“Help yourself,” I muttered, moving out of her way. I glanced at my sister, but she was staring at Farrah in horror as she put a ton of sugar in her empty mug then poured her coffee in on top.
“You can sit,” I offered to Callie, gesturing toward the bed.
“Thanks,” she said with a small smile. She kicked off her shoes and surprised me by climbing onto the bed and making herself comfortable.
“Make yourself at home,” I said with a laugh.
She shrugged and patted the bed beside her.
Within minutes, all of us were sitting in a circle on the bed in complete silence.
“How is he?” I asked finally, picking at a loose thread on my comforter.
“He’s—”
“Still an idiot,” Farrah said dryly, cutting Callie off.
Callie shot her a glare, then looked at me. “He’s upset,” she said quietly. “Worried about you.”
My sister snorted.
“Stop,” I mumbled to Mel, laying my hand on her thigh.
“He’s a lot like his mother,” Farrah said, leaning back against my headboard and stretching out her legs. “Said he was fine over and over again until he couldn’t say it anymore.”
“True,” Callie said. She reached for Farrah’s coffee without a word, took a sip and then handed it back. “When I was young, the same thing happened to me. Different symptoms, though.”
I sat silently, waiting for her to continue. I had no idea what to say.
Tommy had terrified me. I had no idea how to even process that.
“I think he has PTSD,” Callie finally said. “I’ve always thought it, but he’s an adult.” She paused, reaching up to pick at the skin on her lips until Farrah smacked her hand back down again. “He refused to see anyone about it.” Callie shrugged. “But he finally agreed last night.”
“That’s good,” I replied scratchily, then cleared my throat. “I’m glad.”
“I don’t know how much you know about the shooting,” Farrah said, her voice uncharacteristically solemn.
“Nothing really,” I murmured, shaking my head. “Only what I heard on the news.”
Callie made a surprised noise in her throat and sniffled.
“It was bad,” Farrah told me. “Real bad. Just another family barbecue, Gram’s birthday, and then in the blink of an eye, total chaos. We were dropping, just—” she shook her head, her eyes wide. “We were just dropping. Like fucking flies. And Micky,” she choked out. “He was covering Tommy. Completely covering him. When Grease got to them, Tommy didn’t have a scratch on him.”
I shook my head, staring at her in disbelief. Oh God. No.
“I tried to get to them,” Callie said, lifting her palms out in front of her. “I tried, but—”
Farrah reached out and handed Callie her cup of coffee, then patted her on the back.
“Callie dropped like a fly, too,” Farrah said, making Callie choke on the hot coffee.
“Tommy was physically fine,” Callie said quietly when she stopped coughing. “Mick made sure of that. But something like that changes you.”
“I didn’t know,” I replied, wiping at the tears rolling down my face. “No one told me.”
“I don’t know if you can forgive him,” Callie said. “And I’d never ask you to. Not after last night. But I just wanted you to know the why of it, you know?”
“No,” Melanie spoke up for the first time, shaking her head. “No. You don’t get to do that. I’m so sorry for everything your family has been through. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like for you. But you don’t get to come in here and guilt my sister into forgiving your son. I saw him last night. And I saw her.” She pointed at me. “He completely terrorized her. My little sister who isn’t afraid of anything. She shook all night. Even in her sleep.”
Callie sat up straight and nodded. “That was never my intention,” she said, looking at me. “I would never try to excuse my son’s behavior or try to make you feel like you have to forgive him.”
“She meddles,” Farrah muttered.
“I remember what it was like,” Callie said, lifting her hand to her mouth again until Farrah slapped it away. “I remember how Asa felt when I lost it. So, I guess I just wanted to tell you that last night wasn’t your fault. Not at all. And Tommy’s going to get help.”
“Of course it wasn’t her fault,” my sister shot back.
“Mel,” I cut her off, shaking my head. “Enough.”
I wanted to both hug my sister for defending me, and smack her for being so rude. I understood Mel’s defense of me, but I understood where Callie was coming from, too. She loved Tommy and she understood him, and if there was any chance I could forgive him, she wanted him to have that.
And I could forgive him. I’d known something was very wrong the night before. His reactions hadn’t been normal. The fact he’d had to be physically restrained more than once wasn’t normal. But the fact he was sick didn’t mean I’d ever willingly put myself in that position again.
I’d been someone’s punching bag before.
“I’m glad Tommy is going to get the help he needs,” I said softly, looking back and forth between Farrah and Callie. “But I don’t think I can go back. I’m sorry.”
Callie nodded her head, but Farrah just stared at me, a weird look of pride on her face.
We didn’t say much after that.
When they left, they took Tommy’s duffle full of clothes with them.
As soon as they did, I curled up in the middle of my bed and cried myself to sleep.
* * *
Life resumed its usual pattern, but I began to think of things as before Tommy and after Tommy.
Before Tommy I could focus on homework.
After Tommy I had a hard time passing my classes.
Before Tommy a quiet night at home was my favorite activity.
After Tommy my own company made me miserable.
Before Tommy I left windows open at night and added an extra blanket on my bed.
