Chapter 284 Threat

Chapter 284 Threat
Ryder's POV

Diego walked into the clubhouse the next morning at eight.

I was at the bar. I had slept in the room Jaxon had pointed at and woken up early and come back to the same stool because I had nowhere else to be and the bar was the one place where nobody expected anything from me. When Diego came through the door I looked at him and he looked at me and neither of us spoke for a moment.

He had flown overnight. He looked like it. He also looked like it had been a decision, not a reaction. Diego did not do things reactively.

He sat down on the stool beside me. He did not shake my hand. He did not acknowledge the bruise on the left side of my face, which Tommy's fist had turned impressively purple overnight. He just sat down and waited for the barman to bring him a coffee and looked at the bar.

"You said your piece on the phone," I said.

"I said part of it," Diego replied. "The rest I needed to say in person."

I waited.

"I told you what happened in Arizona," Diego said. "You have that now. What I want to talk about today is something different." He turned the coffee cup in his hand. "I want to talk about what happens next."

"That's between me and Sage," I said.

"Yes," Diego said. "It is. And I am not here to insert myself into that." He looked at me directly. "I am here because I flew overnight from Arizona to be with Sage today, not you, and I stopped here first because there are things I want you to hear from my face rather than a phone."

He was not friendly. He was not hostile in the way that would have been easier to manage. He was something more controlled than either of those things. A man who had already made his decisions and was delivering the information that followed from them.

"Three different people told you the same thing yesterday," Diego said. "Tommy. Jaxon. Me on the phone. You had the same conversation three times with three people who know you and know Sage and they all arrived at the same place." He looked at me. "What was that place?"

"That I do not fully believe I deserve her," I said.

"And?"

"That when something feels too good my brain builds an exit before I need one."

"Right," Diego said. He did not say it kindly. He said it the way you confirmed a diagnosis. "So you understand it. The question is what you do with that understanding."

"I work on it," I said.

"How?" Diego asked.

I looked at the bar.

"I don't know yet," I said.

"That is the honest answer," Diego said. "I will give you credit for it." He picked up his coffee. "Here is what I want you to understand. I stepped back from Sage two years ago. Deliberately. Because she had chosen you and I respected that and I was not going to be the kind of man who moved on something that was not offered to me." His voice stayed even. "I have been stepping back ever since. Every time she called. Every time she needed somewhere to go. Arizona was the hardest one. She was in my house for two weeks and she spent most of it missing you and I watched that happen and I stepped back." He looked at me. "I am telling you that so you understand what stepping back has cost me. So you understand that I did not do it casually. I did it because she chose you and I believed you were worth choosing."

The bar was quiet.

"Yesterday morning you asked her if the baby was mine," Diego said. "While she was still wearing the ring you put on her finger the night before." He set the cup down. "I want you to think about what that cost her. Not what it cost you. What it cost her. A woman who spent four days afraid to tell you she was pregnant because of what Bradley did to her. Who told you anyway because she was done letting his damage run her life. Who went to bed on the best night of her year and woke up to that question at the breakfast table."

I said nothing.

"If you go back to her," Diego said, "and she lets you in, you do not get to bring that question with you. You deal with it here, before you go anywhere near her, so that she never has to see it on your face again." His voice went quieter and harder at the same time. "And if you do not deal with it. If you go back before you are ready and you put her through another version of yesterday." He looked at me steadily. "I will not be stepping back."

I looked at him.

"I mean that," Diego said. "She chose you. I stepped back. Those are the terms I have been operating on. But those terms depend on you being worth it." He stood up. "Right now you are not. You have a chance to become worth it again. I suggest you take it seriously."

He left the coffee half finished on the bar.

He walked out without looking back.

I sat on the stool and looked at the door after it closed and understood with complete clarity that every man in Sage's life had just told me the same thing in different words. Deal with what is wrong in you before you go back to her. Or do not go back at all.

I needed to figure out what dealing with it actually looked like.

I had no idea where to start.

My phone was on the bar in front of me. Sage's name was not on the screen. She had not called. She had sent Jaxon and Diego instead, which told me that she was not ready and that she had people around her who were not going to let her be alone in this.

That was something. That she had people. That she was not on that kitchen floor anymore.

It had to be enough for now.