He Chose the MC Princess Over Me While I Was Secretly Pregnant With His Heir, Now He Wants Us Back novel · Chapter 29 of 32

Chapter 29: Ask Me When She's Here

The road captain was the first to speak.

"No," he said.

Boone lifted his head.

"I'm not striking your name," the captain said. "You're a damn fool and a coward who stood on a porch and let your wife get replaced, and you spent a month paying for it on your knees in front of her.

"That's more than most of us would do. Get up."

"Captain."

"We'll vote the chair. Hands for Boone Gallagher, president of the Bitterroot Wardens."

Every hand in the ring went up.

Boone stayed on his knees.

I saw his face working, and I understood that he had not expected it, and that he did not think he deserved it.

"Get up," I said.

He got up.

"Her name goes on the wall," the captain went on. "That one we do right now. Prospect, get the paint."

The young prospect who had burned the motel was not in the ring.

He had gone to the deputy two days ago on his own, and he was waiting to hear what the judge would do.

A different boy ran for the clubhouse.

We all went in, forty men, Birdie, her thermos, and me.

The wall behind the bar was long, painted white, and lettered in black.

Every old lady's name since the club began was on it, in a column.

Nine years of me had stood in front of that wall, and I had never once seen Haugen there.

The boy came back with a brush and a can.

"Do it big," the captain said. "She earned the room."

Boone wrote it himself, in the clean steady hand that had once held mine at my wedding.

Lena Haugen.

He stepped back, and nobody clapped.

They just stood and read it.

Then the old men in the back, the ones who had watched Joelle climb on the seat, took their hats off one by one.

I thought I would cry again, and I didn't.

I looked at my name on the wall and felt something sit down in my chest that had been standing for nine years.

Boone took my hand.

He had a small box in the other.

I stared at it.

"I bought it the day after the heartbeat in Missoula," he said, low, so only I could hear. "I wanted to give it to you in the lot, and then I thought I didn't get to.

"Lena Haugen. I married you in a courthouse in a forty-dollar band, and I let you ride behind me for nine years without ever telling you what you were.

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