“I asked Hannah to make me this.” I moved my hair off my breasts to reveal the small badge I had sewn into the right top side of my dress. “God of Thunder,” I read. “So that even though you’ll be there in our hearts like you said, I can still bring carry a piece of you down the aisle with me just as I would if you were free to walk with me.”
His hand went up to prop up his head as he shook it, shoulders hunched as he let the emotion work through him. It was such a vulnerable moment for the great and terrible Zeus Garro, and I was humbled that my words meant so much to him.
When he looked up at me finally, his cheeks were dry, but his eyes were wet and red. His voice, when he spoke, was like wet gravel under tires. “Outside’a Lou and all her gifts to me, gotta say, this is the best present I’ve ever got.”
“Me too,” I agreed.
Then we smiled at each other again because we were hurt, yes, enraged even at the injustice of this day and the fact they wouldn’t grant him a pass to the wedding, but we had learned through all our trials and tribulations as a family that you took happiness when it came, and you clung hard and fast to it.
So, we smiled, and when I finally left, that was the sight of Zeus I took with me, beaming proudly like a father, warmly like a friend, and full-on loving me like only a Garro could do.
King
* * *
“Can you believe I’m fuckin’ nervous?”
Nova scoffed as he adjusted The Fallen custom cufflinks I had made and gave to the groomsmen for the wedding. “Like hell you are. Never known a man more set and willin’ to wear the noose.”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it?” I admitted, leg bouncin’ with nerves as I waited beneath the arch of blossoms and ivy at the end of a walkway strewn with white petals in our backyard. “Wanted this since I was eight and don’t care if it makes me sound like a fuckin’ girl. Always knew if I could only find the woman for me, I’d love her fiercely and forever.”
“So what’s the problem?”
I let out a sound halfway between a sigh and a growl as I raked my hands through my hair. “It’s just, fuck…can you tell me you’ve never wanted somethin’ so much that when you actually got it, the prospect didn’t fuckin’ terrify you?”
Nova stopped his fussin’ and locked eyes with himself in the mirror. A strange expression seized him, one I’d never seen before, somethin’ like yearnin’ muddied up by regret.
“Nah,” he admitted softly. “Can’t say I have.”
“I know it,” Lion Danner said even though he’d pretended not to be listenin’ as he strummed his guitar, practicin’ the song he’d sing for Cress as she walked down the aisle. “Honest to God, I feel it every day bein’ with Rosie.”
“Afraid to lose them?” Ares asked from the front row of seats where he sat and pumped his legs back and forth while he read from Paradise Lost, tryin’ to get the passage he wanted to recite perfectly memorized.
“No,” I said slowly as the pieces shifted and settled in my chest. “It’s not fear of losin’ her. That’s a fear we all got about everyone we love. It’s the fear of happiness itself. What happens to the dreamer after the dream becomes reality? Does it go on bein’ a dream forever, or do you inevitably fuck it up?”
Nova rolled his eyes and slapped me on the shoulder. “Bro, seriously, only you would get so damn melancholy and philosophic on your weddin’ day.”
I shrugged under his hand because it was true, though I wasn’t melancholy, not exactly. How could you not be contemplative on a day like today? I thought of the night before, the creative stupor I’d been in as I feverishly covered Cress from breast to feet in ink. There was somethin’ eatin’ at me that had nothin’ to do with the weddin’ and everythin’ to do with finally bein’ king of The Fallen and knowin’ what leadership and loyalty really meant.
“You mean like what happened to Adam and Eve after the fall?” Ares asked, his eyebrows screwed up as he considered my quandary.
“Yeah, bud, kinda like that.”
“I think,” he said carefully. “They lived happily ever after.”
Nova snorted, and Ares scowled at him as if mortally wounded by his lack of belief.
“Happily ever after doesn’t hafta mean nothin’ ever goes wrong,” he argued, small fists clenched. “It means you love each other through everything, the good and the bad.” He paused, hesitatin’ before looking at me. “Just like what it means to be family, right?”
