Chapter 165 Worst mistake
Ryder's POV
Acting president of the Steel Wolves.
The words should have meant so much to me. They should have registered as important, as a huge responsibility, as Jaxon putting his trust in me to lead the club while he recovered. Afterall, Dante had gone through great lengths to have this position, but I ended up putting a bullet in his skull.
But all I could focus on was the first part of what Sage had said.
She was leaving for Arizona tomorrow morning.
"Did you hear me?" Sage asked, her voice still that terrible flat monotone. "Jaxon wants you to take over as president."
"I don't care about the presidency." The words came out harsh. "I care about you leaving me tomorrow. That's less than twenty-four hours, Sage. We can fix this thing between us."
"There's nothing to fix." She took a step toward the door. "The decision has already been made."
"No." I moved to block her path even though I knew I had no right to stop her. Diego had moved from the hallway, maybe to take a call or maybe he wanted to give us space to settle properly. "You can't just decide our entire future in one conversation. That's not fair."
"Fair?" She scoffed. "You want to talk about fair? Was it fair that I had to face the possibility of losing Jaxon alone? Was it fair that I sat in a waiting room for over six hours not knowing if my brother was going to come out of that operating room?"
"You weren't alone. Diego was there."
"Exactly." The single word felt like a slap. "Diego was there. And now I'm going to Arizona with him."
"Is this really happening?" I looked at her, searching her face for something, any crack in the resolve, any sign that she was not as certain as she was making herself sound.
The silence that followed was answer enough.
"Sage—"
"Diego is a good man." Her voice was quiet but firm. "He showed up when it mattered. Every single day without being asked."
I wanted to rage. I wanted to argue and tell her that Diego did not love her the way I did, that Diego could not possibly understand her the way I did, that what we had between us was real and rare and worth fighting for even now.
But the look in her eyes stopped me.
She was not making this decision out of love for Diego. I could see that clearly. She was making it out of hurt. Out of the specific pain that only comes from being let down by someone you trusted completely. Pain that I had caused by being too scared and too selfish to get out of my own head when she needed me.
And that somehow made it so much worse than if she had simply fallen for him.
"You don't love him," I said, hating how desperate I sounded.
"No," she admitted. "But I don't trust you anymore either."
The words cut deeper than any knife could have.
"That's not fair," I tried again. "I made one mistake—"
"One mistake?" Her voice rose. "One mistake would be forgetting to call one day. One mistake would be being late to visit. This wasn't one mistake, Ryder. This was a chain of mistakes stretched across an entire week. Every morning you woke up in that chair and decided I wasn't worth five minutes of your time."
"That's not what I decided—"
"Then what did you decide?" She demanded. "Because from where I'm standing, you made it very clear that when things get hard, you run away and hide. And I cannot build a life with someone who does that."
"I won't do it again." I reached for her but she stepped back. "I promise, Sage. I will never abandon you like that again."
"You can't promise that." Her voice shifted then, the anger draining out of it and leaving something sadder and quieter in its place. "You can't promise you won't get scared or overwhelmed or paralyzed by fear. And I can't spend my life waiting to see if you'll show up when I need you."
"So you're choosing Diego instead." I could not keep the bitterness out of my voice. "A man you don't love."
"I'm choosing someone who has proven he'll be there." She straightened her shoulders. "That's more than you've done."
"This is wrong and you know it." I was begging now and I did not care. "You can't marry someone you don't love just because you're hurt and angry at me. Ten years from now you will look at him across a breakfast table and feel nothing and you will know you made the wrong choice."
"I'm not doing it because I'm angry." Sage looked me directly in the eyes. "I'm doing it because Diego showed me I deserve someone who will actually be there. And you showed me that person isn't you."
"That's not true—"
"Goodbye, Ryder." She moved toward the door and this time I did not try to stop her. My feet would not move. "The brothers will be here later today to make the presidency official. Jaxon trusts you to lead the club well. Don't let him down the way you let me down."
"I don't want the club." My voice broke on it, cracked right down the middle. "I want you."
"You should have thought of that a week ago." She paused in the doorway and looked back at me one last time, and for just a second, she looked sorry for me. Then it was gone. "Take care of yourself, Ryder. And take care of Tommy."
Then she was gone, the door closing behind her with a soft click that sounded too loud in the silence of the room.
I stood there frozen, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to process what had just happened. The room felt different with her gone. Smaller and worse.
"Ryder." Tommy's voice came from the hospital bed. I had forgotten he was there, that anyone existed except Sage walking away from me.
I turned to look at my brother. He was sitting up slightly, his face pale but his eyes clear and focused.
"You just made the biggest mistake of your life."