Chapter 26
Nothing
The door to Charity’s room cracked open, light from the hall spilling across the carpet. I didn’t know how long I lay here with her, but it’d been hours; that was for sure.
Hope poked her head into the room and looked us over, a scowl carving deep, shadowed lines in her forehead. She slipped in and shut the door behind her, dipping us back into a deep twilight.
“I swear to fucking Christ, Nothing, if you hurt my baby sister again, I’m cutting your balls off.” I tried not to smile, amused by her overbearing sisterly protection, mostly because I knew if I smiled now, she’d skip waiting on me to hurt Charity and lop off my balls right here and right now. I sort of liked where they were.
“It was never my intent to hurt her in the first place, Hope.”
“Then what were your intentions? Because you damn sure did a bang up fucking job of not hurting her.” Hope crossed her arms over her chest and leaned her back against the door.
“Just wanted to spare her,” I muttered and Hope leaned her head forward on her long, graceful neck.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“Yeah, I was kind of hoping I hadn’t heard that right, you jackass,” she threw up her hands and let them drop to her jeans clad thighs with a slap. “Seriously, what is your fucking deal?”
“I have a lot to sort through, new information, a lot has happened in a short amount of time for me,” I swallowed hard, “I promise when I figure it all out, you’ll be the first to know.”
I stroked Charity’s hair and she shifted in her sleep. Hope and I both froze solid, and exchanged a look.
“Right, I don’t want to wake her up. You,” she stabbed a finger in my direction, “Figure your shit out pronto, because I’m not doing that again.”
I nodded vaguely, eyes on Charity as much as I could for the angle, and Hope slipped back out.
I sighed, wasn’t that what I’d been laying here doing all this time? Trying to figure my shit out?
I didn’t know what to think anymore. Not after the bombshell the Captain had dropped on me. For three years going on four I’d been heartsick, dying a slow death on the inside, plagued with guilt for not having saved my wife and daughter. My own club hiding from me that she wasn’t even faithful to me. Did I get why they hid it? Yeah. Did it still kill me that they did? You bet your life on it.
And Charity… I’d pushed her away, and fuck was I completely mental? It sure felt like I’d lost my fucking mind, man. I closed my eyes, these thoughts chasing themselves around the inside of my head until I felt sick.
Corrine… why?
Her words from that night drifted back to me, as they often did in the dark and quiet moments before sleep. Only this time, they didn’t carry with them the torturous guilt, this time they were there for me to analyze and to rip apart, before they got a chance to tear at me…
“…it’s always your damn brothers fixing things around the house.”
“…you need to be paying attention to what’s going on at home…”
“I need you to grow up before you find we’ve moved on without you... We don’t want anyone else.”
With the new information to put them in context, I realized now why her words had unsettled me so. Our last words to each other had been said in anger and the guilt was still there, welling up out of the cracks and eating at me, but not like before. With new context I understood, clearly now, what Corrine had been trying to say.
If you don’t get your act together, I’m leaving you… and not only was she going to leave me, she was going to leave me for one of my brothers.
Fuck. Why had the Captain and the rest of the guys kept this from me? Which circled me right back around to the bitter as hell truth – because you couldn’t handle it. Cutter had been right. I would have lost my shit completely, I was already riding a dangerous line. Chilling on the edge of a precipice, with only one way to go; down. Straight down, right to hell and gone.
Charity shifted slightly in her sleep, a soft moan escaping her lips that sounded auspiciously like distress. I smoothed a hand over her golden hair and she settled and I thought to myself, but then she looked at me. Charity had looked at me and one look was all it’d taken and I didn’t understand the why of it.
I’d never understood the why of it when it’d been Corrine’s look that’d knocked me left of center either, but as my grandfather had always told me, ‘There are some things in life that you just go with, that you don’t ask questions and just accept them for the gift they are.’ I’d seized it when it’d come to Corrine, so why had I resisted it so hard when it came to Charity?
The answer to that had come to me when that fucking car had flipped up on its side with her in it: because I was scared. Because if I’d let it happen, I was setting myself up for the same kind of pain that’d taken me over when I lost Katy and Corrine and I was damn sure I couldn’t live through that a second time… but I’d nearly had to, tonight.
I held Charity a little tighter and kissed the top of her head. Corrine had been right about one thing, when it came to her final words… she, and now Charity, couldn’t be the only one to try. I needed to try too, or this gift I’d been given, this second chance, would be gone forever. ‘Nobody ever said that life was easy,’ was another thing my gramps used to say. It was the truth, and it was time I stopped waiting for my life to run out so I could see my wife and girl again, and time I started living it so that when I did, they could greet a man they could be proud of.
Eventually, I managed to sleep. Decisions and some peace made with myself over some things. I closed my eyes and let Charity’s deep and even breathing carry me down into the dark.