He Chose Her. I Left Carrying His Heir. novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: My Seat on His Bike
At the Rust Kings' ride-out, Cade puts Ruby's friend Tawny on her seat in front of fifty people. Ruby shows him the photo and walks out, and the old president sees the pregnancy test in her bag.
Fifty people watched my husband tell another woman to climb onto the back of his bike.
It was our motorcycle club's summer ride-out, and the clubhouse lot was full of engines warming up.
I stood by the porch steps in my good black dress, because my husband had asked me to look nice for the photos.
A pregnancy test sat at the bottom of my handbag, under my wallet.
I was seven weeks along, and I had been planning to tell him after the ride.
"Hey, you." Tawny came up beside me with two paper cups of coffee and pressed one into my hand.
She was the new bartender at the clubhouse, and for five months she had been the one person there who asked how my day was.
"You're white as a sheet," she said. "Drink that. You look like you didn't sleep."
"I didn't," I said.
"Cade's been in a mood all week. Don't take it personally. You're the only one he'd ever ride with."
She squeezed my arm and smiled.
Her cup had a lipstick print on the rim, the same red as the dress she was wearing, and I thought nothing of it.
Last night my phone had buzzed with a message from a number I didn't know.
It was a photo of Cade on a motel bed with his shirt half open and a woman lying across his chest.
The woman's face was turned away, and there was a message under it: Ask him how long.
I had not slept, and I had not told anyone.
I wanted to see what he would do when I was standing right there.
Cade came down the clubhouse steps with his helmet under his arm.
He had made me coffee that morning without being asked, and he had left a note on the bathroom mirror: Wear the black one. Proud of you.
I had read that note four times and still did not know what he was proud of.
On his way he stopped at the shelf by the door, where one scuffed black helmet had sat for eight years with the name scraped off the back.
He touched it with two fingers, as he did before every ride.
"Ride with me, brother," he said, low.
I had never asked him about that shelf, because the one time I tried, he went quiet for three days.
Then he turned around and saw me, and he didn't walk to me.
He walked to his bike, swung his leg over, and held out a hand to Tawny.
"Come on, Tawn," he said. "You're up front today."
The lot went quiet.
Somebody near the fence lifted a phone and aimed it at us.
Tawny looked at me, and I saw her check my face.
Then she took his hand and sat down on the seat I had sat on for eight years.
"Ruby, you can take the truck," Cade said. "Meet us at the lake."
He said it flatly, as if it were already settled.
I reached into my bag, past the test, and took out my phone.
I opened the photo and walked across the gravel and held it up in front of his face.
"Is this the lake, too?" I said.
The screen showed his shirt, his hand on her hip, and the motel bedspread I could have picked out of a hundred.
Cade's face changed.
Tawny turned her head and stared at the screen, and then she looked at the ground.
"Where did you get that?" Cade said.
That was all he said.
He did not say he was sorry, and he did not say it wasn't what it looked like.
"How long?" I said.
Cade glanced at the men by the fence, and then back at me.
"Not here, Ruby."
"You picked here," I said. "You picked fifty people and a camera."
"I've handled it badly," he said, in a low voice. "Let's go inside and talk."
"You told her to sit where I sit. In front of everyone."
"It's one ride."
"Six weeks, is it?" I said. "Or longer?"
Nobody moved.
Tawny's cup was still in my left hand, and I set it down on his gas tank very carefully.
"Thank you for the coffee," I said to her.
She opened her mouth, and nothing came out.
I slid my wedding ring off my finger and put it in Cade's palm, and he stared down at it.
"Ruby."
"I'm done," I said.
So I turned around and walked out of the lot on my own two feet.
The engines behind me were still running, and nobody had shut one off.
I got as far as the road before my knees started shaking, and I held onto the gatepost with one hand and my bag with the other.
"That's a fine way to leave a man."
I looked up.
Floyd Chitwood sat on the porch bench above me, Cade's father, the club's founder, with his cane across his knees.
His eyes were on my open handbag.
The test had slid up under the strap, and the little window showed two pink lines.
He looked at it for a long moment, and then he looked at my face.
"Don't tell my son," he said quietly. "A Chitwood baby belongs to the Kings."
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