Kit pulled at a hose and worked hard and smart, her father at her side—quiet as was his nature. Steady. Her dad was steady in a way her mother had been drawn to and in a way that would help Spring recover. They’d all help her. When her big sister was ready.
And gods and fates take it all, but she understood something of what Spring was going through. Good god she did.
But damn, she also didn’t.
Because Spring hadn’t just been broken in spirit. Spring had been a mess of blood and compound fractures. And when she’d woken that night, she’d been unable to say much for the two seconds she was conscious, but the one word was clear: No.
When Kit had tried to ride with her in the ambulance, Spring had somehow found the strength to come to, and that was all she’d said to Kit. No.
Kit had almost lost it herself right then and there, but Lee had fit himself against her side and pulled her in tight. She hadn’t fought his pull as she’d watched her sister being carried away, unconscious and tied to a gurney, a guilty-looking Casper at her side.
Casper had taken care of Spring, stayed by her bedside during visiting hours all week, and it seemed to be his lot in life to take part in the care and feeding of the Markham sisters.
Ten years previous, it had been Kit’s bedside he’d taken. But this, what had happened to all the veterans and their families, the blackmail, what had happened to Spring herself...that was all on Rena, and still Casper was taking it on as his own burden to bear.
Jesus, fuck.
Rena.
Kit stopped her work on the truck and slid out from underneath the vehicle, whispering then shouting out as many cuss words she could think of as she paced.
And then she was in her dad’s arms, his strength surrounding her.
Her dad knew now, and so although she didn’t cry, she did let her dad hold her as she cursed up a storm.
She’d been ready to kill her best friend.
When they’d run in, guns blazing, and they’d seen Rena with a gun pointed at the beaten Spring, her spine exposed…
Before Kit could make a move, one of the two deputies who’d met them at the house gave a warning to Rena, but it had been too late. Kit had watched as Rena fell, blood pooling near her old friend’s heart and head. Two shots. That was all it had taken to bring down an enemy who’d once been a friend.
And yet, here it was, a week later, and Kit still couldn’t deal with all the shit rolling around in her mind.
“Daddy,” she whispered and even though the tough part of her wanted to take such a childish word back, she wouldn’t. Because her dad took that minute to pull her in tighter and give her forehead and temple a kiss.
“Baby girl,” was all he said.
And they stood there.
For minutes, hours, who knew.
She just knew this moment was only one of the moments she’d denied herself this past decade. She’d had people to turn to, and she hadn’t.
So had Rena. Her former best friend had had people. She’d just chosen to hide away. She’d chosen to feed her anger and her hate, in much the same way Kit had fed her guilt for so long.
Kit had met people at therapy, through Honor the Sacrifice, an organization that helped Veterans and their families, and also through the VA who were worse off than Rena. Families of the dead. Those who had quadriplegia. And still many of them made the effort to move forward. However, when Kit thought these things, she felt worse, because Rena had been a monster in the end, but it wasn’t Kit who’d been the one to lose control of her body forever, only for thirty hours.
She also felt like shit for those thoughts because once, Rena had not been a monster. She’d been a friend, a sister, a comrade.
Kit broke away from her dad’s hug and he walked back into Markham’s Everyday.
She’d just finished cleaning up her tools for the day when she saw Lee’s bike pull into the back lot of the hardware store where she’d been working on the truck.
Everything in her went still.
Quiet.
Peaceful.
And she smiled.
She’d tried to reach that point of meditation in a million different classes, yoga studios, and they’d all turned to shit. She’d only done it for Eagle and at the suggestion of someone at the VA. But shit, meditation and fucking yoga just weren’t Kit Markham. Autumn or Spring, maybe. Winter, definitely not. Kit? Aw, fuck no.
Leland Devereux, though. Just his presence was like a prayerful benediction of tranquility.
Fuck.
That was kind of awesome.
Her smile stayed in place as she brushed off her jean shorts and grabbed her leather jacket with its club patch proudly displayed.
She threw on the jacket and stepped into Lee’s space, but before he could say shit, she grabbed him, one hand on his jacket, the other resting against his jaw, red claws scratching at his bearded cheek as she sought out his mouth, meeting his harsh breaths, tangling his tongue with her own. She plastered her front to his front, and then his hands were on her ass, feeling her, sliding a little underneath the small scrap of fabric.
