Lachlan and Elowyn Novel – After being married for several years, my husband has been cheating on me. This is not what I want, and when I can’t stand it anymore, I will leave. The night before he left for his trip, he pulled me to him in bed and for the first time ever, I refused him. “Is your girlfriend going on the trip with you?” I asked quietly. “What the h-ll are you talking about?” he’d asked me, his voice impatient. “Only club brothers are going.” “I’m sure she’ll be lonely with you gone for a week.” “What the f-ck’s gotten into you?” he demanded. “I don’t like your version of love,” I whispered and turned my back to him.
The next day, as I was packing my bags, my phone buzzed. ‘You know I love you and only you.’ In reply, I sent Lachlan the picture I’d taken this morning of his girlfriend in his arms, their lips locked and her legs around his waist. Yeah, I can tell. Two hours later, I was on the road, leaving the state and my life for the last five years behind. I knew what I was signing up for. He’d never made any secret of it, but at the time, the tradeoff seemed distant. Unlikely. Lachlan couldn’t get enough of me, so I could never imagine he’d go somewhere else when he had me waiting at home, ready and willing to give him whatever he wanted. But he’d warned me. In a vague way. “Sometimes I’ll stay at the club. You don’t ask me about those nights, or what goes on or what I’ve done or who I spent time with. But I’ll always be careful and I’ll always come home to you. It’s just the way the biker life is. You have to be OK with it. You have to know that you’re the one I love, you’re the one I made my ol’ lady and nothing else matters.”
Considering the crappy family I came from, the poverty I’d lived in, the scrounging for food I’d done, the lack of stability I’d experienced, the dead-end jobs I’d worked since I was fourteen — his offer sounded good. I’d seen the horrors my mom had put up with right in front of her, and his vague warnings didn’t seem real. He’d bought us an adorable three-bedroom house and handed me his credit card and told me to make it our home. Then he’d given me a leather cut proclaiming me to be his property, he took me for rides on his bike and urged me to use the card for things I wanted. But I rarely did. I was happy with what we already had. Then, right after our first anniversary, things had started to change. Lachlan started spending the occasional night at the club after parties I wasn’t invited to. I’d get a text telling me he was staying at the clubhouse and he’d see me in the morning. After the first couple of times he didn’t come home, I began to panic, worrying he’d tire of me and set me aside.
My pride hadn’t yet kicked in. So I got a job two towns over in a place no one from the club would ever go to, during the hours he’d be at work. I told them I couldn’t work weekends and never past five. But I was a solid, dependable worker, happy to come in at eight and get the store ready for opening. Soon, I was an assistant store manager and making some good money and I saved every penny. I’d opened a bank account at a credit union in this town that wasn’t affiliated in any way with the bank where Lachlan and I had our accounts. My man did work hard for the club, and he was gone from seven in the morning until at least six at night and he made more than enough for the two of us. I was frugal with his money, budget conscious with the meals I made and only rarely bought myself new clothes. Lachlan was still sweet with me, still caring, still took me out, but I was putting up walls in anticipation of him leaving me. Two years went by, then three, then four, and now five years had passed.
Every year, he’d slowly been spending more nights at the clubhouse so now he was gone once a month, sometimes twice. On those occasions I went to the club in the last year, I noticed one of the club girls giving me looks, then giving my man looks and I figured out they had something going. A couple of times, I’d noticed his eyes straying to her and I didn’t like the looks between them. The arrangement I’d agreed to before I became his old lady was no longer working for me. I wanted to be someone’s only. As if the universe was sending me a message, I’d recently been offered a store manager position in another state and accepted the promotion. Lachlan was leaving for a club run and would be gone for a week, and the timing was perfect. I was afraid I’d have to take off while he was at work, which would make being discovered riskier. I bought a nice used car with some of the money I’d saved, and told them to have it detailed and delivered to my house the next morning, and for a small fee, they agreed.
