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Every once in a while, I would revisit Brightwater to see my sister and her family. Connie was ten years younger than me, with a second baby on the way. I loved to fulfill my role as the overindulgent aunt to my five-year-old nephew, Wylie, and I couldn’t wait to meet my new niece when she arrived any day now.

But as soon as I set foot on Montana soil, I felt that familiar ache of longing. To be home. To be near family. To live in thesmall town I adored since I was a young girl. To live under the big sky of Montana and feel all that room to justbreathe, with miles and miles of road and land in every direction you looked.

I missed it here.

And what scared me the most is that I missed Neil. After everything we’d been through. After the fighting, the divorce, and thirteen years separated…a tiny part of me still loved him.

Climbing into my rental car, I pulled out my phone and called Connie. She picked up right away, with the echo of a children’s television program brightly rhyming away in the background.

“How did it go at the hospital?” she asked.

I had called her from the airport when I landed, explaining the situation with Neil. She offered to visit him in my stead, but I couldn’t ask her to do that. Especially when she was eight and a half months pregnant. The last thing she needed was to deal with my drama.

“Neil will be okay,” I replied. “He’s not at death’s door or anything, which is honestly a miracle. Big G was there looking out for him, so he’s not alone.”

Connie gave a thoughtful hum as she listened.

“And what about you?”

I shrugged, scrubbing at the steering wheel with my thumb.

“I’m…”

I trailed off, too scattered to sum it up neatly.

Relieved that he wasn’t dying.

Frustrated that I still felt something for him after all this time.

Annoyed and a little pissed that I could have avoided seeing him again if he’d just taken my name off his emergency contact information like I told him to a thousand times before.

Pissed with myself for not simply changing my number.

There was no wayI’m finewould roll off my tongue, and Connie certainly wouldn’t believe it. Every time I visitedBrightwater, I kept my head down, laid low, and didn’t show my face in town if I could help it. All it would take was one Blackjack to see me, and word would get back to Neil that I was here.

I had successfully avoided him for thirteen years. Until now. When I dropped everything in a heartbeat and upended my life to come running when he was in the hospital.

“You should have let me handle it,” Connie said. “I know he’s a big, tough, scary biker, and I’m only five-foot-two, carting around a belly the size of a jumbo beach ball, but I can take him.”

I laughed.

“You’re as docile as a kitten, Connie. And you wouldn’t hurt a fly without bursting into tears.”

“Pregnancy hormones are a nightmare, all right? Last week, Nathan found me sobbing in the kitchen because we didn’t have any cookies and my cravings were driving me up the wall. The poor guy ran to the grocery store in the middle of the night and came back with a dozen packages of cookies. And two pints of ice cream, just to be on the safe side. You’d be surprised at the level of fear a man experiences when he’s faced with a pregnant woman as big as a whale, bawling her eyes out. I could use that to my advantage.”

I smiled ruefully, saying nothing. At forty-six years old, I’d made peace with the fact that the chance to have children of my own had passed me by, bittersweet though it was.

I’d always wanted kids. But Neil was busy with his club. When I brought up the subject, we were never on the same page about it. My greatest fear was getting a call one day, with a baby in my arms, telling me that Neil was dead in a ditch somewhere because of his bike or his club.

I dreamed of being a mother, a wife, and having a family.

Neil dreamed of being President, the backbone of the Blackjacks MC, and a steady rock for his brothers to rely on when they needed support.

I never doubted Neil’s love for me. But we were never meant to be together. I didn’t have room in my heart, my marriage, or my bed, for that club between us.

I was genuinely, deeply happy for my sister as she experienced motherhood. But it would forever sting a little, that I couldn’t have that same experience for myself with the man I married.

“God, I’m talking your ear off,” Connie added. “Are you still in Brightwater? Can you drop by for a visit? Do you need to get back to Seattle right away?”