Page 47 of Monk
“Yeah, I’m sorry. That was really ignorant.”
He shrugs. “Everybody’s got assumptions about the club and all of us in it. I’ve been dealing with people trying to shoehorn me into one box of assumptions and stereotypes all my life. As you know. It stopped bothering me a while back.”
“I never wanted to be one of those people.”
“And yet, here we are.”
I turn my eyes away, feeling terrible for uttering such a horrible thing. Taking a long swallow of beer, I set the bottle back down on the table. And when I raise my gaze to his, I find him smiling at me.
“You know I’m just screwing with you, right?” he asks.
“No, you’re not.”
“Kasey, there is nobody on this planet I would ever think is less likely to be one of those people than you. Besides, I understand why you buy into all the assumptions. I know being part of a club doesn’t exactly scream refined and classy member of society. And I’m not any of those things. But I’m not some caveman either,” he says.
Jacob looks at me and I can see the sincerity in his face. He’s not actually bothered by the assumptions. And no, he’s not a caveman. It just leaves me with a lot of questions.
“Why did you join this motorcycle club,” I ask.
He leans back in his seat again, taking a long swallow of beer. “One thing I missed when I came home was the camaraderie and brotherhood that I had with my unit over in Afghanistan. The Pharaohs—most of them veterans themselves—gave me that. They’re my brothers and I’d do anything for them.”
I lean forward and hold his gaze. “But what about the drugs and the murders? The human trafficking? What about all of that stuff?”
“I see you’ve been talking to your dad. Or rather, he’s been talking to you.”
“He might have mentioned some things, yeah.”
“Does your dad strike you as the kind of guy who’d let us walk around the streets of Blue Rock Bay if we were runnin’ and gunnin’ like that?”
I give him a faint smile. “I had the same thought, actually. Probably not.”
“Well, there you go.”
“But just because he hasn’t caught you, it doesn’t mean you’re not doing it.”
“And just because he’s accused us doesn’t mean we are.”
I sit back, letting his words sink in. What he said is true. And yet, at the same time, he deftly sidestepped my question.
“What about you?” he asks. “What’s brought you home?”
I blow out a long breath and tug on the end of my hair. It’s a question I don’t particularly want to answer, but given how open he’s been with me, I feel almost obligated to reciprocate. But at the same time, I have to wonder how much of an explanation I really owe him.
I don’t actually owe him anything, given what he did to me. As the thought crosses my mind, I can’t help but feel petty. It makes me feel like a silly girl. It was a long time ago. I’m a different person now, and so is he. That said, I know I can’t bare my entire soul to him, either. There are secrets I can’t share as much for his sake as for mine.
“Let’s just say, my soon-to-be ex-husband isn’t who I thought he was,” I say.
Monk’s eyes bore into me and it feels as if he’s plumbing the depths of my soul to stealing my secrets away. I look away, tearing my gaze from his.
“I just wasn’t happy. I didn’t like who I’d become when I was with him,” I offer.
We both lapse into a comfortable silence and I feel a weight being lifted off my shoulders. It’s as if being able to verbalize my thoughts to him—somebody who will actually hear me—has eased my burden. If only a little.
What amazes me the most about sitting here, sharing a meal and some conversation with him is just how normal it feels. The back-and-forth banter and gentle teasing that always marked our conversations are flying fast. In a way, it almost feels like not a day has gone by and as if we’ve simply picked up where we left off so long ago. I know we haven’t, but it feels like we have.
It’s not that our shared history has disappeared, but what happened more than a decade ago doesn’t seem necessarily relevant right now. Or important. It’s all so confusing and I don’t know what to make of it. And yet at the same time, it feels so natural. More than that, it feels right.
Chapter Eighteen