The night before he left for his trip, he pulled me to him in bed and for the first time ever, I refused him. “Is your girlfriend going on the trip with you?” I asked quietly. “What the h-ll are you talking about?” he’d asked me, his voice impatient. “Only club brothers are going.” “I’m sure she’ll be lonely with you gone for a week.” “What the f-ck’s gotten into you?” he demanded. I was heading into territory I wasn’t allowed in and he didn’t like it. “I want more,” I said simply. “What we have? The lies, the nights at the club with…well, it’s not enough. I thought I could put up with it, but every night you spend away from me…it’s killing me.” “You know I love you,” he said, as if that was it. End of conversation. He didn’t want to discuss it, so it was a forbidden subject. “I don’t like your version of love,” I whispered and turned my back to him. “You knew what to expect from the start. I was straight with you. Just remember, you’re the one I love and live with,” he said, then pressed a k-ss to my shoulder.
“Sweetheart, we’ll talk when I get back, OK?” “OK,” I said. The one and only lie I ever told him. I wouldn’t be here when he got back. Early the next morning, Lachlan left and I followed him to the clubhouse, parking on the street, and watched. Sure enough, she came running out and k-ssed him goodbye like I’d refused to do. I’d turned my head and his lips hit my cheek, then he’d sighed in annoyance at me. But when I saw her jump into his arms, I knew leaving was the right thing. Sometimes you hurt so much, it doesn’t even hurt anymore. It’s just a part of you that you accept. Trading stability for my dignity and self-respect made me sick, especially since I’d let it go on so long. After the brothers rode off, I drove home.
My car was being delivered in two hours and I had clothes to pack. Once the three large suitcases I’d bought and hidden in my trunk were filled with my clothes, I put all of my shoes into two small storage bins and snapped the lids on. I carried them out to the garage, ready to load the minute my car was delivered. Back inside the house, I tidied up, made the bed, and put the dishes in the sink in the dishwasher. I’d put my phone on the counter to leave behind with some other things, but then it buzzed with a text. Already had to stop because one of the brothers didn’t have a full tank. Didn’t like the way we left things this morning between us. You know I love you and only you. In reply, I sent Lachlan the picture I’d taken this morning of his girlfriend in his arms, their lips locked and her legs around his waist. Yeah, I can tell. Two hours later, I was on the road, leaving the state and my life for the last five years behind.
The last hundred miles of the trip back home were taking forever. It’d been a sht week from the very beginning, even before the f-cking trip had started. I’d had my first clue the night before when Elowyn had turned me down flat in our bed and brought up things she’d never once mentioned to me in the five years we’d been together. I’d been wracking my brain to figure out what had flipped her switch, but couldn’t pinpoint anything I’d done recently that would have triggered her reaction. Elowyn was my girl, always had been since the first time I’d seen her. First woman I’d ever wanted to make mine, first woman I took one look at and knew she was different and was going to be in my life in a permanent way. Only woman I had ever loved. When I’d explained the biker lifestyle to her, she hadn’t backed away from me, hadn’t even batted an eye. She accepted right off that sometimes I’d f-ck other women, but I’d always come home to her. And she’d never mentioned it in all the years we’d been together until the night before the trip. Shifts and changes like that always raised my antennae and my radar was pinging.
Then, when I was leaving in the morning, she wouldn’t let me k-ss her lips, and she always returned my k-sses, her soft mouth sweet and eager against mine. Always. Ping. Ping. Ping. Instead, she’d told me to have a safe trip and waved good bye to me after I’d k-ssed her cheek, and I rocketed out of the driveway on my bike, my mood sour. Even the prospect of a day of riding didn’t improve my mood, and I lived to ride. We took off, and only an hour into the trip, one of the brothers signaled he needed gas, which irritated me even more. What moron doesn’t fill his tank the night before a long road trip? While all of us topped off our tanks, I had time to shoot off a text to Elowyn, hoping to calm down whatever was bugging her. Her return text surprised the h-ll out of me. She’d followed me to the clubhouse and took a picture of Yomi k-ssing me. The club girl had jumped in my arms and pressed her lips to mine before I could step back, before I could remind her that I didn’t want her mouth on mine, that she wasn’t allowed to initiate sht.
