ASHES (Ignite Book 3)

by R. J. Lewis

  “I care about my wife. I want her to be at peace. So, I need answers,” Jaxon said, standing in front of him, looking straight in his eyes. “And I need a fucking miracle.”

  Thirty-Nine

  Sara

  I must have sat in my car for fifteen minutes, watching the light rain slide down the wind shield. It was chilly, and the sky was overcast and grey. The morning was gloomy and depressing, and it seemed suitable for the moment. A moment I’d been dreading for a long time.

  Jaxon was blowing up my phone, asking me where I was, if I was at the cemetery. He wouldn’t stop. I understood it was important for him to know I was getting my healing time in, but Jesus, he was being too much of a control freak. The last two days had been nothing but weird as fuck behaviour from him and Damien. I figured it was business, but they watched me a little too hard than I liked.

  I answered him yes and turn off my phone. Just as I stuffed it in my pocket and turned the car off, I heard a motorcycle nearing. I glanced at the rear-view mirror and rolled my eyes as it slowed to a stop next to me. I stepped out of the Escalade and threw my hood over my head.

  “Hi, babysitter,” I said, with a cheeky smile.

  Damien turned his bike off and climbed off the bike. “Nice to see you’re acknowledging me for once.”

  I waved my hand to where we were. “I think it’d be awfully rude not acknowledging you at a cemetery, right?”

  “As opposed to?”

  “As opposed to sitting behind me at the movie theatre when I was with my friends. That wasn’t cool.”

  “Just doing my job. If you don’t like it, you should take it up with management.”

  Yeah, well, management fucked me daily and had a deep-seated issue with me roaming the town on my own without one of the Scorpions. The only say I had about it was pushing for Damien to be the guy there to do it. After years of him around, he was like a brother to me now, and I easily trusted him with my life. Not that I had to trust him with my life, or anything. That was pushing it. Things had cooled off tremendously in Gosnells. Still a bit of crime, still a bit of strife, but it was better than it ever had been before.

  To be honest, I did like his presence. I was feeling on edge recently, and I knew it was the past trying to cut its way into my life again. I hadn’t had these episodes of sadness in a very long time, so when I felt it again this past week, I couldn’t shake the swirl of anxiety at the pit of my stomach telling me something was different. I just didn’t know what yet.

  “You gonna grab those flowers?” Damien then asked, moving to the arched entrance of the cemetery.

  I’d forgotten about them. I opened the car and reached over to the passenger side where a bouquet of flowers had sat for a half hour. I felt a little dumb for getting them. After neglecting her place in the ground for years, it seemed I owed her a lot more than a thirty-dollar roll of shit smelling roses. The gesture was fucking stupid, and I was certain I did it to make myself feel better. Maybe to console myself that I was still her daughter and I ought to have respect for the dead. I looked at things differently now that I was a mother, and I knew I’d like it if my daughter did that for me, even if I’d be too dead to know.

  Damien trailed closely behind me on my way to her grave. When I saw her ogee shaped headstone, I stilled as my eyes dropped to a bouquet of pink tulips. They looked a few days old. I ground my teeth together, unable to fight the pissy feeling inside my chest.

  I felt Damien’s hand run up and down my back, comforting me like I’d gone still because of some heartbreaking emotion. When, really, I was just shitty.

  “You think those flowers are Rita’s?” I asked him through clenched teeth.

  “Probably,” he answered.

  I glanced down at mine. “Why did she pick tulips?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think Mom’s favourite flowers were tulips? Is that why?”

  “I don’t think it matters right now, Sara.”

  Maybe not to him, but right now all I was seeing were pink tulips instead of her headstone, and remembering, once again, how close she’d apparently been to Rita before her death. You’d think years would help lessen the blow of knowing you were replaced, but it didn’t. I still hadn’t confronted her death head-on. This was my first time at her grave and I still couldn’t bear to look at her name carved into the stone.

  “Being here is stupid,” I whispered to myself, already turning around.

  “Don’t go,” Damien said. “Stay a while.”

