Scars of Yesterday (Sons of Templar MC Book Book 8)

by Anne Malcom

  People survived things like this, surely. They had to. Mothers had no choice but to survive anything and everything.

  Mothers had to put on false faces to assure their sons that they would be okay in the hospital without them. That’s what I would do if alive stopped being the word used to describe Kace.

  I would be nothing but a museum of pain. But I would not let my children see that. I would be a woman in a mask.

  But I couldn’t think of that right now.

  Instead, I kissed my son and murmured that everything was going to be okay. Told him I loved him. Watched him leave, watching my heart and strength go with him.

  People approached me. Women took turns sitting next to me, holding my hand, handing me coffee, sometimes speaking, though I couldn’t remember what they said.

  At some point the doctor came out again. My heart crawled up my throat as I watched her slow walk toward our encampment. There was nothing on her face. Of course there wasn’t. Doctor’s couldn’t wear their news on their faces. Couldn’t carry their heart on their sleeve. Being human amongst all of this sickness and death was the quickest way to go insane.

  I knew that because we’d all clutched on to our humanity with bloody fingertips in the midst of the worst years. After Laurie.

  She was coming to tell me he was dead. However long it took her to get here was my remaining time to clutch on to that singular word.

  Alive.

  Three seconds.

  Two.

  One.

  None.

  The doctor stood directly in front of me.

  Bex was beside me now, not holding my hand, because that wasn’t exactly her style. Which I was grateful for. I didn’t want to be touched. She was close enough that I could feel her body tense, waiting for impact. Everyone was. No one thought he was going to make it. It became clear to me now. They’d been listening better before, when the doctor had explained his injuries.

  They were ready for death. They were waiting to watch me hear about it. So they could try to do something. Save the human in me.

  But there was no saving me.

  After this moment, I’d be human for my children. I’d fuse my mask to my face, but I’d be empty inside.

  “You can see him now,” the doctor said.

  The words didn’t penetrate at first because I’d been trying to block out words of death. I blinked rapidly.

  “He’s not awake,” she continued. “We’ve got him in an induced coma. There is some brain swelling that needs to go down before he can wake up. Once that happens, we will be able to gage the full extent of his injuries. For now, he’s stable. Serious, but stable. You won’t be able to see him for long, but I’m sure he’d love to hear your voice.”

  She said the last part with kindness. With a humanness about her. Her eyes smiled ever so slightly, but there was still a detachment there that I understood and envied.

  Serious but stable.

  Not dead.

  I still got to hold on to the word alive. But now came the complexities of what that meant. Alive but... what? Brain dead? Paralyzed? Unable to remember my name?

  If he could open his eyes and breathe on his own, it would be a victory. Surely, I could handle anything else.

  I didn’t want to see him. To see him hooked up to things. To see him in a hospital bed without his cut, without his smile, without his ease.

  But I had to.

  That was my job.

  I’d made the decision to become and Old Lady again. I’d known the risks. Known that this life could steal him from me at any moment. All the while, I’d been worried about gunshots and explosions when it was a semi-truck that might steal my second chance. My second life.

  Strength was required here. The club was all around me. I couldn’t disrespect Kace with my fear. With all of my ugly worries. So I stood, my knees thankfully holding me.

  I followed the doctor in silence. Sterile smells invaded my senses as we walked past rooms. I didn’t want to get to Kace’s room. Be faced with him while fragile.

  But I eventually reached his room, because there was no room for wants in times like these.

  He looked worse than I’d imagined. Which had been pretty bad. One of his legs was in a cast, with scary looking metal prongs going through the plaster and presumably into his skin and bone. His body still looked big, crowding the small hospital bed, though the tube down his throat and the machines he was attached to looked bigger still. White bandages covered his head. Had they done brain surgery? Had someone cut into his skull?

  “I know it’s overwhelming to see him like this,” the doctor conveyed softly. I hadn’t caught her name. I hadn’t wanted to know it. If there was still a chance that she was going to tell me that Kace was dead, I didn’t want to know her name.

  “He has gotten through the worst of it,” she continued. “The next few days will be critical, but he’s young. He is healthy, and strong, which are all of the ingredients needed to get through this.” Her eyes found mine. “And he has a life to fight for, and obviously, a whole lot of love. I know I’m a doctor and supposed to speak purely on the science of things, but sometimes, love can be what brings people back from accidents this.”

  She left on that, though her words hadn’t made me feel particularly warm or hopeful. Ranger had also many reasons to live. He was strong. He was loved. If there had been a way he could’ve fought his way back to us, he would’ve done it.

  I stood in the doorway, just staring at Kace. I wanted to hover there, maybe forever. Because in this doorway, he was alive, none of the realities of what his life might be—what my life might be—could catch me in this doorway.

  My boot moved. Then the other. He looked even was worse when I got to his bedside. The side of his face was swollen, covered with scratches and scrapes. From his face being scraped across the road, I guessed. My stomach lurched at the vision of his injuries. How something simple like a driver’s error, a distracted moment, could end so many things.