Fuck, but I felt my heart in my throat as I stared at the little man with the old soul sittin’ there in a black suit with a patch on the breast that said “Best Man.” Mute would’a stood up with me in that role, and I was hesitant to ask anybody to fill it if I couldn’t have him.
But in strange ways, I thought fate had given us Ares to help ease the loss of Mute in our lives. We all needed someone with a slow-ticking, somber soul like those two to keep us honest and grounded.
Just as the eight-year-old did for a group of grown-ass men now.
“Yeah, exactly like that,” I agreed.
“I was a dick,” Nova admitted with a grimace. “Seems sometimes I don’t know how to stop. Sorry, bro.”
“No need,” I assured. “But you might wanna do some thinkin’ in that pretty head of yours, Booth, and see why it is you’re a dick more often than not. Seems to me, a happy man would have a harder time actin’ like an ass.”
“Oh, fuck off,” he muttered, and I laughed at him because it was impossible not to.
There was a rough throat clearing behind me, and I turned my head to see Wrath Marsden at the edge of the stage, hands shoved in his pockets, lookin’ like he’d lost about forty pounds since his accident, since Kylie’s murder, but the fact that he was actually outside the trailer we’d got for him to convalesce in was enough of a miracle for one day.
“Hey, man.” I walked to the edge of the stage and offered him my hand to hoist him up. “You gonna join us?”
We hadn’t found Wrath after everythin’ went down. One day, we thought he was dead, and weeks later, we’d come downstairs and found him sittin’ at our kitchen table lookin’ like a real-life zombie drinking a cup of our coffee. Cress had cried and thrown herself into his lap, and he’d let her, even held her. But I’d seen the apathy in his eyes and the way he’d winced at the pressure she put on his healing wounds, and I’d known Wrath had returned from the dead a different man.
Still didn’t know the specifics of what had happened to him, but if there was one thing I recognized, it was the look of demons lurkin’ in a man’s eyes, and Wrath’s were full of them.
With Kylie gone, Cress and I were the only two souls he had left he could turn to now that his club was disbanded, and we’d taken him in without a word of contention. That same day, I’d gone out with Lion and his truck and brought back an Airstream so Wrath could have his own place on the property.
I’d asked him to be a groomsman one night when I’d found him on the back patio smokin’, but he’d just given me a blank look, snuffed out the stick, and left.
Apparently, that had meant yeah.
He stared at my hand, face completely unanimated by any emotion, eyes a flat, dead grey-blue like slate. And then his hand was in mine, and I was leverin’ his weight up onto the stage with me and the brothers standin’ with me.
They didn’t like him, outside’a Lion who had his own bound with him after takin’ down the Berserkers, but I didn’t care.
They’d come around, and if they didn’t and I told them even a hint of Wrath’s story, they’d get it and get him. The Fallen were named so for a reason; not one’a us was without our tragic stories.
Seconds later, cars started to pull into the drive and park along the road leading down to our cabin, and my nerves hit me again like a battering ram.
“You ready?” Harleigh Rose called as she walked up the path, but honest to God, I forgot her question immediately because she looked so damn pretty.
She’d always been a beautiful girl, and she grew into a beautiful wom
an. It was the bane of Zeus’s and my existence as she got older, but now, I was happy as fuck she’d wound up with the one man I could trust to take care with all that loveliness. Because I knew, the way most people didn’t, that H.R. was soft and sweet as an unfurled rose at the heart under all those thorns, and Lion would always make sure she kept that tenderness and it remained safe from harm.
Lion stood then, mouth open, eyes blown to black by the sight of her.
“Prettiest flower in the whole fuckin’ garden,” he promised her as she stepped up into his arms and let him kiss her.
She pulled away with a smile and then bit his bottom lip playfully. “Thorniest too.”
“Don’t I know it,” he muttered dryly.