Her hands were gripping my hair like it was the only thing preventing her from falling off a cliff and it took me a minute to break free. Long enough for Wyn to take a picture and read more into this than there was, had been or ever would be. I’d aimed a few pointed, poisonous words at Yomi before we left the MC compound and tamped down my irritation as we took off. Now, with everyone gassed up, our road captain was signaling it was time to move on, so I shot off a quick text to Elowyn. Don’t piss me off by reading anything into this b-llshit that isn’t there Tucking my phone into my cut, I didn’t have time to wait for her reply. When we stopped three hours later, I grabbed my phone so I could see what she’d said. And what she’d said was nothing. Elowyn hadn’t answered but she had read my text. Once again, my radar was pinging because she always responded. We bantered, we argued, we joked; that was something we did. My girl had a sharp wit and I had a dry sense of humor and the two blended together well.
What we didn’t do was not reply to one another. At every stop for the next eight hours, I’d text Elowyn and she’d read my texts…but she wouldn’t respond. You know I don’t like games. Answer me. You need to answer me Why did you follow me to the clubhouse? Answer me, Wyn. What’s going on? I hadn’t been this angry since the one-year anniversary of Elowyn becoming my ol’ lady. We’d gone out to a nice restaurant and I’d proposed with a simple, elegant diamond ring. It was pure Elowyn and the second I saw it, it reminded me of her. Then she’d turned me down. Didn’t even pause to think about it. Being your ol’ lady’s good enough for me. I don’t need or want a legal commitment. She gave me the same answer every year when I asked her to marry me on the anniversary of her officially becoming my ol’ lady.
It always pissed me off when I brought up marriage and she shut me down, refusing to discuss why she wouldn’t consider it other than saying she didn’t want a legal commitment. It was about two weeks after our first anniversary that I first stepped out on Elowyn. Spent the night at the club drinking with the brothers after a quick, successful run, feeling frustrated, like I wanted to shed my skin, without understanding exactly why and didn’t say no when a club girl offered to wipe the scowl off my face in her room. After that, feeling more in control, I’d gone to my room alone, sent Elowyn a text saying I was staying at the club and stared at the ceiling all night, trying to drown out voices I didn’t want to hear, fighting the urge to go home and get into bed with Wyn. She’d been quiet when I’d come home early the next morning, where I found her in the kitchen with the coffee brewing and whipping up some eggs to scramble. I could smell the bacon in the oven and she’d already made biscuits, which were cooling. When Elowyn turned from the stove, there was a look in her eye that hadn’t been there before last night.
Not knowing what to say, exactly, we sized each other up for a few awkward moments before I finally spoke, realizing I needed to get us back to normal when I saw she’d only set one place at the table. Breakfast was always a shared meal. Every morning, without fail, she and I ate breakfast together, the same as we ate dinner together every night. “Wyn,” I began gently, pointing to the table, “I told you I’d always come home” “I know, Lachlan. I know,” she said, and her crisp tone clearly let me know she didn’t want any more words out of my mouth on the subject of last night. “I just didn’t know when.” “Always in time to have breakfast together. Had a shower at the clubhouse but don’t like the hard water there, so I’m gonna go grab a quick shower, change clothes. Then we’ll eat, and we can make some plans for today, yeah? Maybe go for a ride? Stop by the garden center or whatever you want to do.” My girl loved gardening and was in the process of transforming our backyard into paradise, as she called it.
My job was laying a brick patio and putting in an outdoor grill. Taking a deep breath, she smiled at me, but it wasn’t her usual big smile, and I knew I was the reason it was dialed back. “OK, Lach. Go shower off…the hard water and breakfast will be ready. There’s enough for both of us.” And now, Wyn wasn’t answering my texts, wasn’t picking up my calls and I could barely concentrate on the MC’s business. My VP, Specter, took me aside during a break one morning. “Not sure what the f-ck your problem is, Shadow, but get your head outta your -ss and back in the game. If you f-ck up the numbers, Prez’ll kill you.” I did better, but underlying every business discussion, I wondered why Elowyn wasn’t answering, why she wouldn’t take my calls so I could explain that f-cking picture. I’d probably sent her more than two hundred texts and made at least sixty calls. We’d never been out of touch this long. I had a prospect ride over to check on her, but he said her car was in the garage and there was note on the door for Uber Eats to just leave the food since she had popped over to a neighbor’s. Probably planning another event for our neighborhood cookouts, margarita nights, pool parties, book clubs, food trucks she planned it all with a few other neighbors who were as social as she was.
