2. Destroyed Memories
1270 Words
Chapter 2
Six years ago, Sage Bennett learned the hard way that love could disappear overnight.
One minute, people swore they’d protect you forever.
Next, they stood there and watched while your life burned.
The memory still crawled beneath her skin even now.
Back then, she’d been twenty-one, bruised from throat to thigh, shaking so hard she could barely hold the steering wheel as she drove through the rain toward the only place that had ever felt safe.
Blackwood Manor.
The giant estate sitting outside Devil’s Hollow, Tennessee, where the Callahan boys had grown up.
Where she had grown up too.
The Callahans weren’t blood, but they might as well have been. Their fathers rode together in the Iron Reapers Motorcycle Club, one of the most feared biker clubs in the South. Her father, Victor Bennett, was the president. The Callahan brothers had spent most of their childhood inside her home.
Jace, Rhett, Mason and Cole.
Her boys.
At least… they used to be.
Sage remembered sneaking into Jace’s room during thunderstorms because she hated lightning.
Remembered Rhett punching a kid bloody in middle school because he’d made her cry.
Remembered Mason teaching her how to ride dirt bikes while Cole swore he’d marry her when they got older.
They had loved her once.
Obsessively and Protectively until Vivienne showed up.
Even now Sage hated remembering that girl’s name.
Vivienne Hart.
She's Beautiful, fragile and always crying.
The Callahans brought her home one winter after claiming they found her bleeding near the highway outside town. She’d looked pitiful enough to make saints feel guilty.
Sage had welcomed her too.
God, that was the worst part.
She’d shared clothes with her, shared secrets especially with whom she liked the most amongst the boys. She even shared her room.
And Vivienne slowly destroyed everything from inside.
“She said you called her pathetic.” Mason yelled at her for the first time, staring at her in disgust that rainy afternoon.
“She said you hid her necklace.” Jace glared at her and Rhett snarled
“She said you embarrassed her on purpose.”
Every single lie chipped away at them little by little the day we were supposed to go on a picnic date, it happened all the time until she couldn't go out with them anymore, until the boys started looking at Sage differently.
Like she was cruel, jealous and an attention-seeking spoilt brat.
Meanwhile Vivienne cried prettily and pretended she didn’t understand why Sage suddenly hated her.
Sage remembered standing in the middle of Jace’s room one night while all four boys stared at her like she was the problem.
“She’s lying,” Sage had snapped desperately “Why won't you listen to me for once?
Vivienne flinched beside Rhett instantly, tears filling her eyes.
“I-I never wanted problems— I have a heart problem and I just wanted….” She choked on tears and rage filled Sage.
“Oh my God, stop crying for five f*****g seconds!”
“Sage,” Mason warned sharply.
And that had been the moment.
The exact moment she realized they’d chosen someone else.
Not her.
It was never her. After that, everything spiraled quickly.
Her father started talking more seriously about marriage, loyalty and reputation.
Victor Bennett loved power more than his children. Everybody in Devil’s Hollow knew that. The Iron Reapers ruled the town through fear, weapons, and political connections, and her father protected that image like religion.
Then Damien Cross entered her life.
He was Twenty-nine, Vice president of a rival biker chapter, violent when angry and Cruel even when calm.
Her future husband.
Sage still remembered the day she begged the Callahans for help after overhearing the arrangement.
“I don’t want to marry him,” she’d whispered.
Jace barely looked up from his drink.
“It’s what you want, isn’t it?”
The betrayal hit harder than any slap.
“What?”
“You’ve been acting miserable for months,” Cole muttered coldly. “Maybe this marriage gets you what you’ve wanted all along. You're such a pathetic w***e”
Sage gasped “And what exactly is that?”
“Attention.”
The memory still hurt enough to steal her breath.
So she got married and hell began. Damien didn’t hit her immediately. That would’ve been too easy.
Instead he isolated her first.
Controlled what she wore, who she talked to and where she went. He made sure she cut all ties from the Cahallan brothers.
Then came the bruises, screaming, the locked doors and the nights she cried silently into pillows because nobody came when she begged.
The Iron Reapers protected their own even when their own were monsters.
Especially then and when Sage finally escaped after nearly a year of marriage, bleeding and terrified and desperate enough to run barefoot through the woods…
She went back to the Callahans.
One last time.
She remembered collapsing onto the marble floor inside Blackwood Manor while rain soaked through her clothes.
“Please,” she sobbed. “Please don’t make me go back.”
For one second, she thought they looked horrified enough to help her.
Then Jace made the call, not to the police or a doctor but to her father.
Sage could still hear herself screaming when Victor Bennett dragged her toward his SUV while Damien watched with a satisfied smile.
“I trusted you!” she cried at the Callahans as they stared at her with disgust
Nobody stopped it. That night Damien nearly beat her unconscious for running.
Three weeks later, Ethan came home from London.
And everything exploded. He realised what was happening and beat up their father to pulp, He was locked up and her mum called her a curse and an ungrateful brat. She has a step daughter she cherishes but Sage hated her guts so much, she could never call her sister.
Sage leaned heavily against the kitchen counter now, tears burning her eyes as the memories resurfaced. The tiny apartment above Pine Creek Veterinary Clinic suddenly felt too small.
Her phone sat dark beside her after the call ended with Ethan.
He always brought the past back with him somehow.
She wiped angrily at her face and went to her apartment, moved toward the living room just as tiny paws thundered across the hardwood floor.
“There are my babies.”
Three cats immediately surrounded her ankles.
Mochi, the fat white Persian, screamed dramatically for food.
Binx, her black rescue cat missing one ear, rubbed against her legs possessively.
And Peaches—the orange menace she’d bottle-fed herself—leaped directly onto the kitchen counter despite repeated warnings.
“Absolutely not,” Sage gasped.
Peaches knocked over a pen intentionally.
Binx looked judgmental and Mochi looked hungry.
Sage pointed accusingly at them.
“You all contribute nothing to society.”
Mochi meowed loudly.
“That’s fair,” she admitted.
She filled their bowls while Peaches attempted to climb her shoulder like a squirrel.
“You’re lucky you’re cute.”
The cat bit gently at her hoodie string.
Downstairs, wind rattled softly against the clinic windows while Colorado rain continued falling outside Blackwater Ridge.
When Ethan first brought her here four years ago, she’d hated the silence.
Now she craved it.
Blackwater Ridge wasn’t like Devil’s Hollow.
Nobody cared who your father was here.
Nobody cared about biker politics.
People worried about ski season, hiking trails, and whether the local diner overcooked pancakes again.
Exactly what Sage wanted. Her phone buzzed again suddenly and it's not Ethan this time.
It's Harper.
Sage smiled immediately before opening the downstairs entrance.
- Writer