  “I hate her, Damien, and I love her too. I can’t get past it.”

  “She loved you.”

  “Then why didn’t she try?”

  He looked down at me with sympathy. “Maybe she had to let you go.”

  I gave him a perplexed look. “Why?”

  “Maybe she knew it couldn’t be fixed. Sometimes things stay broken, Sara. Sometimes that’s a lesson in life to let it go and accept what can’t be changed. You ever wonder if maybe she did that? Let you go because you deserved better and she knew it?”

  I never thought of it like that. I ran a hand through my hair, contemplating. “Rita didn’t say those things.”

  “Okay, and who cares what she said? No one’s ever gonna know what she truly felt at the end. But you know what, she improved her life and she didn’t try to reach out. Doesn’t that speak of shame? She couldn’t even look at Jaxon’s mom in the eye. She could have easily been punishing herself.”

  “She was,” said a voice.

  I whipped my head around, meeting Rita’s eyes. I was quiet, watching her with utter surprise. She looked different. No make-up, no tight fitted clothes or bitch-face. She looked…broken. Her dark hair was down, her eyes welled with tears.

  “She loved you,” she told me. “It was only fair that you know that. All bullshit aside, she had her swings, but she was fighting. I swear, she was.”

  I looked at her and then at Damien. This was too serendipitous. “Did Jaxon set this up, Damien?”

  He stiffened a nod. “Yeah.”

  “Why isn’t he here with me then?”

  “He…couldn’t stomach being here.”

  “Why?”

  Damien didn’t answer. Rita took a step forward, looking like she was nervous. “Remy will be here in a minute.”

  I went lightheaded and my legs wobbled. I collapsed to the ground, shocked. Damien hurried to my side and stood me up. I felt faint. I looked up at him, already crying. “Is that true?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yeah, Sara, Jaxon went to Edge.”

  “Edge knew all along where he was?”

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Remy’s been operating off the grid. Still in the club, just not an exclusive member.”

  “This whole time?”

  “No, not this whole time. Only in the last couple years. He was behind the massacre in Winthrop. He’s…taken over that city now, and he’s…married.”

  They watched me intently, gauging my reaction with…what looked like worry. Before I could respond, the sound of a motorcycle ripped through the air. I turned around where the parking lot and watched as a black sports bike turned in. Not at all the same bike as before.

  I stood, wobbling still, and watched the large figure – much larger than my memory served me – hop off the bike. When he removed his helmet, and saw his face, I started sobbing. I couldn’t hold back. My chest ached. I put my hand over my mouth in disbelief as he walked through the gate and toward me, looking straight at me.

  Somewhere in the background, Damien and Rita stepped back to give us privacy.

  He stopped in front of me, looking at me with those eyes – those eyes that used to beg for a touch, a kiss, a piece of love. Just love. Love was the only thing Remy ever wanted. His eyes were softer than before. He looked at me with unshed tears, taller, stronger looking than ever.

  “Hey,” he began. And that was all it took for me to breakdown. I fell to the ground crying and he caught me, wrapping his large arms around me. I sank
into the familiarity of his touch, his scent, and let all those feelings I’d carried in my heart and soul bleed out of me. I looked up at him, disbelieving, my eyes roaming every inch of him.

  “Your hair is long?” I half-laughed, half-cried as I grabbed a loose strand.

  He laughed too, his voice raw. “Yeah, I got the fuckin’ hair that blows in the wind now, can you believe it? Don’t tell Jaxon that. He’ll have my head.”

  He was so different, but the same too. I touched his face with my hands. Pressed my palms against his chest. Just to make sure he was real. Damien and Rita had at some point backed away, giving us space.

  We sat there for a while, taking each other in, smiling randomly, awkwardly, sadly. Then I took his hand and held it tightly. I looked him in the eyes and whispered out, “I’m so sorry.”

  His eyes watered straight away. He took a deep breath, trying to compose himself. It looked like he’d been wanting to hear those words for a long time. So I repeated it, aching, “I’m so sorry, Remy.”

