“Nothing. She just watched and waited.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say to her. I knew begging her to come back wouldn’t do anything. I’d ridden over eighteen hundred miles on my bike just so I could see her and then turn around and leave again.”
I swallowed the emotion brewing in my throat. “Do you think—do you think it would’ve been different for all of us if you’d said something? Do you think she would’ve told you about me?”
“I don’t know, Mia. I’ve spent twenty-five years trying not to think about the past. All my fuck ups and great regrets, you know? Shit like that can kill a man.”
We fell silent and took a few minutes passing the bottle of bourbon back and forth.
“Did she ever get married? Do you have any siblings?” he asked suddenly.
“You didn’t keep tabs on her? Well, I guess that makes sense since you knew nothing about me.” My tone wasn’t bitter, just honest. “No, she never married and I don’t have any siblings. She died when I was five.”
“Scarlett died,” he stated.
I could hear the tension in his voice, the shock of learning that the woman he’d loved most of his life had passed.
“She drowned. Off the coast of Catalina. She was swimming, and a riptide…” I didn’t need to finish.
He made a slight noise, almost like a stifled wail, but it caught in the back of his throat.
I forced myself to finish the rest of the story. Only Shelly and Grammie knew it. I hadn’t even been able to bring myself to tell Colt. We had enough horrors to contend with. But I owed this to Knight.
“I saw it,” I murmured.
Knight’s eyes snapped to mine.
“I didn’t speak for two years.”
He leaned forward, his face earnest. “Tell me about your life. Tell me everything.”
I talked to my father long into the night. Not once was there a knock on the door interrupting us. Questions turned into stories. Stories that made my childhood vivid.
He winced when I recounted when I was eight and fell out of a tree, breaking my arm. He laughed when I told him when I was ten I tackled a schoolyard bully.
“What about you?” I asked finally sometime around two in the morning. “I’ve told you about me. What about you?”
“Not much to tell,” he said quietly. “I have a small house on the lake. Spend my time working on my bike when I’m not dealing with club business.”
It sounded like a lonely existence to me, but who was I to judge? I couldn’t tell his age since his face was hiding behind his beard and the sun had weathered his skin.
“How old are you?” I asked suddenly.
“Forty-six.”
“Forty-six,” I repeated. “You were twenty-one when I was born. That’s so young.”
Mom had been twenty. I couldn’t imagine having a baby that young. I couldn’t imagine having to scrape it all together. Thank God for Grammie who’d been there through it all.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what my life would’ve looked like if Knight had been in it. Would we have lived on the lake? Would we have spent Saturday mornings on a boat? Would my mother still be alive?
The questions were exhausting and the bourbon was causing my eyelids to droop.
“You should hit the sack,” Knight said. “You look exhausted.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah.” He nodded but made no move to stand up.
I forced myself to rise and then I went for the door.