35
The concert was packed.
I was selling my dope to my usual customers at the May Day Rock Fest just over the border in Colorado. Drac stuck by my side, keeping an eye out for anything or anyone questionable, any potential agents of the law. People had endured a long, cold winter, and they were starving for the sun on their skin, riding, and partying outdoors. The few spring music festivals there were around rocked for business heading into the summer tidal wave. It was low grade action, but steady. The civilians wanted their party supply, from high schoolers to college pricks to upper middle class white collar types. Plus, a number of my Flame brothers and members of other clubs from far and wide ordered up bulk amounts ahead of time.
The sun was dropping in the red sky. The whole night lay ahead of us. The wild ones had been unleashed.
A local band that had made good was the third group up. They were all right. Not my scene. I preferred heavy metal to this grungy whiney shit with too much guitar thrown in for a classic rock effect. Everyone was trying to sing like Eddie Vedder these days, but nope, only in their sorry ass dreams.
“My heart’s on fire! My heart’s on fire!” the lead singer screeched.
I knew this song. I’d been hearing it from every open car window I’d passed on the road this week.
And that’s when I saw her.
My stomach nosedived like an elevator run amok.
Everything suddenly blurred out. Everything was fuzzy except for her. Only yards from me. Could’ve been five thousand or four, three, two, one. I’d know the curve of that face, those lips, the slim column of that throat. All my senses flared to life again. That ache twisted inside me hard, and it hurt.
Now she had blonde hair, waves of warm honey. Her arms were swirling with tats, her chest dancing with bold designs and colors showing from under the long white sundress she wore. She clapped and cheered for the band.
I was rooted to the spot. It had been over six months since I’d seen her. Half a year. An eternity.
Serena. Serena.
She turned.
Those blue green eyes. Oh God, those eyes.
Those eyes locked on mine, making the blood freeze in my veins and roar to life, rising like whirling storm winds, ripping and unrooting everything in their path. A sensation unlike any other—a burn, a sizzle, an electric misfire that exploded and combusted instead of simply charging.
That fuse that we’d shorted was lit once again.
She stumbled, her body twisting just a bit, and my eyes widened. That white dress stretched over a high, round middle. Her hand rose, pressing against her full belly as if guarding it from the rays of my vision.
She was pregnant. Pregnant.
Something wrenched in my chest, jamming there. A cold hammer banged at my pulse, zapping the easy lethargy of the beer and weed I’d consumed all afternoon. A fist twisted inside me and yanked whatever there existed inside me, flinging it on the ground, shredding it as it went, pitching it between me and her.
Rings were on that finger on her hand. Did she get married like she said she would? Now she was having that fucker’s baby? My eyes snapped to the stage. Of course. The guitarist.
After that time I’d tracked her down in LA, I’d found out she’d been seeing a musician, Eric Lanier.
“I’m getting married.”
Congratufuckinglations.
Now she was having a baby. His baby.
She was in someone else’s tide. A moon in another solar system. Another hemisphere. She’d dropped the axe, cut the line. Her taste of normal was working out for her.
My head spun. I didn’t have to do the math in my head. That could be my baby. Would she really have married someone else if it was? Fuck, I didn’t know. I was going to find out, though. My chest was on fire. Somehow my feet remembered how to walk, my knees to bend. I moved forward.
Her eyes widened, her mouth tightening as I stalked toward her. She reached back, grabbing her long blonde hair, pulling a stretchy around the thick handful into a ponytail.
My signal. Keep moving. You don’t know me. Don’t contact me.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
She removed a large ring on her index finger and put it on the index finger of her other hand, and my pulse kicked at my veins.
Her signal. Keep moving. You don’t know me. I’m okay, but you have to go. Don’t contact me.
Double signals. Both of them. Definitive.
I raised my chin, my jaw grinding together.
Her hand remained on her stomach, her back rigid. She turned away, focusing her attention back on the stage. On her new man up there playing his fucking guitar, howling out his douchebag lyrics.
My heart pumped hard, straining against the thick wave of venom filling my veins. My eyes remained glued on her.
Why couldn’t it be us, dammit? You and me? I screamed at her across the campground.
I roared.
I pleaded.
My fingers crushed the packets of weed, blow, and assorted pills I had in my pockets. I swallowed hard, my heels digging in the damp ground.
Here I was cutting deals, scoring big, scoring little, but what did it amount to? She was the only person on the planet that I’d ever felt close to, and now she was bearing a living, breathing miracle in her body, where once our miracle had taken root. But I had no part in it. Not me. Her body was not mine to hold and take care of, that body growing inside her not of me. Nothing to do with me.
Nothing.
A bucket of ice water smashed over me.
New life. New world. And I had no clue.
I blinked, willing my vision to clear, my breath to even out, the back of my hand scrubbing across my mouth. I’d never know that kind of life, that level of intimacy. I never would, not if it couldn’t be with her.
A heavy hand fell on my back, and I bolted upright.
“Man, I can’t listen to this shit,” muttered Drac. “Let’s head over to the other side of the concert area. Our bros from Oregon are over there.”
“Yeah.”
What I had now was good. I was an officer. I had brothers who I trusted and who trusted me. I was doing good. I wasn’t the “kid” any more.
So why did I feel like I was on the outside looking in again? Tossed back on the dusty shelf, labeled, “just not good enough.” That shadow of Meghan’s withering looks passed through me again. “He’s not coming to our house.”
Second best. Second rate. Under the table. Unwanted. Dirty little secret.
“Let’s go.” Drac nudged me with his shoulder.
Women were screaming, singing along with the band. I threw a final look back at the stage. The band’s name was “Cruel Fate.”
Fuck you.
“Yeah, let’s go.” Flexing my throbbing fingers, the fingers that weren’t there, I forced my lungs to take in air, forced my cold brittle bones to move.
Move forward.
Move.
Move.
And don’t look back.