34
I got the fuck out of California on my bike and headed back to Nebraska. I was exhausted, worn out.
How was I supposed to do this? Breathe? Move without the promise of her within my grasp. In the distance on the road, a blurry figure, pink and blue hair flying, arms lifting over her head, reaching toward the sky, showing me the way, welcoming me home.
This way, baby. Right here. Here I am. Here we are.
She was my exit, the next one coming up, the one I was straining to get to, leaning forward in my saddle, throttle high, engine screaming, wind beating on me.
No more.
No exits. Keep rolling, keep going, going, going.
I blinked past the blur and focused on the road.
Cars. Road. Bikes. Trucks. Trucks. Road.
I’d reached Denver, and a wisp of metal scraped under my chin, the wind lifting the helmet up off my head.
Dammit.
The clasp on my skull helmet had snapped.
I changed lanes, got out of the flow of traffic, pulled over, and tied the frayed ends together. This was one of my oldest and most favorite lids. I’d had it since I’d left Missouri, and I never rode without one. I’d seen too many brains splattered on roads all over the country. I needed a new one, fast. I got back onto the highway and veered off onto W. County Line Road in Littleton, where I knew there was a Harley Davidson store.
The summer heat was suffocating, and I hadn’t realized how much until I’d pulled up in the parking lot. I entered the shop, and my every pore sucked in the stunning air conditioning, my muscles relaxing as I stretched out my back, enjoying the blanket of cold. I avoided what seemed like a shiny Harley souvenir shop section and tracked over to the helmets.
I passed a saleswoman with light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail wearing black jeans, black boots, and a black Harley T who was talking to a guy over a new Dyna Glide. He flirted with her more than he listened to her pitch or paid attention to the bike. She was explaining the bike’s new features to him and knew what she was talking about, but he kept sinking the conversation with bullshit. Idiot.
I grabbed a helmet.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Yeah.” I turned to the middle-aged balding man who stood in front of me. Lucky me. I raised the lid. “I need this.”
“Very good. Anything else I can help you with today?”
“I’ll take a look,” I said to get rid of him. He took the helmet and moved toward the cash registers.
My eyes trailed back to the woman. Something about her was familiar, but I hadn’t seen her face yet. I didn’t forget a face.
“Thanks for all the info, hon.” The dark haired man waved at her as he walked off, a huge smile on his face.
“Sure. You’re welcome.” She turned, stacking a bunch of brochures into a neat pile, the smile on her face quickly fading.
My pulse thudded in my chest.
It’s her.
Sister, Dig’s old lady. No. Now she was Dig’s widow. I’d heard about his murder just before I’d gotten arrested. What the fuck was she doing here? Why wasn’t she home in South Dakota surrounded by friends and family?
A dull look was stamped on her face. Stamped and sealed there. She was going through the motions of the living. Getting by.
What would Dig say if he could see her now? Like this? Dangling? Coasting?
I rubbed a hand across my chest. I wasn’t dead, and neither was Serena.
Lenore. Her name’s Lenore now.
Lenore was out in the world breathing in the air, and I was grateful she was safe and alive. I didn’t have her with me, but if I really wanted to I could hold her or touch her or hear her voice. She wasn’t buried in the cold, hard ground.
What did Dig’s widow have? Fading memories, thick shadows. Echoes of pounding heartbeats in the dark night.
I got Serena out of her hell. I got her to a safe place, a place where she bloomed and took her first steps in new shoes. I did that. We’d done it together. In jail, I’d clung to a hope that there would be a one day with us, but she didn’t see it that way. Or maybe she just didn’t want that anymore. Want me enough. She’d convinced herself.
I had to stay sane now, stay whole, whatever the fuck that was. Somehow I had to figure out how to live without her, without the promise of her inspiring me. That promise had kept me warm all these years like a slow burning fire in a field of snow and ice. I had to pick myself up from the debris we’d left behind. Somehow…
I squelched down the urge to walk over to Sister. To look her in the eyes and tell her I was sorry about Dig. To tell her—
Tell her what?
My neck flared with heat, and I turned away. She wouldn’t want to see me. I’d bring it all back up for her. Memories of good times, memories of bad times. And every single one of those damned memories had her old man pulsing at its core. Why should I ruin her running away, her jamming the brake on all that pain?
That’s what I have to do, isn’t it? Stop the pain.
Being with Serena had made me be the man I’d always wanted to be. Daring, determined, brave. Devoted. We’d reveled outside in the sun together. Now, what was I without her?
I went to the cash register and tossed two one hundred dollar bills on the counter. My gaze returned to Dig’s old lady who absently smoothed a hand over the leather saddle of a brand new Fat Bob. She strode to the other end of the brightly lit showroom where a young upscale couple were lusting over a new bike.
“Okay, here’s your change. Sir?”
“That saleswoman over there? The one in black?”
His gaze darted over at Sister. “Grace?”
“She been with you a while? She seems familiar. I know I’ve seen her somewhere.”
“She just started here. Came up from Texas. Worked at a Harley store in Dallas.”
“Must be it,” I replied. “I go through Dallas a lot.”
“Well, don’t bother trying it on with her. She’ll only shoot you down.”
“Oh yeah? Thanks.”
“Sure thing.”
Grace had run away. Grace was on the carousel of go round and round and make it all a blur.
Dig was dead and gone; that was absolute. Like my and Serena’s baby.
A baby…
We’d had a baby...
My brain couldn’t even begin to wrap around that one. Something stung in my chest, wrenching there like a flaming poker.
In jail, my first bunkmate was obsessed with Hinduism and meditation. He’d yelp about reincarnation and karma as I’d be smashing cockroaches in our cell. Had my baby’s soul been waiting for its cue to come to us? After the miscarriage did his soul go somewhere else, to another family? Does he belong now to better, more deserving parents?
Stop. Stop. Shut the fuck up.
Serena had suffered all that on her own while Reich had sent me to prison—Motormouth finding her, her killing him, then losing our kid. All of it on her own. I should have been there. I should have found a way for us; a better way than hiding and biding our time. Had we wasted our time? At least she was still alive. Unlike Dig. Unlike the robot that was Grace right now.
Grace let out a long breath, her head nodding as she pretended to listen to her customers’ chatter. What if I were dead, and Serena was stuck in grief, shuffling through her life like Grace?
I didn’t want that for Serena.
I rubbed an aching hand across my jaw. I needed to let Lenore have her “normal.” Let her have a life the way she chose. After everything she’d been through before me, with me, she deserved to have what she wanted, even if it didn’t make sense to me.
Even if it killed me.
She was marrying another man, and I was heading back to Nebraska, back to what I knew, back to the life I’d carved out for myself all these years. A life I was born into. One I liked, and one I’d intended to make richer, fuller, complete with her in it. Now that was over, and I had to accept it. I had to accept we might be better off apart, no matter how insane and how painful that felt right now. Maybe she had a point. Maybe there was too much pain, too much sorrow dividing us along with the scars.
I charged out of the store and got on my bike, swinging through the back section of the parking lot where I figured the employees kept their vehicles. There it was. Texas plates. I memorized the number.
I could keep a look out for Grace. No one knew the real reasons Dig had gotten assassinated. On the outside it seemed like a drug deal gone wrong, but you never knew. The rivalry between the Demon Seeds and the One-Eyed Jacks had revived with his murder, and things were shit all across our territories now. Yeah, I would do that for him, check in on his woman. I would. He was dead, and she was smoldering like a full blown bonfire put out too early.
Smoldering, like I was.