waist.

Under it, someone had written: Annie's baby daddy finally showed up.

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