Her heartbeat pitter-pattered in that stupid way hearts did when a person was in love, and she smiled against his lips.
“All right, lover boy,” she said, her breath coming in pants as she extricated herself from his goddamned beautiful and handsy grip. “Dad’s right inside–”
“And he’s already seen my hands all over you, babe,” Lee interrupted.
She raised her eyebrow. “Yeah, and we’re even more fucking horny than we were as teenagers, Lee. I don’t want my dad seeing your hands up my short shorts.”
Lee looked sheepish. “I didn’t realize—”
Kit’s laugh flew out of her.
“We’re so fucked up,” she said, but she didn’t mean it in a bad way.
“Babe, I hate to be an ass, but my dick likes it when you say ‘fuck’ in any way, shape, or form, and right now, your daddy is coming out the door, and I’m thinkin’ he’s gonna try to get us to go to that Meatless Monday shit at my parent’s place.” He hooked her belt, pulling her closer, and she let him drag her to him. “And babe, I don’t want to eat fucking vegetarian tonight.” He winked and she knew he was going to be a stupidly in love idiot. “I want to eat Kitten.” Yeah, stupid. Just like that.
“Idiot,” Kit said, but the word was spoken just above a whisper.
She was thinking. Too hard, maybe.
He pulled her around, guiding her to sit behind him on the bike.
“It’s no Harley,” she whispered against Lee’s ear, wrapping herself around him, “but it’ll do.” She held on tight, ready to feel her hair blowing in the breeze and the freedom of riding along the open road.
He turned his head sideways and although his trademark smirk was there, so too had a serious look as he replied with their old practiced script. “Well, darlin’,” he drawled, “Harley’s are great. But I’m a Cajun boy, and Triumphs are built for a good rough and tumble. You keep that Harley, Kit Markham. And I’ll keep my Triumph and the woman on the back of it.”
“How about I be fucking cheesy right now and say I’ll keep you too, Leland Devereux?”
His chuckle reached down deep, and she started laughing as well.
“I’d say if you’re being that fucking cheesy, babe, you need my dick more than I thought.”
She punched his shoulder awkwardly because she was still sitting on the back of the started but unmoving bike, but she felt the sudden rush of the bike as it jolted forward in a steady increase of speed.
Tight and tighter.
She held onto him as they made their way down winding roads.
Sometimes, she let her hands fall from his body, not because she didn’t want to be close to him, but because she was Kit Markham.
She’d changed.
And she needed the freedom she’d found with Lee, but she’d also started her journey of freedom before that. On the inside. And she’d built a strong woman she was proud
of, a woman who was a partner to Lee, the second of the Fallen Eagles MC, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a lover. She’d done that.
So, she let her arms fly out a bit at her sides, embracing the wind, the force of nature she’d been made into, and once she was done riding the waves of a summer wind, she grabbed on tightly to her man.
She’d thought a few short weeks earlier that riding on the back of Lee's bike was a refuge, but no. Riding with Lee wasn’t just a refuge. It was beauty.
So often, she still felt at war—within herself, outside of herself, in the nightmares that still rode her.
Yes, war was a terrible beauty.
But the thing about something being a terrible beauty was that everyone always forgot about the ‘beauty’ part, the honesty that came from war…
The purity that resulted...
The return to instinct and nature…and what that return meant.
For Kit, it meant becoming stronger, more cunning, smarter. But it also meant helping those who’d been lost in the trenches, whose minds or bodies or souls had been left behind.
War brought out the ugly, but it also brought out the good Samaritan, the caregiver, the strength of character in the everyday man, and a person’s true heart.
The beauty part was that war often revealed the perseverance of the human spirit.
Kit had clung so long to the ‘terrible’ part, she’d forgotten the ‘beauty’. But holding onto Lee as the summer sunset bled its oranges and pinks and fire across the skyline of home, she knew she’d finally learned the greatest lesson from her time in the trenches: Just as the road to hell was paved with good intentions, so too, sometimes, the path toward ‘beauty’ was paved with all that was ‘terrible’ and ‘ugly’ in the world.
You had to hold tight to that beauty, though, because the terrible was often around the next curve.
And it was a long road home to the beauty if you let it slip through your fingers.
A Terrible Beauty Page 10