  It wasn’t as quiet in here as I’d expected. I had imagined without Kace’s presence, without his smile, his easy words, his hard words, without any of his words really, that there would be nothing but a cruel silence filling the room. The same one that was there when I was cleaning my husband’s bloody body two years ago.

  But there was the beep of the monitors he was strapped to. A low hum. Sounds of nurses, patients and doctors moving around in the hallways. My heart thumping between my ears.

  My fingers moved to trail his. They were slightly scraped up too. The rings he usually wore were gone. I wondered what happened to them. Had the doctors taken them off? What about the necklace Lily made him that he wore every day, even in the shower?

  I checked his neck. That was gone too.

  I was thankful for his tattoos. For the permanence of them. His identity, his personality, stamped on his skin so he didn’t seem so anonymous laying in this bed. He was somebody. He was ours.

  “I don’t think you can actually hear me right now,” I rasped, my voice a hoarse whisper. “I think maybe that’s something doctor’s say to people to try to make them feel better. To soften all the hard edges of this. Or maybe because the talking thing isn’t even for you. Maybe it’s for me. Being able to talk to you is a reminder you’re not gone.” My fingers interlaced with his. He was still warm.

  “I know I’m meant to sit here and tell you I know you’re going to make it through. Know you’d never leave us. But that’s not how it works. You are not in control of this. Something else is. That makes it so much harder, doesn’t it? That neither of us are in control of what life will look like. I’ve gotta say, I can’t even think of a life that doesn’t have you in it. You managed to find your way into our lives, and it just isn’t fair for you to leave us yet.” I paused, tears prickling the backs of my eyes.

  I took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling, doing my best to hold them back. I couldn’t let them fall. Not yet. I’d either cry with joy when he opened his eyes and s
aid my name, or I’d fall apart in the shower after burying the second man I’d loved.

  Either way, I had to hold it together for now.

  “We’ll be waiting for you,” I whispered. “To come back to us.”

  Six Months Later

  “Okay, babe, I’m not a snob, not by any stretch of the imagination. But I’m afraid I’m not doing my job as your Old Man if I let you walk in there, let alone catch whatever STD is living on the sheets in those rooms.”

  I smiled, watching Kace screw up his face at the exterior of the motel. He was still leaning on a cane that he was expected to need for another few weeks. He’d tried to tell me he didn’t, but that hadn’t worked. Not with me. Not with Lily. Or Jack. Or even any of the macho men of the Sons of Templar. Sure, they were mens’ men, alpha males to the max, but they also weren’t about to let their brother jeopardize his health for any kind of dumb masculinity bullshit.

  It hurt me to see him need to use it. The slight hardness in his eyes illustrating that he was in pain. But he was alive to feel pain. And as much as I hated for him to suffer, that was all that mattered. And the doctors had assured us—me, many times—that he was going to heal completely as long as he used the cane, did his rehab and took it easy.

  He did most of those things.

  Except when it came to sex and his bike. Two things he did not ever do easy. I should’ve fought harder, but I was a weak, selfish woman. I liked being fucked hard by my Old Man. Liked being on the back of his bike.

  We’d just gotten off it and were standing in front of a familiar motel.

  It had definitely fallen into disrepair since the last time I was here. Which was saying something, since it wasn’t that long ago since I’d last been here. Even though it seemed like eons had passed.

  Where it used to only look somewhat questionable but functional for a road trip traveler who was tired, hungry and didn’t have many other choices, the motel was now a place even the most desperate of long haulers wouldn’t likely venture into. They’d get another large coffee from the gas station up the road and take their chances.

  I liked that it had slowly started to decay since the day I came here. That it was crumbling to ruin. Because one day it wouldn’t be here anymore. One day, I wouldn’t need it to be here.

  And it wasn’t meant to be anything but ugly. If someone had bought it, redid it, tried to make it something desirable, comfortable, pretty, I would’ve hated it. This was right.

  I reached out to squeeze Kace’s hand. “The first time I came here, I’d just lost my baby.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath beside me. I didn’t look at him. I found solace in the crumbling paint and a crooked sign.

  “It was after Jack,” I continued. “Another boy. Four months along. There was no reason for it. Nothing we did wrong. The doctor’s said it just... happens sometimes. They can’t explain why. Other than death is all around us. Death doesn’t always make sense, doesn’t target the evil, the deserving. It just... is.”

  I sighed, thinking of the hell I’d gone through six months ago, waiting for Kace to wake up, terrified he never would or that he’d be changed forever. Then seeing him struggle with the most basic of things, seeing him grit his teeth through the most basic of things, trying to hide the extent of his pain because he didn’t want me to feel any.

  Those six months had been hard. On me. On Kace. On the kids. But they’d also been... something else entirely. We’d created something.

  “It was the first time I’d really experienced it, death,” I continued. “And in the most brutal and horrific way. My baby died inside me. No matter what the doctor said, no matter what Ranger said, I knew it was my fault. I was the reason for it. There was no way to breathe under that weight. Not with the most understanding, loving husband. Or kind, supportive friends. There was only escape. So that’s what I did. I stopped here because I was tired. Because I needed somewhere to hide. To tend to my wounds. And because I liked its ugliness. Liked that the sheets were scratchy, the bathroom dirty. It’s what I needed at the time. Eventually, someone came to get me.”

