Chapter 178 Thoughts about the future
Sage's POV
I needed air.
The celebration was wonderful and the brothers were welcoming and everything felt right, but suddenly I needed a moment to myself. To process everything that was happening. To think about what I was doing and what came next before the noise of it all carried me somewhere I had not deliberately chosen to go.
I slipped out the back door without telling anyone, stepping into the cool evening air. The parking lot was quiet, despite the number of people in the clubhouse. The trucks and motorcycles scattered across the asphalt caught the last of the fading sunlight.
I leaned against the wall and took a slow breath, trying to organize my thoughts properly.
I was back in Millbrook. Back with Ryder. The club had accepted us with a warmth that had genuinely surprised me. But I had not yet spoken to Jaxon and I did not know what he would have to say about all of it. Everything was moving fast, and I had not stopped to think carefully about what I was actually choosing in practical terms.
Where was I going to live?
The question hit me suddenly and I realized I had not thought about it at all. Not once on the flight here, not while I was standing in that office with Ryder, not while I was being hugged by brothers who were welcoming me home. I had been so focused on the emotional weight of coming back that I had completely skipped over the logistics.
I still had my apartment in Manhattan. I had been paying rent on it all this time, even through the weeks in Millbrook after my father died and then through Arizona. But going back there felt wrong. That apartment belonged to a different version of me. The version who had constructed a careful life of distance and independence. The version who dated Bradley and wore high heels and drank champagne and kept her real family background buried under six years of deliberate reinvention.
That version of me felt very far away right now.
But I could not stay at the clubhouse indefinitely either. My father's house was still not fixed after the shooting, so that was not an option for now. Living in borrowed rooms and guest spaces was not a long term solution, no matter how welcome the brothers made me feel.
So where did that leave me?
Did Ryder expect me to move in with him? We had not talked about it. We had not discussed anything practical at all. We had been back together for barely an hour and most of that hour had been spent being swept up in the celebration. Everything between us had been emotion and relief and the joy of something finally being said out loud after too long. The practical conversations had not happened yet.
And beyond the question of where I would live, there were larger questions sitting behind it.
What did my life look like now? Was I moving back to Millbrook permanently? What about work? About building something that was mine, that was not tied to anyone else's identity or anyone else's world? I had spent six years constructing a life for myself in Manhattan that had nothing to do with being Jaxon's sister or the daughter of a Steel Wolf. I had done it deliberately, carefully, because I had needed to know I could. And then I had come back when my father died and slowly everything I had built for myself had gotten tangled up in the club again, in Ryder, in a world that had a gravity pull I had never quite managed to escape.
I had spent two weeks in Arizona trying to build a life with Diego, and it had failed because I did not love him. But the experience had shown me something important. Diego had his business and his crew and his own world, and in the middle of all of that he had given me space to be my own person. It had been suffocating because I had not wanted to be there. But at least I had maintained some sense of being Sage Romano rather than someone's girlfriend or someone's sister.
What would that look like with Ryder?
I wrapped my arms around myself, not from cold but from the weight of all these questions pressing down at once.
I loved him. I had no doubt about that. I had come back to Millbrook for him, chosen him over safety, chosen the risk of him over the certainty of someone else. But loving him did not automatically answer any of these questions. It just made them more urgent. Because I was terrified of losing myself in the process of building a life with him. Of becoming so wrapped up in his world that I forgot I had ever had one of my own.
Would I be expected to be at the clubhouse all the time? To attend every club event? To build my entire life around the Steel Wolves?
I wanted to be part of his world. I genuinely did. But I also needed to find my own world inside of it. My own purpose, space and identity.
These were not doubts about loving him. I knew I loved him. These were practical concerns about how to build a life together without losing ourselves in the process.
And I had no idea how to talk to him about it. How to explain that I needed independence without making it sound like I did not want to be with him. Without it sounding like I had come all this way and already had one foot pointed toward the door. I had no idea how to ask for space without pushing him away.
I thought about Diego driving me to the airport. About his words about me deserving to choose my own happiness. About him setting me free to make my own decisions.
I had chosen to come back. I had chosen Ryder. But now I needed to figure out what that choice actually meant in practical, day to day terms.
Where would I live? What would I do with my time? How would I maintain my independence while being in a relationship? How would I be part of the club family without being consumed by it?
I heard the back door open behind me and turned.
Ryder stepped out into the parking lot, his eyes finding me immediately. He walked toward me.
"There you are," he said. "I was looking for you. Everything okay?"
His expression was open and genuinely concerned that something was wrong. He looked like he was reading my face and trying to understand what was happening before I had said a word.
I looked at him and had to decide whether to tell him what I was really feeling. Whether to be honest about these practical concerns and fears. Or whether to push them down and deal with them later.