The Biker Who Married Me Without Asking novel · Chapter 2 of 48

Chapter 2: The Patch

Cade cuts Travis's patch off in front of the club while Willa reads the page she signed and sees what it is; she slaps Cade and he lets her; a neighbour texts her a photo of her bags on the curb and a new padlock on her door.

For a moment nobody in the clubhouse said a word.

Then forty men started talking at once.

I stood at the red table with the pen still in my hand and Cade's arm beside mine.

Travis was the first one to move.

"You can't do that," he said. "She doesn't even know what she signed."

"She signed it in front of forty witnesses," Cade said. "Come here."

"Cade."

"Come here, Travis."

Two big men in vests took Travis by the arms and walked him to the middle of the floor, and he let them, because he was still sure it was a joke.

Cade pulled a folding knife out of his boot.

He crossed the room and stopped in front of Travis.

"Three weeks ago the till at the garage came up short," he said. "I let it go. Tonight you stole a ring from a woman who trusted you and gave it to another one, in my house, on my floor."

"It was a ring, man."

"It was her grandmother's."

He took hold of the leather patch on Travis's back and cut the stitching in four clean strokes.

The patch fell to the floor.

It said Black Harbor Riders in white thread, with an anchor underneath.

Travis stared at it and for the first time he did not grin.

"Get him out," Cade said. "He can come back for his bike when he can say what he took."

I should have felt something good.

What I felt was the room looking at me, all of it at once.

Someone put a glass in my hand.

It was a short woman with silver hair and reading glasses on a cord, and she smelled like cigarettes and lemon.

"Drink that, kid," she said. "I'm Ginny. I run the bar and I've been waiting four years to meet you."

"Four years?" I said.

"Drink."

I drank. It was whiskey, and it burned the whole way down.

Behind her, Bree had sat on the floor in the silver dress with her knees pulled up.

Her mascara had run down to her chin.

"He told me you were his sister," she said to me. "I swear to God. He told me you were crazy and he was babysitting you."

"I believe you," I said.

I did, and I hated that I did.

I looked down at the page Cade had left on the red cloth.

It was folded in half, and Ginny put a hand on it, then took it off.

I opened it.

The top line said Certificate of Marriage.

Under it was my name and under that was his.

My handwriting was on the line at the bottom, a signature I had made two minutes ago without reading a single word.

I read my name again.

Then I looked up and found Cade across the room, and I crossed the floor and slapped him as hard as I could.

The sound carried to the pool table.

His head turned with it and came back.

He didn't touch his face and he didn't say anything.

He stood there and let me do it again, if I wanted.

I wanted to.

My hand shook, so I put it in my pocket.

"You said it was club paper," I said.

"It is. It's the club's paper and it's the state's paper."

"You tricked me."

"Yes," he said.

I had been ready for him to argue.

"Yes," he said again. "I'm not going to tell you I didn't."

"I want to see that paper."

"You can have it in the morning." He took it out of my hand, folded it, and slid it into the inside of his vest. "Nobody can undo it tonight, and tonight nobody can touch you. That's all I was after."

"I don't believe a word you say."

"That's fair."

He picked up the black helmet from the table and held it out.

I looked at it.

"It's raining," he said. "Ride with me or let Ginny drive you. Either way you're not staying anywhere Travis can reach tonight."

"I'm going home."

"Then I'll take you home."

I took the helmet because I did not want to cry in front of forty men.

Cade stepped close to fix the strap under my chin.

His knuckles brushed my jaw.

They were warm and rough, and the touch was gone before I could move away from it.

I told myself I had not noticed.

I had noticed.

We went out through the side door into the rain.

The bike was a black one with a bag on the back, and the engine started at the first turn of his wrist.

I stood beside it holding the helmet and shaking.

My phone buzzed in the green dress's pocket.

It was a message from the woman who lived downstairs from me, and it had a photograph.

"Honey, your things are on the sidewalk," she had written. "Somebody put a new lock on your door. I didn't know who to call."

In the picture my armchair sat in the rain with a cardboard box on it.

Beside it my grandmother's quilt lay on the curb, and the lamp had fallen over in the gutter.

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