I laughed, drawing my sister’s attention. She cocked her head as she took me in and then grinned like a loon. “You look fuckin’ dapper, King.”
“If I look dapper, then you look like a princess,” I countered with a raised brow.
She pursed her lips. “MC princess then.”
“Dapper rebel then,” I retorted.
She laughed, lighter than I’d seen her in years, and bounded up the three steps to the small stage we stood on to hug me so hard it took my breath.
“Easy,” I whispered even as I wrapped her up tight and breathed in that floral scent that somehow suited her. “Try not to break my back before my weddin’, yeah?”
She burrowed her nose into my chest and sighed so heavily it felt like a cleansing. “Love you, big bro. You know that, right? Even if I’m a brat half the time.”
“Only half?”
“King…” she warned, tilting that streaky blond head back so we could lock eyes. “I’m bein’ serious.”
“So was I.” I grinned, then let it drop off my face as I cupped the back of her head and kissed her forehead. “In all the hardest times of my life before Cress, it was my love for you that kept me goin’.”
Instantly, her cerulean blue eyes, our mother’s eyes, went wet with tears that trembled on her lower lids. “Cress’ll be pissed you made me cry and fucked up my makeup.”
“Nah.” I hugged her again because over the past few years, it was rare she’d let me show her affection easy and often as I pleased. “Wish Dad was here,” I admitted into her hair.
She squeezed me. “Me too.”
“Okay, enough huggin’ and cryin’ and all that crap,” Boner bellowed as he walked up the aisle, clapping his hands. “This is a biker wedding, ain’t it? Let’s fuckin’ well act like it then.”
“No more tears,” I promised him as I let H.R. go with one last hug. “Swear it.”
Only, half an hour later, when the dozens of black chairs strewn over the lawn in a small clearing at the side of our property were filled with Fallen brothers, family, and friends, I started regrettin’ my promise. Seein’ the faces of the people who’d been instrumental in my life smilin’ and eager to witness me marry the love of my life moved me in a way that felt like lava wakening in my gut, flooding through my system so hot it felt as if I was bein’ burned alive. Old Sam from the record shop was there, old friends from Entrance Bay Academy and even older friends from Entrance Public, all the Old Ladies sittin’ together already cryin’, and their men tryin’ hard not to be moved by the moment and failin’.
It was a lot to process for a man with an admittedly sensitive heart who felt too much for himself and too often for others. The very air felt thick and sweet as honey with happiness and a degree of relief that the day was finally––even after everything that had happened––here.
And then the bridal party came.
Benny and Carson together, the only men, linkin’ arms and beamin’ like proud fathers.
Rainbow, then Tayline, walking to the rhythm of “The One” by Kodaline as Lion strummed it on his guitar, accompanied by Eugene who played on a giant piano that’d been a pain in the ass to drag out on the grass.
Then Harleigh Rose in all her glory wearin’ a black dress with her yellow hair flowin’ down her back.
Loulou came next, her cloud of moonshine waves like a halo as she glided toward us; her face serene and so beautiful it made my heart ache to think Z was missin’ out on the sight of her like that.
The song changed to “Love Me Tender” by Elvis, and I swallowed thickly as I spotted a flash of white through the trees, and Cressida rounded the corner.
My nose itched with the burn of tears as I looked at her, alone and proud, gorgeous in a way that literally shook me, my hands tremblin’.
She was a fairy tale come to life or like somethin’ out of a dream. The dress was sorta sheer, highlighting the movement of her sweet form through the webbing of lace, and it hung over her shoulders precariously like one puff of wind would expose her. With all’a her hair done in a fancy mass of waves and braids and her heartstoppin’ face done up just enough to make her eyes fuckin’ glow and her mouth a deep, crushed berry colour that begged tastin’, I didn’t think I’d ever see anything or anyone more beautiful.
Struck by her, quaked by the force of love that moved through me and fucked my equilibrium, I was unprepared for the playful wink she shot me as she drew close.
