Chapter 180 The call
Sage's POV
We went back inside the clubhouse and made our way to Jaxon's office, which Ryder was currently occupying as the acting president. My heart was pounding so hard I could barely breathe.
Ryder closed the door behind us, and the noise of the celebration on the other side of it became a muffled background hum. The office felt very small suddenly. I pulled out my phone and stared at Jaxon's name in my contacts, my finger hovering over the call button. I was too tensed up to press it.
"You okay?" Ryder asked, standing beside me.
"Nervous," I admitted. "I don't know how he's going to react."
"He loves you," Ryder said gently. "Whatever else happens, he loves you and he wants you to be happy."
I hoped he was right. But we both knew what Jaxon's reaction had looked like the first time he found out about us. That evening at the clubhouse was not something I had forgotten, and I doubted Jaxon had either. He had been so furious then that he kicked Ryder out of the club. And that was before I had agreed to marry Diego, before Diego's men had saved us, before everything that had happened with Dante. The stakes were higher now and being with Ryder now was likely going to come with another fight.
I hit the call button before I could talk myself out of it.
The phone rang once. Twice. Three times. For a moment I thought it would go to voicemail and I genuinely did not know if I felt relieved or disappointed by that possibility.
Then Jaxon answered.
"Sage?" His voice was surprised and immediately concerned. "Is everything okay? Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," I said quickly. "I'm good. I just needed to call you. It's been a while since we spoke properly."
"Where are you?" he asked. Just those two words, but I could hear the careful attention behind them.
I took a slow breath. "Well, the thing is, I'm back in Millbrook. I'm at the clubhouse."
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. I waited with my heart pounding for him to say something, anything, that would tell me which direction this was going.
"You're back," Jaxon said finally, his voice careful and measured in the way it got when he was controlling his reaction deliberately. "When did you get back?"
"Today. A few hours ago."
Another silence. I could hear him breathing on the other end, and I could picture him exactly, lying in that hospital bed with the phone held to his ear, working through what I had just told him with barely controlled emotions.
"Are you with Diego?" he asked quietly.
This was the moment. The question I had been expecting and dreading in equal measure since I picked up the phone.
"No," I said, meeting Ryder's eyes as I spoke. He was watching me steadily, his expression calm and supportive, giving me something to hold onto. "I'm with Ryder. Diego and I didn't work out. He sent me back to Millbrook."
"Sent you back," Jaxon repeated slowly, like he was not sure what even the hell I meant by that. "What does that mean?"
"It means he realized I couldn't be happy in Arizona," I explained. "That I was trying to force something that wasn't there, no matter how hard I tried or how much I wanted it to be different. He saw it clearly even when I was still pretending otherwise. So he let me go."
"And you came back to be with Ryder." It was not quite a question, but I answered it anyway.
"Yes."
There was another long silence. This one stretched long enough that I started to worry the call had dropped.
"Jaxon?" I prompted. "Are you still there?"
"I'm here." His voice was tight. "Just processing."
"Say something," I pleaded. "Tell me what you're thinking."
"I'm thinking about whether this is what you really want," Jaxon said slowly. "Or whether you're making this decision because you're hurt and scared or you're just being stubborn. Because coming back to what you know and coming back because it's right are not always the same thing."
"It's what I really want," I said, and I kept my voice firm because I needed him to know that I was sure of it. "I love Ryder. I tried not to. I spent two weeks genuinely trying to fall for Diego instead because he was safer and steadier and he showed up when Ryder didn't. But I couldn't do it. My heart wouldn't cooperate no matter how many reasonable arguments I made to it."
"Are you sure?" Jaxon pressed. "Because once you commit to this, once you make this choice, you need to actually mean it. You can't half-decide something like this."
"I'm certain." My voice did not shake. "I've never been more certain about anything."
I heard Jaxon take a deep breath and release it slowly on the other end of the line, the way he did when he was making peace with something he could not change and had decided to stop resisting.
"I need to see you both," he said finally. "I need to look you in the eye and hear you say it to my face. Not over the phone. I need to talk to both of you properly."
"Okay," I said immediately. "When?"
"Come to the hospital tomorrow," Jaxon said. "Morning, around ten. Can you do that?"
"Yes," I said. "We'll be there."
"Good." His voice softened slightly. "Make sure you're telling me the truth, Sage. The last thing we can afford right now is the Vasquez family and the Blood Sisters banging what's left of our door down. You better not have run away from Diego without him knowing."
"It is the truth," I said. "I promise you it is. Diego knew. He drove me to the airport himself."
"We'll see tomorrow," Jaxon said.
The line went dead before I could say anything else, no goodbye, no reassurance, just silence where his voice had been.
I lowered the phone slowly and looked at Ryder, the nervous energy I had been carrying since I picked up the phone turning into panic. My brother had not said no. He had not said yes either. In fact he sounded upset that I was back.
I was terrified of what he would say when he saw us together and was looking at us both in the face.