Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 56238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 281(@200wpm)___ 225(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 281(@200wpm)___ 225(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
“Forever you will be my solider on deployment. Never to come home,” I whisper to the night air. “The eternity we now have is one where you are forever apart from me.”
How did my life end up like this? “Forever you are twenty-four while I continue to wrinkle and age. Your time stopped and mine keeps going when I crave nothing more than one simple moment with you once again.”
Another sip of wine and I look at the urn containing my husband’s remains. I long for him to hold me once again. How did our dreams shatter? This isn’t how I ever imagined our life to be.
What happened to happily ever after?
What happened to all those plans for raising kids while seeing the world? What happened to the future in a rocking chair on a wraparound porch reminiscing on all we have seen and done together?
What is to be said when together is no longer ever an option? Death is as final as it gets.
I’ll never have love like he gave me again. I’ll never have a companion, a partner, a father for my son, a protector, a lover, best friend, or person to love and accept me the way I had with Jonah.
Setting the empty wine glass on my nightstand, I touch two fingers to my lips, kissing them, and moving them to the urn. The only way I can give love to him anymore. My heart hurts.
“We had five married years together and nine years of loving each other. It was all cut too short. I miss you, Jonah.” All my whispers fall on deaf ears and the silence back to me shatters my heart all over again.
My life wasn’t supposed to be like this.
His life wasn’t supposed to be cut short.
Yet, here we are, and as hard as this may be, for my son, I have to continue to press on. A son he never got to meet. A son sleeping in a tiny toddler bed in the room we always talked about having when we had a son.
I have spent two years as a widow and not one day ever gets easier. Loneliness only feeds my grief more. At twenty-three, I faced the greatest loss in my husband and the greatest gift of my son in the same year. At twenty-five, I still have this gaping hole in my chest that once belonged to Jonah. Justice is a duplicate of his dad, but rather than filling what I am missing, my heart simply grew to love this little boy more than my own breath. Love is funny like that.
The capacity of the heart to grow and yet still remain unfulfilled. It’s something only a mother can understand, especially a mother without her lover.
This is my life.
Love.
Loss.
Love once again.
Never to be what I was before.
One
Raff
The only fucks I give are reserved for family and fun.
* * *
Dropping my kickstand, I lean the bike on the small metal peg. One by one, I pull my fingers from the leather gloves and lay them on my gas tank before reaching up to unhook my lid. The half-shell helmet is lightweight and a summer staple for riding. Hooking it to the handlebar, I dismount. Tonight, I’m here on Ruby, my Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail, decked out in a ruby red with metallic flake paint job featuring the Hellions skull on the gas tank. The bike is basic outside of the paint. I stripped the saddlebags, sissy bar, additional chrome, and even the exhaust tips from this bike.
Sometimes there is nothing better than a bare ride.
I mean that in every way possible. For my bike, it means no accessories. With a woman, it is an indescribable sensation to raw fuck especially in the heat of the moment.
With my helmet hanging, I drop my sunglasses inside the top. The wind is pretty steady tonight, making the Hellions flag snap in the wind. The clubhouse and surrounding area of our compound is lit up.
I’m parked at Honey’s Hot Rods when I notice the light inside the office is still on. Looking to my watch, it is six twelve PM. I’m right on time. I left my house at six sharp to arrive and be in a seat by six thirty even allowing myself time to chat outside should a brother feel compelled to. This is how my brain works. Have a time window for everything and remain on schedule. Because of my need to have my plans in allotments, I notice when others around me also have patterns.
Honey has a strict policy about being off at six sharp. She has two kids at home. There is one thing she’s firm in having, and its dinner immediately after work at the table with them. Before kids, she practically lived at the garage. If she wasn’t crashing at Smoke’s house, then she was at work. I know Stud always keeps a room for her at his house, even now, but she’s always been fiercely independent. As soon as the house down the street from the shop came up for sale, she scooped it up. Most days, she walks to work even though she isn’t exactly next door. According to Honey the fresh air helps her wake up. Personally, coffee wakes me up just fine. Whatever works for her, though.