After Tommy, my apartment was closed up like a tomb, yet I still couldn’t get warm.
The before and afters were endless and relentless.
I wasn’t sure how less than two weeks with him had changed me so completely, but the evidence was clear. I was miserable without him.
I didn’t regret my decision, not even for a moment, but I did wonder about him constantly. I wondered how he was doing, if he’d gone to a counselor or a psychologist, if he was getting better. I worried that he wasn’t taking care of himself. I thought about what the fallout must have been after his parents learned about Mick. I wondered if they’d celebrated when his case was dropped.
I heard bits and pieces from Molly and my sister, so I knew he was okay, but they didn’t give me any details and I didn’t ask for them.
I also hadn’t filed for divorce.
I wrote it in my calendar at least once a week, but I ignored the reminder every time, finding something else to do instead. I just… couldn’t make myself do it.
I couldn’t go back to him, but I also couldn’t seem to sever the connection.
He was my husband. Our marriage might have started out for the least romantic reasons, but somewhere along the line I’d started to care for him beyond the friendship we’d started with.
Weeks without him turned to months without him, and I still didn’t file the paperwork.
I missed him and the longer I went without him the worse it got. I’d always assumed when you lost someone, you might not ever fully recover, but at least it got easier to deal with as time went by. That wasn’t the case for me. Every day that passed was harder than the one before it.
A part of me was waiting, I guess. A small kernel of hope just sat there in the back of my mind, waiting for the day he came back and promised me he was healed.
The only problem was I wasn’t sure I could trust him if he did.
Chapter 18
Thomas
I was pretty sure if my psychol
ogist ever decided to actually talk back to me instead of just asking the leading questions that had me spilling my guts, he’d call me a giant pussy and start laughing.
I’d started seeing the guy just days after the clusterfuck that had gone down at the club, but I wasn’t sure if it was helping. He’d warned me on the first day dealing with my shit would be a process, but I hadn’t quite believed him. I got shit done. That’s what I did.
I’d always seen a problem and solved it. It was why I liked working on cars and houses. If I didn’t like the placement of a wall, I changed it. If I saw something busted on a vehicle, I fixed it. Those things were black and white.
I was finding that wading through the years of shit I’d been dealing with wasn’t so easy. Just because I talked about the shooting didn’t mean my guilt lessened. My anger didn’t abate. If anything, I felt worse. I always left the psychologist’s office covered in sweat and practically shaking with emotion.
I fucking hated it. The psychologist had asked me to stop what he considered to be self-medicating, so I’d stopped smoking pot, which meant my dreams got more vivid and I woke up yelling all the fucking time. Sleeping was a joke, and for the first few weeks I spent most nights sitting awake half the night, chain-smoking cigarettes on my parents’ back porch. Usually my mom or dad would slip outside not long after I’d gone out there, and we’d sit in silence until the sun came up. We didn’t talk, but they stayed with me anyway. I rarely slept at the club.
It took months for anything to change. The first night I slept without nightmares, I’d woken up confused by the sun shining in my window and for a second I’d been completely disoriented. That hadn’t lasted, though. The next night the nightmares had been back, and I’d felt like I was back at square one.
I hadn’t seen Heather.
My mom had let me know she’d gone to see her and that Heather was okay, but I’d known from what she didn’t say that Heather was done with me. I didn’t blame her.
My wife had been brutalized by someone she’d trusted when she was just a little kid. Someone without a background of abuse would have a hard time trusting a person that couldn’t control their anger, but for Heather that distrust was multiplied by a thousand. I understood.
Every day I expected to be served with divorce papers, but it didn’t happen. I didn’t hear a word from Heather, but she didn’t try to sever ties either.
It gave me a little bit of hope.
I knew I shouldn’t contact her, though. Not yet.
Instead, I just went to work. Took care of business. I sat down with the Aces officers and laid everything out for them. The idea that our club would have an issue with someone because of an anger problem was ludicrous. They didn’t give a shit about that. They didn’t even give a fuck that I had a form of PTSD. Shit, half the original members had come back from Vietnam more fucked up than I was. It wasn’t anything new. It was the fact I couldn’t control myself that they had a problem with. It’s impossible to trust a man who can’t control his reactions and someone like that could get everyone killed in our line of work. It took time, but eventually I smoothed shit out with them.
I spent hours in a tattoo chair getting my back piece done. It gave me a lot of time to think about shit. What I wanted, how I was going to get it, and what I’d do when I had it.
I hired an electrician the club knew to wire in my house, and as soon as that was finished I started hanging sheetrock. The house was starting to take shape, and it looked fucking fantastic. My dad and Will had come by on a few different weekends and we’d worked easily together getting shit done. Will had no idea what he was doing, but my dad had experience and he’d stepped right in like he’d been remodeling houses his entire life.
Lincoln had been right when he’d said the DA’s office would drop the charges against me. I got word the night after Heather left. It was a relief, but I’d known from the beginning they hadn’t had enough to nail me for it. Mark Phillips was gone without a trace. With no body, their entire case had been pretty much fucked.
