Chapter 281 Exile

Chapter 281 Exile
Sage's POV

I cleaned the kitchen.

Not because it needed cleaning urgently. Because I had to do something with my hands and standing in the middle of the room staring at the cold eggs and the burnt-down candles was not something I could do for much longer without losing my composure again.

I put the food in the bin. I blew out the candles. I stacked the plates and ran the water hot and washed them one at a time and set them to dry. I wiped down the table. I put the cloth back where Tommy had brought it from, folded on the windowsill. I picked up the ring box from the counter where I had placed it and held it for a moment and then put it in the drawer next to the sink because I did not want to look at it and I was not ready to put it away properly.

The ring was still on my hand. I had not taken it off. I noticed that while I was washing the plates and I kept noticing it.

By the time the kitchen was clean I felt marginally more human.

I made tea and took it to the couch and sat down.

Jaxon would be at the clubhouse by now. I had called him from the floor, which was where I had been, and he had listened to me for about ninety seconds and then said "I'm coming now" and hung up. I had texted him not to do anything that would make things worse. He had not replied to that. Jaxon not replying to a request like that was its own kind of reply.

I thought about Ryder sitting at that bar with whatever Jaxon was saying to him and felt two things at the same time. Glad that someone was saying it. Sorry for him having to hear it.

Both of those were true and I was not going to spend energy trying to resolve them.

I looked at the ring.

I thought about the moment he put it on my finger. Both of us on our knees in the wet grass with Tommy standing in the trees behind us trying very hard to be invisible. I had been laughing. He had been looking at me like the laughing was the best possible response and he had known it would be.

That man knew me. That was what made this morning so hard to sit with. He knew me and he had doubted me anyway.

My tea was going cold.

I drank some of it.

The kitchen was clean and the ring was on my hand and the baby was six weeks old and Ryder was at the clubhouse and Jaxon was probably talking to him right now in the way that he talked to people when he had decided they had made some sort of stupid move.

I did not know what came next.

That was not a comfortable position for me. I was a person who usually had a sense of what came next, who planned and prepared and thought three steps ahead. Bradley had taught me that. The year before that had reinforced it. But sitting on this couch in this house on this Tuesday morning I genuinely did not know what I was going to do.

I knew I was keeping the baby. That was not in question.

I knew I was not taking the ring off today. That was apparently also not in question, given that it was still on my hand after everything.

What I did not know was what I was going to do with the man who had given it to me.

I put both hands around the mug and looked at the window.

He had gone to Manhattan for me. He had sat in a holding cell for three days without once asking me to feel responsible for it. He had stood in a room full of his brothers and received Jaxon's public thanks without flinching.

And this morning he thought that the best thing he needed to do was doubt that I was pregnant for him.

He was not Bradley. I knew that. Bradley would have made it my fault and left me questioning myself for weeks. Ryder had said it out loud, taken the hit for it, and walked out when I asked him to. Those were not nothing.

They were also not enough to make this morning not have happened.

I finished the tea.

My phone buzzed. Jaxon.

I picked up.

"He knows," Jaxon said.

"I know he knows," I said. "He knew in the kitchen. That wasn't the problem."

"I know," Jaxon said. "I told him what the problem actually is."

"Which is?"

"That he doesn't believe he deserves you," Jaxon said. "And that until he deals with that, it will happen again."

I was quiet for a moment.

"Is he okay?" I asked.

Jaxon paused. "Tommy punched him."

"Of course he did," I said.

"Sage," Jaxon said, and his voice had the gentler version of his weight in it. "What do you need right now?"

I thought about it.

"Time," I said. "And for nobody to make this into something that has to be resolved today."

"Okay," Jaxon said. "I'll tell him that."

"Tell him I said it. Not you."

"Done," Jaxon said. A pause. "For what it's worth, he didn't try to argue his way out of it. He just sat there and took it."

I did not say anything.

"That's also information," Jaxon said.

"I know," I said. "I know it is."

The call ended. I set the phone down and looked at the ring and the cleaned kitchen and the morning that had gone so badly so quickly.

Then I got up, put the mug in the sink, and went to shower. Whatever came next was going to have to wait until I had at least done that.