  He shook his head. “I’m the fucking crazy one out of us, birdy. I wasn’t right. I…I had problems. I shouldn’t have hurt you like that. I recognize my faults.”

  “I shouldn’t have lied.”

  “No, you were stuck. You had to. I know that now. I see it. I didn’t see it before, because I was so angry at you, Sara.” He shook his head, buried in his pain. “But I was angrier at myself, because I knew what I was. I knew what I’d done. I’ve got a lifetime of wrongs to live with.”

  He squeezed my hand back and we breathed each other in. He looked me over, smiling softly.

  “You’re free,” I said, catching the look in his eyes. “Aren’t you?”

  He looked sheepish, looking down at our clasped hands as he nodded. “I’m in love, Sara. I’m in love with a great woman.”

  My tears fell fast and hard. “I’m so happy for you, Remy.”

  I was. I was so fucking happy. There was a twinge of pain, but nothing compared to the true joy I felt for him.

  “I got a baby on the way,” he said, proudly. “I can’t wait to meet him.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  The rain fell all around a little harder. It was sort of symbolic. Everything dirty was washing away. The guilt. The sadness. The pain. We looked at each other for a very long time, not once looking back to the past.

  “Jaxon reached out,” he told me. “He said it would make you happy to know how I was doing, and it would set you free. Are you free now, Sara?”

  I nodded and wiped at my tears. “Yeah, Rem. Too many nights hurting over this.”

  He nodded, understanding. “Too much time wasted.”

  “Yeah.”

  He let out a sigh, looking raw now as he took me in with this look of finality. I knew what was coming. My heart stopped beating, but I was ready.

  “I can’t see you again after this, Sara,” he said, sadly. “I gotta move forward. I gotta put you in the past forever now.”

  “For eternity,” I whispered, squiggling his wrist with my finger. “That’s what I used to say to you when you used to leave. Frank told me. You’d say, ‘Good bye Sara,’ and I’d say, ‘Hello for all eternity, Remy.’ And you’d wave and point to your wrist where the symbol was. Isn’t that right?”

  A tear fell from his eye. “That’s right, Sara.”

  “Then no good byes. Just hello forever, okay?”

  He wrapped an arm around me and tugged me into his chest, embracing me for the final time.

  It hurt. It hurt so hard, I cried. But it made me complete. Letting go gave me peace.

  We were both free.

  The loop

  …Twelve years old…

  A boot slammed into his face. He woke up to blood and pain, a surprised cough sputtering out of his mouth as he blinked up at his father’s face.

  “Fucking animal,” his father cursed as he grabbed the collar of Remy’s shirt by his fist and shoved him out of bed. He landed hard on the hardwood floor, no time to collect his thoughts as his father landed another punch across his face and then dragged him out of the room.

  “What’s going on?” His mother’s shrill voice sounded out. “Oh, God, Antonio, leave him alone! Put him down –”

  She was silenced by a slap across the face.

  “Don’t you fucking start with me, Maria!” Antonio roared at her, dragging Remy further down the hall until they were in the kitchen. He forced him to his feet and brought his face to the stove top. Remy’s eyes widened, and he tried to jerk from his father’s grip, but he couldn’t move. He felt the heat of the element as his old man forced him closer, so close his skin burned. Like being cooked alive. A worm over a fire pit.

  “You see the crumbs in there, boy?” his father shouted. “What have I said about cleaning up after yourself, you little shit?”

  Remy clenched his teeth, choosing not to respond. Angry, Antonio forced his face closer. His cheek burned from the heat, but he didn’t beg. Remy never begged anymore. He’d been through enough pain to know begging never did shit.

  “Stop it!” his mother pleaded from behind him. “Stop it!”

  “Are you an animal, you filthy little rat?”

  Remy shut his eyes, swallowing the groan of pain climbing up his throat. He tried to think about good things, happy things, only it had been so long since he’d even known what happiness was, and the burn…Dear god, the burn was something fierce, and it was pulling him back into the present, to his cheek on the verge of melting straight off.

