Chapter 287 Grand gesture

Chapter 287 Grand gesture
Sage's POV

Diego arrived on a Wednesday afternoon.

I had known he was coming. He had texted from the airport that morning, one line, and I had texted back one line. We did not need more than that with each other.

He knocked on the door even though I had told him not to. I opened it. He looked at me and held out a paper bag from the bakery on Main Street.

"Croissants," he said.

"Come in," I said.

He came in and I made coffee and we sat at the kitchen table, the same table where everything had happened three mornings ago. I had cleaned the kitchen on Tuesday. Cleared the cold food, returned the cloth to the clubhouse through Tommy who had come by to drop off some things I had asked for, put the candle holders back on the windowsill. The ring box was on the counter where I had placed it after I picked it up off the floor.

Diego looked at the ring box on the counter. He looked at the ring on my hand. He did not comment on either of those things, which was exactly right. If he had said anything about either of them I would have had to say something back and I was not ready for that conversation.

"How are you?" he asked.

"Honestly?"

"Always."

"I am furious," I said. "And I am sad. And I am scared about the pregnancy without him here. And I miss him in a way that I am deeply annoyed about given what he did." I looked at my coffee. "All of those things at the same time, every day for the past three days."

"That sounds exhausting," Diego said.

"Completely exhausting. I would like to be purely furious. That would be simpler. But I cannot manage it."

Diego nodded. He did not try to reframe it or find a silver lining in it. He just sat with it.

"How's the pregnancy?" he asked.

"I have an appointment Friday. First one. I was going to tell Ryder when I booked it." I looked at the window. "I haven't told him yet."

"You should," Diego said. "Whatever is happening between you two, he is the father. He should know about the appointment."

"I know. I just cannot make myself call him yet. Every time I pick up the phone I put it back down."

"I know," Diego said. "Do it anyway. You do not have to talk about anything else. Just the appointment time and where it is. That is enough for now."

We drank our coffee. Diego ate a croissant. I ate half of one because my appetite had been inconsistent since the fight, which I was fairly certain was pregnancy related rather than purely emotional.

"You went to see him." Not a question. Diego had told me he was going to. I had told him I could not stop him and he had said he was not asking permission, he was informing me. That was Diego. He had boundaries and he told you what they were and he did not apologize for them.

"Yesterday," Diego said.

"And?"

"He looks like someone who has not slept in forty-eight hours. He has a significant bruise on the left side of his face."

"Tommy," I said.

"That was my assumption."

"What did you say to him?" I asked.

"I told him what happened in Arizona," Diego said. "All of it. The guest room. The crying. The way you would go quiet in the middle of something and I always knew where you had gone." He held my gaze. "I told him exactly what those two weeks looked like. And I told him clearly that you and I never slept together and there was never anything to question."

"How did he take it?"

"Like a man who already knew it and needed to hear it said out loud anyway," Diego said. "He was not surprised. He was not relieved. He was just destroyed."

"Good," I said.

I sat with that for a second. Good was the true answer. He needed to hear it said out loud. He needed to sit with the weight of having heard it from Diego specifically.

"Is he okay?"

Diego looked at me.

"I knew that was coming," I said. "Don't."

"I am not doing anything," Diego said, in a tone that suggested he was absolutely doing something.

"Is he okay?" I asked again.

"No. He is sleeping in a room at the back of the clubhouse. He has barely eaten. Tommy is watching him the way Tommy watches people he has recently punched and is not certain it helped."

I pressed my lips together. The image of Tommy watching Ryder like that was not something I had expected to feel anything about. I felt something about it anyway.

"I am not telling you that to make you feel sorry for him," Diego said. "I am telling you because you asked and because you deserve the full picture."

"Which is?"

"He is not just sitting there," Diego said. "He is doing something. He has a plan. Something he put together with Jaxon and Tommy."

I looked at him.

"What kind of plan?" I asked, and I heard the curiosity in my own voice and could not help it.

"The kind that is not an apology," Diego said.

I was quiet for a moment.

"Tell me," I said.

Diego looked at me for a moment. Then he picked up his coffee.

"He is going to ask for one week," Diego said. "One week to do something specific. After that he is going to come back and when he does that, you can decide what you do with it."

"What is the specific thing?" I asked.

"He did not tell me," Diego said. "He told me about. Not the detail."

I thought about that.

"Okay," I said.

"You do not have to agree to anything," Diego said. "He is not asking you to wait. He is telling you what he intends to do. Whether you are still there when he does it is your decision."

I looked at the ring on my hand.

"I know," I said.