I looked to her with narrowed eyes.
“Don’t look so shocked. I know what a well fucked woman looks like,” she explained, lighting up a cigarette. She’d smoked continuously since I met her, yet the only thing she had to show for it was her husky voice and the faint smell of smoke that mingled with her perfume.
She’d aged with only a few wrinkles that only managed to make her more harshly beautiful. I worried that one day this vice would steal her from us too early. But if there was anyone who seemed too strong and stubborn for death, it was Evie.
Or maybe that was my brain trying to protect me because there was no way in hell I’d be able to manage if something else happened to someone I loved.
I could lie to her.
Rather, I could try to lie to her, but there was no way she’d believe me. Or let me get away with it. Plus, I respected her too much to lie to her. Beyond that, I needed someone to talk to about this. Someone who wouldn’t judge me. At least not as harshly as I was judging myself.
“Fine, I’m definitely well fucked,” I admitted.
She grinned. “I’d say.”
I looked at her face, looking for traces of anything to communicate that she thought it was too soon. That I was some kind of whore. Or a bad mother. Not that that was Evie’s style. Even if she was having thoughts like that, she wasn’t ever going to show that on her face. Being an Old Lady in the Sons of Templar for as long as she had had taught her a lot of things, including the art of having a poker face.
“He’s in the Sons,” I admitted.
“All the better,” Evie replied.
I furrowed my brows, looking to her. “Isn’t that a little... I don’t know, incestuous or somehow morally wrong? I should be with someone different.” I paused, trying to think of someone who would be more sensible to be fucking than a man in my dead husband’s MC. “An accountant,” I said finally.
Evie stared at me and cackled. “An accountant?” she repeated, still laughing. “Oh, baby, there is no way you’d ever be satisfied with an accountant. With some civilian with a 401k and a day job. We don’t work like that. Just because you didn’t patch in doesn’t mean you’re no less of an outlaw. For better or for worse, just like there’s no way out for the men wearing ink and leather, there’s no way out for you either.” She sucked on her cigarette. “There’s no way out for any of us.”
I pursed my lips. “Apart from death.”
She glanced at me then back out to her yard. “Yeah, apart from death.”
“And you’re going to move on to another member?” I questioned, trying to take the focus away from me.
She laughed in that throaty way that communicated she’d been a smoker for longer than I’d been alive. “No, honey. I’m not going to do that. I had a whole lifetime with Steg. As an Old Lady. I’ll always be her. I’ll always be his. But I get away with sayin’ shit like that because I’m old enough that I don’t have much of a life to squeeze that in to the few years I’ve got left.”
I scowled at her as the bottom fell out of my stomach. “You’ve got a lot more than a few years. I’m not letting you die too.”
She smiled. “I’m not about to leave the party early, that’s not what I’m sayin’. I’m also not sayin’ that I’m not gonna get laid.”
I smiled back, thinking of everything that had happened these past years. When I was a fifteen-year-old girl, trying to find sleep after finishing a book at two in the morning, I’d write my own versions of my life. Imagining wild things that would happen to me. Wild adventures I’d take with some man who would sweep me off my feet. We’d have struggles because all the best couples did, but we’d also have a story for the ages. It would change me.
All of that happened with Ranger. And not just the things I’d imagined for myself. In so many other good ways.
And then one of the worst.
“I wanted to die,” I confessed, looking back at her.
I hadn’t talked to anyone about this. Hadn’t spilled my ugly grief at anyone’s table. Even though any one of my friends would’ve taken it. Would’ve wanted to hear it. To help. Maybe because I was trying to forget. Or because I just hadn’t wanted to say it out loud.
“Not at first,” I continued. “There was too much to be done. The funeral. Telling the kids. All that practical stuff. It sounds insane, but I was distracted enough to forget about what this was going to do to me. But that didn’t last long. When life started to get back to normal, the grief hit hard. I didn’t let it show on the outside. That’s the craziest thing. There was so much normal. The kids went back to school. I had to get them up every morning, make them breakfast, pack them lunch, drive them. I still had to pay the bills, clean the bathrooms, cook dinner. Shower. I had to do all that stuff and then it suddenly became so starkly apparent and so inescapable that Ranger wasn’t a part of my normal anymore, I wanted to die. With every part of me I wanted to.”