  “Ranger?” Kace guessed.

  I realized then it was the first time I’d heard Kace say his name. Surely, that couldn’t have been right. It wasn’t as if Kace was afraid of my husband’s ghost. Wasn’t like he was living in fear of my dead husband. He hadn’t ever made me feel guilty or uncomfortable for still mentioning him. Still grieving. There was no forcing me to forget him, to move on. Kace was perfectly comfortable with sharing me with my dead husband.

  Yet I hadn’t ever heard him say his name out loud.

  Was that on purpose? Had he waited for me to bring him up because he didn’t want to push me? Hurt me? I made a mental note to go back to that thought later.

  “No, not Ranger,” I answered.

  My mind went back to those memories. Before all of this, before Kace, the recollections coming back in crisp detail. Stark color. As if they had just happened yesterday.

  But now they were blurrier. My pain couldn’t get through as easily. Like my body had some kind of protective shell around it. Or maybe I was finally starting to heal.

  “It was Gage,” I clarified. “I’m sure that Ranger fought him hard on being the one to come and get me. No one mentioned it, but I know it was most likely not pretty. He wasn’t exactly the kind of man who would sit back and let anyone else be with his wife when she was in pain. Especially his best friend. But he was also a man who knew when to step back, even if it hurt him. Which I know it did. But he knew me well enough to understand I couldn’t face him, not then. And he loved me enough to put every one of his instincts and needs aside. Because he’d just lost a baby too. He was bleeding too. But he wanted to tend to my wounds first. Like always.”

  I smiled. It was easier to remember these things about him now. It still hurt, I figured it always would, at least a little. But now I could see Ranger more clearly. His death didn’t permeate every thought of him.

  “Gage didn’t seem like the right person, before all of that happening. You wouldn’t look at him and think that he was. But these Sons of Templar men all tend to surprise you.”

  I glanced back from the motel to look at Kace.

  “I thought I was going to be finished then. I’d survive, of course, because I had Jack at home. I had Ranger. There was a whole life beyond my pain. My plan was to leave it all here. Like a time capsule of suffering. Suspended, yet still connected to me somehow. My pain did stay here, yet it was also still inside of me. Gage helped me understand I wasn’t finished. Some things would just be different. Life did carry on. I’d drive by here sometimes, though. With an almost kind of cockiness. That I’d been dealt my pain and I’d survived it. Then Ranger died. I didn’t come here immediately. No, there wasn’t time. Wasn’t space for that. There were two children to care for. There were things to do. There were lies to tell myself. It came much later, that visit. But it came. And like last time, Gage brought me back again. But I left a lot here. Almost all of me. Left it to die.”

  I paused, sucked in the air that smelled faintly of the fast food place across the street. “Then I met you. You grew new things inside of me. You changed me. And I want to show you this, the last of my pain. Maybe I want to show myself I don’t need it anymore. To go to this place for a different reason.”

  I sucked in another breath. Deeper this time.

  “I’ll always love two men,” I said. “One dead. One alive. He is buried, but what I have for him, it’s eternal. It doesn’t go away. I don’t work that way.” I looked up, but I found myself afraid, and that was unfamiliar. When was the last time I’d felt afraid for myself? To see the look on a man’s face, to see if it was painted with rejection.

  He didn’t give me anything. The master of the poker face.

  It was torture.

  “If you want me, you have to know that,” I continued. “That I’ll always love him. He will always live for me. I can’t change that.”

  “Baby,”
he murmured, lifting his hands to cup my face. “There’s not a single thing I want to change about you, sure as fuck not the way you love. I can handle you loving your dead husband. As fucked up as it is, I’ll only love you more for it. I’ll make it my personal mission to stay alive longer than you do so you don’t ever have to feel the pain of that loss ever again.”

  “Don’t ever leave me,” I whispered.

  “Not a worldly or other worldly thing can take me from you,” he promised, having proved this six months ago. The doctor had told us—after he’d woken up—that his recovery was nothing short of miraculous.

  So Kace had kept the promise he’d made all that time ago. About preforming miracles.

  “What do you think about us getting married?” I asked, sitting in front of the empty pool on a rickety sun lounger.

  “I think you need to not suggest things like that when I’m staring at what is quite possibly a dead rat being consumed by one of its own kind. I need a little romance, please,” Kace replied from his own sun lounger.

  I smiled. “What? The dead rats aren’t doing it for you?”

  “They do it for my plenty. But I have an ego. I like control. As you well know.” His gaze went dark, and my stomach dipped in a delightful way.

  “So because of all of this, and because I do only plan on proposing once and plan on you only being proposed to once, I’m gonna need to take the lead on this. But if you want, when I do mine—at an undisclosed place and time when I catch you by surprise—if you aren’t enchanted, we can tell everyone the dead rat story instead of mine. That okay?”

  Warmth bloomed in my stomach. An unfamiliar feeling in this place. This place reserved for my wounds and scars, my sorrows.