“Is it a girl or a boy?” I wondered, imagining a mini King inside her and ignoring the brutal twist of pain-edged joy in my gut.
“A surprise, as all good things should be,” she said, almost slyly as we turned onto Main Street.
I snorted. “In my experience, only bad things come suddenly.”
“Good can come from bad,” she said softly, reminiscent of her schoolteacher's voice. “Lion came back into your life after you killed Cricket. Zeus met Loulou at a freaking gang shoot-out at First Light Church. Nova didn’t get his head out of his ass about Lila until she almost married someone else. That’s worth remembering.”
“Nothing good came from King’s death.”
Cress made a soft noise in the back of her throat, part sympathy, part protest. Her hand squeezed mine so tightly, I would feel the imprint of her hold for hours. “It put Harold Danner behind bars and proved Zeus didn’t kill Officer Gibson. It meant you and Monster and Angel got your dad back. That we all got Zeus back.”
“We would have found another way.”
“Would we have?” she mused wearily. “I wonder, but sometimes, I don’t think so.”
“Nothing was worth the cost of my brother,” I bit out, suddenly angry, so angry it blinded me and set my blood to boiling.
“No,” she agreed on a heavy sigh. Beneath our hands, the baby kicked at us in some kind of approval. “But that’s why I brought you here.”
I looked out the window to realize we’d stopped in front of Old Sam’s Mega Music record store.
“No.” There was no way I was going in there today. “No way.”
“Yes, Rosie,” Lion argued in his Dom voice, that smoke and steel tone that brooked absolutely no rebuttal.
I shivered slightly, a Pavlovian response.
“Please, trust me,” Cress beseeched, her eyes wide and flawless. “You and me, H.R., we’ve been through a lot. What’s a little more, hmm?”
I swallowed thickly as I decided I was being selfish. King was my brother, but he was the love of Cressida’s life. I had no idea what I would do without Lion. How I would function without the force of his love like gravity tethering me to the earth?
I could do this for Cress.
Truthfully, I was much more capable of doing this for her than for me.
Because maybe, deep down past the posturing and the bristling fear, I needed this too.
To be in a safe place filled with only good memories of the brother that had always gone out of his way to love me and keep me safe.
When Lion opened Cress’s door and helped her out, we caught eyes over her shoulder, and his gaze was full of aching tenderness.
I could fool a lot of people, but never him.
He knew I needed this, all of it, even if I was terrified of feeling too much.
So, when he rounded the car and opened my door next, I launched myself into his strong arms and wrapped my legs around his waist. He smelled of musk and man, of mornings on the ranch, sweet hay and cut grass. It reminded me that he was born and raised a cowboy before he’d ever been a cop or a P.I., and no one was more capable of wrangling my restless rebel soul than him.
As if reading my thoughts, he wrapped a hand in my mess of hair and yanked it back to take my mouth in a searing, possessive kiss I felt all the way to my toes.
When we broke free, we rested our foreheads together for a moment to regain our equilibrium.
“You go on in with your sister,” he offered. “I’ll buy my girl a coffee.”
I smiled slightly at how well he knew me. I couldn’t survive on anything less than three cups of Joe a day.
“You don’t want to come in?”
“Oh, I won’t be far behind. I never am. But I’m thinking this is a good moment to go in alone.”
“I have to pee,” Cress admitted with a playful wince. “The joys of being pregnant. You go in, and I’ll just be a minute, okay? Old Sam’s already waiting for you.”
The thought of my old friend warmed my calamitous heart. This place and Sam had been my oasis throughout my entire childhood. Anytime Farah was on a rampage or when Dad was in prison, music and Sam had always been there.
I didn’t want to go in by myself, but I told myself I was being a chickenshit.
I could do this.
I could do anything.
Farah made me believe for most of my life that I was lesser, not good enough for anything or anything worthy. Cricket had only cemented that feeling, casting me in stone so I was trapped by it.
But then Lion had broken me free, and every moment since then, I’d struggled and worked to love myself.
To feel worthy and act worthy of all the goodness life had seen fit to bless upon me.
My family, my friends, my man, and my sweet dog who trotted happily by my side as I walked slowly to the glass door of the record store. He was tall enough that I could thread my fingers in his silky coat for comfort as I pushed through into the music-filled interior.
“Oh, Sister” by Bob Dylan thrummed through the cramped rows of records and CDs.
Instantly, my throat closed up, and my fingers tightened in Saint’s fur. He pressed his big body against my side and whined low in his throat.
“’S okay,” I soothed him, but my voice was ravaged by the emotion growing like a thicket of thorns in my throat.
It wasn’t okay.
Why had Sam put this record on?
I didn’t need to hear about a lost brother apologizing to the sister he left behind.
Because suddenly the lyrics were sung in Bob Dylan’s throaty vocals, but King’s infrequently heard, lyrical murmur.
I stood in the middle of the record store and squeezed my eyes shut.
I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry.
The mantra helped to steady me against the deluge of poignant words.
“Hey, Sam,” I called, eyes still closed, voice a little stronger. “Are you trying to kill a girl? Change the record, will ya?”
“Sorry, H.R., but I put a lotta thought into this, and I’m thinkin’ this song is the only song for this moment we’re about to have.”
Agony seared through me like a lightning strike, leaving me electric with anger and vibrating pain.
“He isn’t here,” I muttered to myself like a fucking nutbar. “Get a grip.”
“You’re not crazy.” His voice again, rougher than I remembered, choked up almost as bad as mine. “Not yet, anyway.”
Saint tensed beside me, another whimper escaping from his throat.
I opened my eyes to soothe my dog because my unsteady emotional climate was clearly worrying him.
And that was when I saw him.
King.
He stood like a mirage in the middle aisle of the shop, not twelve feet away from me, in one of his countless white tees that fit too tight beneath a leather jacket I didn’t recognize because it wasn’t his Fallen MC cut. Maybe that was why I was convinced he was a figment of my imagination. My brother wouldn’t wear leather without his patch. He’d worked hard for the club we called family, and he’d never willingly give up the cut he’d earned time and time again.
But…
When I blinked, he was still there, staring at me with those pale eyes like cubes in a glass, so clear I could see straight through to the bottom of the purest soul I’d ever known.