It was good I didn’t have to worry about it, though, because within a couple weeks I’d started leaving the state for meet ups in California, Idaho, Washington and Montana. Once Dragon had known he could trust me, he’d needed me.
As I started being part of more and more conversations, I’d finally figured out the club’s plan for the Russians. It wasn’t very intricate, but it was pretty brilliant all the same and if you looked close enough, you could see Casper’s fingers all over that shit. We met up with dealers and suppliers and informants all over the west coast, and one by one we either earned or bought their loyalty.
That loyalty had once belonged to the Russian cartel before it had gone tits up. The Feds arrested so many key players the fuckers were barely limping along, and the few that were still around began to find they didn’t have any allies left. People flocked to strength, and when the Aces gave them the opportunity to jump ship and climb into our lifeboats, they’d taken it.
The Russians inside weren’t finding life as pleasant. We had allies from coast to coast, in every federal prison, and we’d sent out the call. Half of those fuckers wouldn’t make it to trial, and the other half was locked in solitary. They wouldn’t be there forever. At some point, the guard would relax. Their time was limited.
Things were moving along. Life was happening. We were still pretty careful about big groups of us together outside the club gates, but we were able to let our guard down a bit like we hadn’t done in years.
Months went by and the weather got cold, but I still didn’t get any divorce papers.
My nightmares started happening less and less. Sometimes I’d go three or four days without one. I hadn’t made it an entire week yet, but I could see it on the horizon.
I missed Heather in a way I hadn’t even realized was possible.
And I still didn’t get any divorce papers.
We replaced the siding on my house and installed new windows before the weather got bad. I spent two weeks at our club in Sacramento visiting the brothers down there and solidifying some deals we’d made with a pair of sisters that controlled the meth trade in that part of the state. Casper and I froze our balls off as we rode home.
When I got there, I still didn’t have any divorce papers waiting for me.
Eventually, I stopped expecting to see them. I still looked for them, waited, but I stopped thinking she’d actually send them.
Then two days after the beginning of the new year, almost six months after the last time I’d seen her, a courier dropped off the manila envelope filled with her escape from me.
“Fuck!” I yelled, shuffling through the paperwork.
“Tommy?” my mom called, jogging down the stairs. “What’s going on?”
I looked up from the papers in my hands and tried to ignore the twisting in my gut. “Divorce papers,” I mumbled, waving them back and forth. “Son of a bitch.”
“Damn,” she whispered.
“Am I supposed to just sign them?” I asked in confusion. “She hasn’t signed them.”
“I’m not sure,” she replied, walking toward me. “Does it come with directions?”
“I’m not seeing any.” I handed her the papers and scrubbed my hands through my hair. “But I don’t have my glasses on me so I can barely fuckin’ read it.”
“I don’t see any,” she said, leafing through the pages. She stopped suddenly and looked up at me. “Do you want to sign them?”
I looked at her in disbelief. “ ’Course I don’t wanna fuckin’ sign ’em,” I snapped, shaking my head.
“Then don’t.”
“I can’t just—” I threw my hands up in the air and shook my head again. “She’s done, Ma.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she sent me fuckin’ divorce papers,” I replied flatly.
“You haven’t seen her in six months,” she pointed out like I hadn’t been counting the fucking days. “Maybe she thinks you’re done.”
I stared at her for a long moment. “I’ll be back later,” I finally mumbled, leaning forward to kiss the top of her head.
I turned around and walked out the door, heading straight for my bike.
* * *
Showing up at her apartment was a bad idea. I realized that the moment I’d pulled up. She’d never come to see me. She hadn’t called or even told her sister to say hi to me in the entire time we’d been apart.
Maybe she was with someone else. Maybe that was why she’d finally sent the divorce papers.
I had no idea what was going on in her life.
I parked my bike and climbed off, but I didn’t move toward her apartment. My hands shook as I lit up a smoke, and I shivered a little as the wind blew. It was cold as fuck, but thank God it wasn’t raining.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to her. I wanted to ask her how she’d been, apologize to her for everything that had happened, and beg her to forgive me. That was selfish, though. I didn’t deserve her forgiveness.
It didn’t matter I’d never hurt her in a million years. She’d believed I was going to. I’d scared her. Badly.
I stared at her door as I finished my cigarette and dropped it on the pavement, crushing it beneath my boot. My palms were sweating. As I debated lighting another one up to give me a few extra minutes to think things through, her door opened.
Then she was there, standing in her doorway, looking at me like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Chapter 19
Heather
I’d never forget the sound of a Harley’s pipes. It was one of those noises, that as soon as you knew what it was, you could recognize it anywhere. I’d heard it dozens of times when I was with Tommy, when we’d be at the club or he’d pull up outside my apartment, but I’d only heard that particular sound a few times since we’d split. Sometimes Rocky brought my sister over and dropped her off, and even though I’d known they were coming, my stomach would do this weird swooping thing the moment I’d hear them pull up.
I was working on some history homework when I heard the familiar rumble. I had music on while I typed, but the unmistakable sound was clear as day and I froze in the middle of my sentence on Thomas Jefferson. A few seconds later, the sound was gone, but it hadn’t drifted away.