As much as I wanted my kids to be nearby, to be within touching distance, I needed space. I needed to breathe. Needed to down three tequila shots.
So I found Gwen, gave her the look, the one that got her distracting the kids, all but prying Lily away from me.
It was a bad move on my part, but I just needed a second.
Just one.
That’s all I got.
Because Ranger was dead, I could die inside but I had to continue.
Had to endure.Chapter 2One Year LaterNew members had been patched in.
It made sense.
The club had taken losses. There were holes that made the club vulnerable, even if they were walking closer to the right side of the law these days. Any rivals, enemies who smelled blood in the water, would strike. And we had plenty of those.
Steg had died six months ago.
It was sudden. Unexpected.
A brain bleed that was connected to the injury he’d sustained that took his eye. So we’d had another funeral. Evie handled it the way Evie handled everything, with strength and whisky, didn’t wear the label of widow like I did.
Despite what she’d lost, she was more of a support system to me than I was to her. To be honest, I was jealous of her. She had longer with Steg. An entire lifetime. Which didn’t make it any better. Maybe it even made it worse. What did I know?
So new patches. Members from other charters had moved to Amber too. I knew this because Evie kept me updated during her weekly visits. She had started off coming by daily, but now that time had passed, I was meant to be somewhat of a functioning human being. There was never any pressure in my interactions with her. She didn’t expect me to reply in a certain way. I didn’t even reply to her at all in the beginning, yet she wasn’t at all bothered. She continued to come, bringing food and booze, smiling at the kids. Updating me on the club that killed my husband.
The one that killed hers, too, if you thought about it.
The club was moving on now. As they should. As they needed to. Steg and Ranger’s deaths would be a wound that didn’t heal quite right, but the club had many of those wounds.
I’d declined any and all offers to be at any kind of club function. Hadn’t stepped foot in the clubhouse since I’d washed my husband’s body clean of blood, since we’d held his wake there.
It wasn’t because of the bad memories the place held, there was no escaping those. It was the good memories. It was the fact that I’d walk in there and expect to see my husband, expect to be the person I was before, and I couldn’t handle that.
I couldn’t handle people eying me with pity, tiptoeing around me, just like I couldn’t handle seeing those who had moved on. I didn’t need to see how things had changed when I felt the exact same I had the night he died. They could move on, but I couldn’t.
Hence me avoiding everybody. Slowly, at first, because it was kind of hard to avoid the people who’d took up residence at my home every day and night, working in shifts to make sure I was never alone with my thoughts.
But eventually, I managed to distance myself. Made sure to decline any and all invitations to cocktail nights, girl’s nights and any kind of shopping trip. I couldn’t stop them from turning up at the house, but I made sure to communicate I didn’t want to be part of the group anymore.
These women were good friends. The best. But they also had lives. Children. They couldn’t dedicate their entire lives to watching over me, trying to bring me back to the person I had been before.
I’d never be her again. Never even resemble her. She was buried in the soil right under my feet.
“I don’t even know why I’m here,” I grumbled, looking down. “This is just a rock with a name and a birthdate carved into it. Beneath that it’s just wood, holding the decaying bones of the man this headstone is claiming him to be.” I looked up at the sky, the cloudless blue taunting me with the fact that the sun still shone, even in cemeteries. The world still moved on.
I laid my hand on the rock. “I guess I’m here because I think this is what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to visit your grave. Put flowers on it so they can die too. Go through all the motions. The routine.” I scoffed. “Which is kind of ironic, since we’ve lived our life in opposition to routine. But I guess death wins everything.”
The words made me angry. The stone made me angry. The fact that grass was growing over my husband’s body made me furious.