  “Let him go!” Maria shouted hysterically.

  Antonio let go abruptly and redirected his attention to her. Remy fell to the ground, his head spinning, his face aching from the heat that felt like it’d been branded on him. All energy drained from him as he lay there in a heap of sweat and groans. He looked up just as his father grabbed Maria by the neck and shoved her against the counter of the kitchen.

  “You want to involve yourself?” he screamed. “Is that it? You want to be part of this?”

  She sobbed, clawing at his arm as he choked her. Remy tried to move. Everything ached from yesterday’s beating. He crawled, his palms slipping against the drops of blood falling from his nose. He barely made it when his father turned around and kicked him in the face again. This time he blacked out for a few seconds, falling to the ground, his body shaking from the agony. Somewhere in the background Rita’s cries erupted, high pitched and terrified. She was nearby, but he couldn’t even lift his head to know where it was coming from. He couldn’t move to help her. He couldn’t move to help his mom. He couldn’t move for shit.

  He was twelve, weak, and fucking useless. He couldn’t save them from his father’s hands. It was all Remy’s fault. When they got hurt, it was always his fault.

  Antonio slapped her around and then stormed out of the house after that. They knew where he was headed. Back to the liquor store for more of his holy grail. Whiskey was the name, and Remy hoped his old man would drown in it one day.

  Maria rushed to him, dropping to the floor and gathering him in her arms.

  “I’m so sorry, Remy,” she cried, shakily rubbing the blood off his face. “I’m so sorry. We’re gonna leave. You hear me? We’re gonna leave. You, me and Rita, we’re going to get out of here. We’re going to go far, far away, and he’ll never find us. He’ll never touch us again.”

  He stared vacantly at the floor, knowing her promises were bullshit. How many times would he hear them before doing something about it?

  He pulled away from her and stood up, rushing to Rita’s cries. She managed to climb out of her crib and was standing by the doorway of their bedroom, holding onto the doorframe, her brown eyes searching for him.

  “Rebee?” she called out, lifting her fat arms out to him. Remy quickly picked her up and held her to him and she instantly quieted down.

  “I’ve got her,” Maria said, rushing to his side. “Here, give her to me.”

  Warily, he stepped away from
her, clutching Rita to his chest. “You been drinking again?”

  She shook her head feverishly. “No.”

  “Look at me.”

  She looked at him and he stared into her eyes and then down her body, inspecting every inch of her night gown, searching for fresh stains of any kind. When he was satisfied she was sober, he handed Rita over.

  “Can’t do this anymore, Ma,” he told her, wincing at the pain. “I don’t wanna be like Brett, don’t wanna run away from you like he did, but…I can’t keep doing this.”

  She nodded profusely. “Like I said, I’m gonna make it up to you. We’re gonna leave. Just give me time. A bit more time, okay? I promise.”

  Her pleading eyes softened him. His mother was his soft spot. She needed him. Rita needed him too. There was no escape, no way he could escape this bullshit without feeling like he was going to leave them both behind. And if keeping them out of harm’s way meant he was the one getting beaten, he’d take it.

  What other choice did he have?

  He gulped down a mouthful of blood and walked back to his room. He closed the door and collapsed to the floor, his entire body a ball of pain and nerves. He shut his eyes and tried to breathe, but his lungs ached, and his heart fucking hurt something awful.

  It hurt and hurt.

  “Oy, Rem, you look like shit, bro,” Kieran said when Remy stepped out and found him waiting by the driveway of his mobile home.

  After this early morning’s beating, he didn’t stop to look at himself in the mirror. It was always a fucked-up sight. He couldn’t remember a time his face wasn’t covered in bruises, or healing bruises, or even faded bruises. Nah, they were always fresh. The pain was a visitor that came knocking daily, and he’d gotten too used to its company.

  “You should really do something about it,” Kieran continued, shuddering as he studied his face on their way to school.

  “Like what?”

  “Like call child services or something. I’m sure there’s child-thirsty adults beggin’ to rescue a sad looking soul like yourself.”