When I had the prospect go back to check the next day, he said there was no food bag outside on the porch but there was a different note on the door telling her friend Marisol that she’d had to leave early for book club to grab some w-ne and she’d tried to text her to let her know, but her phone had been acting up and her texts weren’t sending. That should have reassured me, but my motherf-cking radar was still pinging like crazy. The next day, we left bright and early for home, and I kept wanting Specter to go faster, get us home sooner. It was such a f-cking relief to finally pull into our garage, right next to Elowyn’s car, just after dusk, so I could lay eyes on her. “Wyn?” I called out when I walked into the house through the back door. I needed to make this right with her. A week without talking with Wyn was seven days too long. “Elowyn?” No answer and the house felt like it did when she wasn’t home. Empty and still. Completely wrong. As if the life had been drained out of it.
“Wyn” I called again before my eyes focused on the kitchen island. Wyn’s phone was there, plugged in, but that wasn’t what made my heart stop. It was her cut that was laid out next to her phone that drew my eyes. I snatched up the note that was on top of her cut and read it several times before it sunk in. Lachlan — I’m gone. I could see what was coming, and that’s OK because I realized I needed more. I needed to be the only one for you. I wish you the best. Elowyn P.S. Maybe you can give this cut to your girlfriend. I was going to say it’s only fitting since she’s already gotten a lot of what was mine, but then I realized…you were never really mine. Oh, f-ck, no. I flew through the house to our bedroom and threw open the closet. All her clothes were gone. Her shoes were gone. I yanked drawers out of the dressers and onto the floor when I saw they were empty. Running to the bathroom, I saw her shampoos and body washes were gone, and the drawers in the vanity were likewise emptied of her makeup and hairbrushes. With a sweep of my arm, I pushed all of my things on the countertop onto the floor.
At this point, I didn’t even realize I was yelling her name at the top of my lungs as if I could conjure her up, bring her back to me. Without thinking, I ran out the back door to get on my bike, bringing up the tracking app for her phone…only to stop dead when I realized that, with her phone sitting on the counter, I had no way to track Wyn. No way to find her. Not the first clue where she was or how she’d gotten there. I pulled up our banking app on my phone, but that was no help. The only transactions had been mine. She was gone. For what felt like the millionth time in the last forty-eight hours, I ran my hands through my hair. At this f-cking rate, I was going to be bald before the end of the day. “How can you not f-cking find her?” I demanded for what also seemed like the millionth time in the last two days. My brother was supposed to be a world-class hacker and tracker, and couldn’t find Elowyn. She was out there who knows where and I had no idea if she was safe or even alive, and didn’t that twist my gut. I always knew where she was. She was a homebody who didn’t stray far from our neighborhood unless I was with her.
Wyn loved our home and she especially loved the little community she helped foster. When we’d decided to move in together, Elowyn had asked for a neighborhood with people our age in it and I’d researched neighborhoods and found this one, a small, quiet community of one hundred fifty homes. It’d had three homes for sale at the time, and of the three, Elowyn had chosen ours. “It’s not too big, Lach,” she’d said. “And it feels just right to me, like it can be cozy and homey. And it has a great backyard that’s a blank slate.” She’d confessed to me that she’d always wanted a garden and had plans for turning it into a flowery paradise, complete with a fish pond. The biggest selling feature to me was the three-car garage; I didn’t need much more than that, so if the house made Elowyn happy, I was sold. Not wanting to risk losing the house, I’d put in an offer right away and we moved in before the month was out. Those memories crowded my head, keeping me from focusing on Wyn’s whereabouts. The second I’d realized I couldn’t track her phone because she’d left it behind, I’d started knocking on doors, talking with her friends in our neighborhood, and met confused stares and shrugs and concerned expressions.
