The Biker Who Drove Her Away novel · Chapter 1 of 1
Chapter 1: I Love You, Said to Someone Else
Seven months pregnant, Annie surprises Boone at his rally, hears him say I love you to Krista in front of his club, drops her ring in his beer and walks out; a black Harley stops for her in the rain.
Three hundred bikers stood in a wet field and watched my husband tell another woman he loved her.
I was holding a lemon cake in both hands, seven months pregnant, in the third row.
Boone Tarrant stood on the flatbed that served as a stage, with his club's banner behind him.
He had a microphone in one hand and Krista Voight's fingers in the other.
Krista painted the pinstripes on the bikes in his shop.
She was twenty-nine, and she had been in our kitchen for Thanksgiving.
"Fifteen years in this business," Boone said to the crowd, "and the best thing I ever built isn't a bike."
People whooped.
He turned and looked down at Krista.
"I love you," he said, into the microphone, so the whole field could hear it.
Then he kissed her, and the Riders cheered.
That morning at six, his text had said: Don't drive out, Annie. Stay home and rest. Back tonight.
I had read it as him being kind.
I had driven ninety miles anyway, because I wanted to see his face when I handed him the cake.
The shop turned fifteen this month, and so did our marriage.
For fifteen years Boone had never once said the name of his old best friend, Rafe, and I had stopped asking why.
I stopped asking a lot of things.
A man next to me saw my belly, then the stage, then my face.
He took one step away from me.
Then the whole row did.
Boone looked up and found me through the crowd.
For a second he went completely still.
"Annie," he said, and the microphone carried it. "What are you doing here?"
Krista let go of his hand.
I walked to the front of the stage with the cake.
Nobody stopped me.
I was seven months along, and nobody knew what to do with that.
"I brought dessert," I said. "It's lemon. You like lemon."
Somebody laughed and cut it off.
Boone climbed down off the flatbed.
He came close and spoke low, with the smile he used for customers.
"Not here, babe. Let's go talk by the truck."
"You said it into a microphone, Boone."
"It's not what it looks like."
"Then tell me what it is, right now, in front of your club."
He looked at the Riders.
Then he did what he always did when a crowd was watching, which was make me the problem.
"Annie's hormones are bad this month," he told them, with a little shrug. "Somebody get her a chair."
Krista was already there with a folding chair, her voice soft.
"Sit down, Annie. You shouldn't be on your feet. Let me get you some water."
She was so gentle about it.
I looked at the hand she held out, with a thin line of silver paint under the nails.
I looked at the beer in Boone's other hand, sweating in the rain.
I set the cake on the bumper of his truck.
I twisted the ring off my left hand, which took some doing, because my fingers had swollen.
Then I dropped it into his beer.
It made a small plink, and the whole row heard it.
"I'm not sitting down," I said. "So I'm stepping out."
Boone's smile slid off.
"Annie. Be serious. Where do you think you're going?"
"Home."
"Home is mine, sweetheart. The truck's mine. The shop is mine. The house, the accounts, all of it is in my name."
He said it quietly, so only I and the first few rows could hear it.
Everyone heard it anyway.
"You've got a baby coming and no job," he said. "Nobody's going to hire you now. Get in the truck and stop embarrassing yourself."
I held out my hand, palm up.
"Then give me back my keys, and I'll walk."
He took the keys out of his pocket and put them in his vest.
"You're not driving like this."
"Then I'm walking."
"Annie."
I turned and went.
Behind me I heard the engine of his bike catch, and then the second one, and Krista's laugh.
By the time I reached the road, the rain had come down hard.
I had my father's old leather jacket on over a thin dress, and one hand under the baby.
The truck lights swept past me.
Then the motorcycles went by, two together, with Krista's red coat bright on the back of Boone's seat.
He didn't slow down.
He didn't look back.
I stood on the gravel shoulder in the dark, and the rain ran down inside my collar.
Ninety miles from home, with two dollars in my pocket and eleven failed cycles of treatment behind me, I put both hands on my belly.
"Okay," I told her. "Okay."
Headlights came out of the rain behind me, low and single, an old motorcycle's.
It slowed, then stopped beside me.
The rider took off his helmet.
I knew the scar through his left eyebrow before I knew the face.
"Annie," Rafe Lanier said. "Get on."
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