“You can’t leave, Lucy,” my editor shouted. “You’ve got a deadline.”
I ignored him.
I didn’t have time for that. I was running.
I took his advice and ran right in the direction of the battle. At least the remains of it.
The cemetery was perched up on a hill out of town, overlooking the ocean. Laurie’s headstone was as close to the edge as we could get it. So she could always look at the sea she loved so much.
She used to sit out on the beach for hours, watching the waves, reading, laughing with Bull at her side. Living.
It seemed only proper that in death, she could figuratively be watching it.
I doubted that if she was anywhere, she was in a graveyard full of bones and sorrow. But there was no other place to go, no other battlefield to run to, so I was here.
I parked beside the black Harley, surprised and resigned to see it at the same time.
My shoes sank into the grass on my first step, so I bent down and took them off, carrying them in my hand when I reached the polished stone.
I was met with the grim reaper.
Riding a Harley on a road of skulls brandishing a skull.
Sons of Templar MC – California.
I regarded the leather. The club that brought me together with my favorite people in the world.
And took one from me.
I remember the day of the funeral. Being so angry. At them. At all of the men I considered brothers and friends. Because they took my sister away. The one who couldn’t kill spiders yet Spiders killed her. Ironic. The gang that kidnapped, raped and murdered her were the namesake of the insect that terrified her, yet she couldn’t even bring herself to kill them.
I’d been smashing up every single photo I had of them. The men who were responsible for taking her from me. The club that I had always been so proud to be a part of, so quick to defend when Luke or any of the other buttoned-up lawmakers tried to find a way to take them down.
I had wondered, perhaps wished for that to have happened. For them to be taken down before Laurie had been taken away. Then I wondered whether that would’ve made any difference.
Our names, our dates, life and death were etched into some faraway stone before we even took our first breath and well after we took our last.
Polly found me. She had red eyes and was wearing a white sundress.
Because she knew Laurie would have wanted that.
I was wearing a black pencil dress that channeled Audrey Hepburn. I needed Audrey today. And I needed black.
Because that was the colour of my soul. Because Laurie wouldn’t even fucking know what color dress I was wearing. Because she was dead.
I smashed another frame.
The destruction didn’t make it hurt any less, but it distracted me. Anger was always a welcomed friend when it came in the place of sorrow.
A small hand circled my wrist.
“It’s their fault,” I choked out between sobs, looking at the men in the leather beyond the smashed glass. And the small blonde-haired girl tucked into the side of a large menacing tattooed man who was staring at her like she made the sun. Because she did. And now the sun was gone. And all there was left was black. “It was all because of them. What they are.”
Polly gently took the frame from my hands, shaking out the glass so the picture was visible, so it wasn’t broken anymore.
“No,” she whispered, her seventeen-year-old eyes bursting with too much grief and sorrow for my little sister to have to bear. “It’s not because of what they are. It’s because of what they’re not. It’s because they’re good people. A family. It’s because they’ve got something that those people will never have. Nor understand. Love. And the people, the animals that did what they did to—” she sucked in a strangled breath—“Laurie, they don’t know how to possess that so they have to destroy it. It’s not because of them.” She ran her thumb across Laurie’s curls. “It’s because of them that she was happy. Could you imagine her without him?” She paused. “No. It’s because of ugly people like that in the world that we need to hold onto what we have left that much tighter. We’ll not let them win. Let Laurie die for nothing.”
I stared at her, the pain radiating through me. “She did die for nothing,” I hissed.
She shook her head, the tears glistening in her eyes as she did so. “How could you say that? When you’re looking at the evidence proving you wrong. She died for everything.”
I stepped beside Bull, slipping my hand into his, holding my heels in the other.
He flinched slightly at the contact and went stiff. He kept staring at the polished marble and didn’t say a word, but his hand flexed in mine.
I looked at the polished rock.
Always and forever in her unclouded day. Always and forever in our hearts.
“She wouldn’t have had it any other way,” I whispered after a long silence.
He flinched but didn’t respond.
Not a surprise. The man was as cold as the rock we were staring at.
That’s what happened to someone who didn’t see the sun in three years.
“If she could have had it all over again. If she knew this was where it would end, she would have done it the same. As much as I wish to the contrary. I know she would,” I continued, my voice neither flat nor empty. I wouldn’t do that to her here. Put on that mask that did me so well everywhere else.
He didn’t respond, though I didn’t expect him to.
We stayed in the silence that I expected to last until one of us decided to stop looking for ghosts.
“That’s the worst part,” he rasped, surprising me.
I glanced at him, but his demon-filled gaze was on that stone and the bunch of sunflowers in her grave.
The fresh ones.
The ones he gave her every single week when they were together.
“Because if I could do it all over again, I would push her away. I would have made sure she never spent a second in my presence, even if it killed me.” He paused, his jaw tight. “Especially if it killed me. I would have done anything to make sure she didn’t end up here, including that being my name on that fuckin’ slab of rock.” He took his hand from mine. “But that’s the problem. I can’t. Never fuckin’ can. And that’ll be my cross to bear from then to the moment it’s me on that rock.”
He glanced at it one more time, then turned on his booted heel and left.
I watched him with a heavy heart, wishing Laurie was here for perhaps the two millionth time in three years.
Or wishing there was someone who he could stop running with.
But then again, the world was cruel.
I was staring at the cold, polished reminder.
One Week Later
From: [email protected]
Subject: Standing still
So I’m writing this from a cell.
I decided to desert out of worry.
Or panic. Never really felt that before. Consider myself a laid-back kind of guy. Especially with chicks. You change it all, Snow.
Radio silence only works in life-threatening situations.
So of course, I thought the worst.