He Chose the MC Princess Over Me While I Was Secretly Pregnant With His Heir, Now He Wants Us Back novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Room Six

Lena takes a room at Birdie's motel, switches off her phone, and at dawn finds her husband's bike outside with the ultrasound photo in his hand.

The Lost Trail Motel had eleven rooms, a diner with six stools, and a neon sign that said VACANCY with the V burned out.

Birdie was behind the counter with her reading glasses on a cord, counting the lunch receipts.

She looked up when the bell rang, and then she put the receipts down.

"Honey," she said. "You're a day early for your mother's anniversary."

"I need a room, Birdie."

"You need supper first."

She came around the counter and took my face in both her hands, the way she had at the funeral.

I had meant to keep it together until I was alone.

I got as far as the third stool.

Birdie let me cry into a dish towel while the fry cook pretended to scrub the grill.

When I could breathe again, I told her about the seat, and Joelle, and forty men looking at their mirrors.

I did not tell her about the baby yet.

I showed her the text instead.

Birdie read it with her glasses on the end of her nose, and her mouth went flat.

"Who has your number?"

"The whole club. Half the valley."

"And who would write that to you?"

"I don't know," I said. "That's what scares me."

She turned the phone face down on the counter.

"You'll have Room 6. It's the one at the end with the deadbolt I put in myself."

She handed me the key and a bowl of venison chili, and she stood over me until the bowl was empty.

At seven the phone started buzzing against the counter.

It was Boone.

The ride must have ended an hour ago, and the first thing he had done was call me.

It rang out.

It rang again.

By nine I had fourteen missed calls and six texts I had not opened.

I sat on the edge of the bed in Room 6 with the phone in my lap and read the first one.

Where are you.

The second said: Lena, pick up.

The third said: Rafe says you left the ring.

I put the phone down.

He had noticed the ring before he had noticed me.

I did not want his explanation tonight, and I did not want to hear him say her name.

I held the power button until the screen went black.

Then I took the other thing out of my purse, the one I had carried out of the bar without thinking.

It was the appointment card from Missoula, with the next visit written on the back in blue pen.

Friday, 10:15.

I had been so careful.

The clinic was forty minutes from our house, and I had paid in cash, and I had told nobody.

Boone had been out on a run the night I took the test, and I had put the stick in my bathroom drawer under the hair ties.

The only person who had come to the house since was Rafe, for Sunday dinner, and he had never gone past the kitchen.

I didn't want to think about that.

I wanted to think about the heartbeat.

Birdie knocked once and came in with a quilt over her arm.

She sat on the other bed and looked at the card in my hand.

"How far along?"

I stared at her.

"I raised two boys and a girl," Birdie said. "You turned down my coffee and ate two rolls. How far?"

"Eight weeks."

"Does he know?"

"No."

"Do you want him to?"

I thought about Joelle's chin on his shoulder.

"Not yet," I said. "Not like this."

"Then he doesn't hear it from me."

She tucked the quilt around my knees and turned off the lamp.

I lay awake listening to the trucks go by on the highway until the sky went gray at the edges.

At first light I heard something that was not a truck.

It was one motorcycle, coming in slow, with the engine kept low.

I knew that sound.

I had been listening for it from the porch for nine years.

I got up and pulled the curtain back one inch.

Boone's bike sat in the gravel outside the diner with its engine ticking as it cooled.

He stood next to it in his cut, with his head down and one hand pushed into his hair.

In the other hand he was holding something small and white and creased from the gravel.

It was the photo.

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