Laughter bubbled up through the fault lines and erupted. I laughed long and low as she grinned at me and started to walk up the steps, only, I decided as she did that I didn’t want to wait one more fuckin’ second to hold her. So I lunged forward and took her arm as she climbed the last stair. Surprised, she paused and tipped her head to look up at me, then lost her train of thought to something she found in my face.
So we stared at each other, suspended on the edge of the stage, locked in each other’s gaze.
“Knew the moment I saw you across Mac’s Grocer parking lot you were the one for me,” I whispered just for her. “Knew it like you were made from me, for me, and you were just slottin’ back into place inside me. Adam’s rib returned to him.”
Those huge whiskey eyes warmed and went wet as she stared up at me with that expression I lived for, that one that said I was her hero and her fuckin’ haven, her bad boy with a good heart that beat just for her.
“I can hardly breathe for loving you right now,” she admitted.
“It’d be a shame if you died on our weddin’ day,” I joked, but I felt the same.
My heart beatin’ too fast and too hard in my chest as if it was tryin’ to break free to get to her.
“If you could tear your eyes away from each other for one fuckin’ moment, Priest could marry ya,” Nova called out, and a ripple of laughter worked through the crowd.
Cress blushed, the dusky rose sweeping over her cheeks and chest so that I just had to reach out and feel it under my fingers before I tucked her into my arm and led her to Priest.
It shocked us both, I think, when we turned to look at the man who would marry us, an ordained minister despite his detestation of religion, and found him smiling.
Not his rare, closed-lipped expression of evil delight that was more like a bloody smear across his face than a smile, or the even more unusual faint tip of his lips to the side that marked genuine pleasure, but a teeth bared, fairly soft smile that made him look almost human.
“You’re smilin’,” I noted, in case he wasn’t aware.
The smile broke under the force of his frown as he glared at me. “Was, yeah.”
“King,” Cress hissed. “You ruined it!”
Priest looked at her, and the smile came back to his eyes. “No ruinin’ today, Cress. Don’t believe in marriage or much else besides, but today, I believe in you and King enough to join the two of you and be fuckin’ proud to do it.”
Cress’s lips trembled. “Thanks, honey.”
He nodded and began the more formal ceremony, but I tuned him out because Cress was lookin’ at me, and my heart was beatin’ too hard and too fast, and I felt sick and fuckin’ dizzy because never in my entire twenty-three years had I conceived of a happiness so big as this.
“You got somethin’ to say to each other, say it now,�
�� Priest finally said.
And it was my turn.
My turn to somehow find the right words for the emotions in my chest that defied reasoning. I was a poet not because I wanted to be, but because it possessed me, compelled me, as if the words were magic, and I the wand that harboured them.
In the chaos of my over full, rioting heart, it was no wonder that poetry was the only way I could hope to express myself.
There was a desert in my mouth and a storm in my skull, a tossing sea in my gut and a strain on soul, but somehow, I found the words I wanted––no––needed to say to my woman before I made her mine.
“I found love when I was eight
Pressed petals the colour of blood
Hidden between the pages
Of a book I was too young to read
* * *
Again,
At that awkward time
When my voice lacked depth
Then suddenly
Fell to the bottom of a well
That signaled maturity and I thought
“Finally, I am old enough to love.”
* * *
But by fifteen, I had seen only wraiths,
Lust like brass when I would have gold
Infatuation thin as gauze and just as easily torn
* * *
At eighteen,
My half-formed soul felt fallow
My dreams withered to husks and tumble weeds
I was old enough for first love, they said
But my heart yearned for that and more
* * *
They couldn’t have known what would happen
That same year
When I saw you across a parking lot
How my heart would age a decade with each beat
And the hollow cage of my chest would be at once so filled
* * *
In a second, I was found.
Too young, too old, too every single thing at once
After the Fall: The Fallen Men, #4 Page 22