Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 52357 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 209(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52357 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 209(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Without a word, she shuts the door.
Right in my face.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I don’t even know what to say.
I let the moment sink in. I let her rejection soak deep inside. I know I deserve this. But I also know this right here isn’t even about me. She’s hurting. She doesn’t know how to accept the lifeline.
Maybe I don’t deserve to be the one who helps her out of this dark place.
I told them I couldn’t help her.
But I’ll be damned if I don’t want to try. There is something about seeing her. Having her this close. I can’t make myself walk away again.
Even if all she can give me is silence.
Even if all I can have is the sound of the lock turning between us as she shuts me out physically and emotionally. I sit down at her front door, my back to the wall beside the door she left me at.
As long as she’s in there. Out here is where I’ll be.
I’m not going anywhere.
Not this time.
FOUR
DIA
"When life becomes unbearable, channel the resilience of a grizzly." — Unknown
The sky is far too blue. The sun is brilliantly shining down lighting up the day in a gorgeous way. The clouds are fluffy bundles like cotton in a pillow. It’s the kind of Carolina day to be relaxing on Emerald Isle, toes in the sand, listening to the waves roll in.
It is like the outside world is trying to give me a gentle kiss into the new day, this new world.
But I don’t want the sky to be blue or the sun to shine. I don’t care about the clouds in the sky. I don’t want to be outside inhaling the fresh air.
I want to be anywhere but here.
I want to be anyone but me.
And I want today to be anything but what it is.
My mom thinks this will help me. His mom literally sent a legal paper, professionally served and all, to keep me and every Hellion away from Benji’s funeral.
Nothing will help me. Yet, everyone around me says the words, but they don’t stop pushing me to do something.
I park at the top of the hill, the gravel parking lot crunching under the tires of my car. Skye whimpers in the car beside me like she knows where we are. I grab the flowers from the passenger floorboard, the red Dahlias with red Gerber daisy mix just for him. The flowers we planned for our wedding next year. I climb out of the car, flowers and leash in hand as Skye follows me out of my Camaro. The wind blows against my cheeks sending a chill through my body.
Is that him?
Is Benji embracing me?
There is a cardinal in the distance watching me. Is that him? There is an old saying, if a cardinal appears a loved one is near. I have always seen the red birds and thought about my grandparents that I didn’t meet but know they loved my parents fiercely. I am named for my grandmother, Claudia Reklinger. But seeing this cardinal, here, today, well, I would like to think it’s Benji watching over me this time.
I walk the path my brother drew out for me. Since Benji’s mom forbid the Hellions from being part of his official funeral service yesterday, this is my goodbye. While my dad and the club wanted to put pressure on her to let me take my place as his ol’ lady and make his last arrangements, I told them to stand down.
I overwhelmed Benji’s world. She doesn’t understand. All she knows is her son was straight laced, gentlemen, and always there for her since his dad died when he was fifteen. Then he fell in love with a biker’s daughter. My world didn’t make sense, but he embraced it fully and soon it became his world too. A world she can’t understand.
Her goodbye matters as much as mine. I didn’t want to taint this for her with more reminders of the son she lost because to her she lost him the first time the moment he fell in love with me.
I’ve always walked the line in between. I know that in the outside world, she had the power. As his woman, his property, I’m equal to being his wife with or without the vows, the ring, and ceremony. In society norms, though, I was nothing more than a girlfriend. I didn’t even have an engagement ring even though we were planning a wedding. His mom is hurting too, though.
She blames the club. If it wasn’t for the Hellions he never would have been out that night. It doesn’t matter to her that if he hadn’t been there, the woman and child would be the ones in the ground, not her son. And for him, knowing he could have done something and didn’t, well, this is how he would have preferred it to be. It’s the kind of man he was: selfless to a fault.