As far as they knew, she was still at home. No one knew where she was or when she’d gone. Until I knocked on Marisol’s door after she got home, our neighbor to the immediate right and the one who was mentioned in one of Elowyn’s notes that the prospect had seen on our front door. She was also Wyn’s best friend in the neighborhood. “Yes?” she asked, blank faced and slightly hostile as if she’d never seen me before, as if we hadn’t attended dozens and dozens of neighborhood parties together over the years. But her very hostility told me she knew something about my girl. “Do you know where Elowyn is?” “Elowyn. E-lo-wyn,” she tapped her finger against her lips, drawing out the syllables. “Sounds vaguely familiar. Can you describe her?” “You do not want to f-ck with me on this if you know something, Marisol. I just got home, she’s taken off, and I need to know she’s OK. Tell me what you know,” I demanded. “Oh, I know her new man’s taking good care of her,” she purred to me with a wink. “Really good care of her.” “What the f-ck are you talking about?” I demanded. Not possible. No way.
There was just no way. Elowyn wouldn’t would she? Marisol had to be lying. She had to be making sht up just to f-ck with me. “Should I repeat it slower so you can follow along?” “Quit f-cking with me, Marisol.” If she’d known me better, my tone should have warned her I wasn’t in the mood for her messing with me in the slightest. “Great guy…well, as much as a cheater can be. Anyhoo, he’s in an MC so that makes it all OK. Has an ol’lady, but they have an arrangement so he can step out whenever he wants and he wants with Elowyn. They’re so d-mn hot for each other. When he pulls up in my driveway, she always runs over and jumps in his arms and plants a big k-ss on his lips. So you can rest assured that on those nights you’re away on club business, he keeps her busy, so to speak — too busy to be missing her man and thinking about what he’s doing at the clubhouse when she’s getting a little somethin’-somethin’.” I felt my control slipping as my blood started boiling and was seconds away from putting my fist through the wall. Marisol had to be messing with me. Had to be. Right? “Where the f-ck is she, Marisol?” I growled, trying not to get in her face. She leaned toward me, her face an angry mask. “I don’t know! She wouldn’t tell me.
Just told me she’d be in touch when she got to wherever she was going, and I’m wondering if it was Mexico or Canada because she kept mentioning her passport. And by the way, congratulations on f-cking up the best thing to ever happen to you! She was so happy when I first met you two. But over the last few years, I’ve had to watch that happiness dim year by year, you thoughtless, cheating prick! She only told me everything six months ago and only because I pushed and pushed and pushed until it all came out. You stupid, stupid assh-le!” She stepped back and slammed the heavy door in my face. I stood on her porch, breathing heavily, fists clenched at my side, fighting not to lose control. In a few minutes, I turned and walked back home. My phone rang, and I almost fumbled it as I grabbed it from my pocket, hoping it was Elowyn. My whole body slumped when I saw it was only Specter. “Brother,” he said. “Something going on you need to tell us about?” In the two hours since I’d discovered Wyn had taken off, I hadn’t told anyone in the MC yet that she’d pulled a runner, hoping I could find her or she’d return home before I called in the professionals to track her down.
She had no money the two thousand I’d left her before I went on the club run was still sitting on the counter. She hadn’t used her debit card or either of the credit cards, so I had no f-cking clue what she was using for money. Unless she really was with a man and he was paying for everything. No way. No way. I felt sweat break out on my forehead as it seemed more and more likely that maybe she was with another man no. That wasn’t Elowyn. She wouldn’t She wouldn’t do the same thing to you that you did to her? “What have you heard?” I asked my VP sharply, just not ready to admit that my ol’ lady had left me, not wanting to listen to that voice in my head. F-cking conscience. “My wife got a letter from Elowyn. Was just delivered to the house. Few of the other ol’ ladies got one, too. All four letters say the same thing. She appreciated their friendship over the years, wished she could tell them more, but wanted to let them know she was gone, she’d miss them and would be in touch once she was settled.” “F-ck,” I bit out. “Where were they mailed from?” “From town, Shadow. They were mailed right here in town.” “Sht.” My voice cracked like I was going through puberty. I still had nothing to go on, and I was starting to lose my mind. Why had she suddenly changed our rules? Why was she now taking exception to our way of life that we’d had from the start? Had something happened? Like another man