by Drew Elyse
Since I knew Norma, her mother, I didn’t question this further. It wasn’t uncommon for the girls to make up all sorts of ailments and surgeries for real and fake relatives alike. Norma, I knew for a fact, had bad vision.
“I’ll rework the schedule. Do you want me to see if someone will switch nights with you?” Finding someone to cover a shift was always easy. Plenty of the girls would take an extra night and the added income it meant. Getting someone to just switch was trickier, but it was part of my job.
“Nah. If someone offers, I’ll take it. But I just need to get off that night regardless.”
I might have actually sighed. This was part of why Candy had been put on the private party list. She didn’t make my life hard.
“You’ve got it. I’ll let you know if I schedule you in somewhere else.”
She read the dismissal for what it was. It was obvious when her bright red bottom lip puffed out in a ridiculous pout. I was the one going to end up needing eye surgery from how often I’d been rolling them.
“You really aren’t going to tell me anything?” she pressed.
“I’m really not going to tell you anything.”
There was a solid knock at the door, louder than any of the girls usually did unless they were having a freak out of some kind—in which case the knocks were faster and accompanied by yelling or whining.
“Come in,” I called, and Candy recognized the fight was pointless. As the door swung open and Gauge filled the entryway, she stood to go.
After looking him over, she asked, “You’re one of the married ones, aren’t you?”
“Happily,” he returned.
She looked over her shoulder at me as she walked out. “Why is it the taken ones always come around?”
I chuckled at her, but that lightness dissipated when I noticed Gauge didn’t look amused—at all. It wasn’t like I had spent much time around the guy, but I’d seen him at Daz’s party. He hadn’t been getting into the show, as he wouldn’t since he was—by his own declaration—happily married, but he hadn’t seemed uptight. Standing there right then, he was radiating something intense I couldn’t put my finger on.
Subconsciously, I got to my feet. “What can I do for you?”
“We’re gonna need you and Roy to hold down the fort here for a while,” he said.
There was something in the way he said it, a gravity in his voice that underlined the tension in his body, that had my reply of, “Of course,” coming out hesitantly. My confirmation that I would handle it didn’t seem to settle him at all.
“All the brothers will be out of town for a few days. Maybe a week. Daz might be gone longer. Whenever some of the guys start getting back, we’ll check in. Spoke to Rick before I came here. He said he’d be on call in case you and Roy need backup for anything, but we think the two of you can handle things,” he went on.
“Okay,” I responded, because I wasn’t sure what else there was to say. Obviously there was something big going on, something way more important than the day-to-day Roy and I absolutely could cover on our own. “We’ll take care of things here.”
“Great. Thanks, Avery,” he said, and suddenly he seemed all about getting out of there.
It was probably crossing a line, it was almost certainly not even a little bit my business, but the fact that he’d said Daz might be gone longer had me curious. As he walked away, I couldn’t stop myself from blurting out, “Can I ask what’s going on?”
Gauge stopped, and it took a moment before he turned back to face me. In the time since he’d turned away, the mask he’d been wearing had slipped. There, on his face, was grief, plain as day.
“Daz’s brother and his family were in an accident. He didn’t make it.”
Bile burned the back of my throat.
Doc talking about knowing Daz since he was a kid came back to me, about how his parents had been assholes, about how his brother had planned to stick around despite that to watch out for Daz until Doc took him in. There was no way they’d shared that without a strong bond. His brother was probably the only blood family that meant something to Daz—at least until his nephew came along.
And now he was gone.
Unbidden, the memories of the devastation from losing Gran came bubbling up. It had felt like a part of my soul had been ripped from me. I hadn’t been able to eat and had barely been able to sleep for days. All I could do was cry until the tears stopped coming because I was too dehydrated.
I would never wish that kind of pain on anyone.
“I’m so sorry,” I choked out, as if the words mattered, as if they could help, like I was giving them to Daz himself instead of his club brother.
Gauge nodded. “We’re riding out with him for the funeral. The whole club is going, so we need to know we can rely on you and Roy.”
“We’ve got it,” I promised.
“Thank you.”
Gauge didn’t waste any more time, and I wouldn’t have asked him to. Undoubtedly, the Disciples were trying to get on the road as soon as possible with Daz, or to catch up with him if he’d already left. Them being there for him was what was important.
For a long time even after he left, I stood in the same spot in my dressing room. I didn’t see the burgundy walls, the mess of costumes on the rolling rack that needed to be sorted, or the stack of papers and schedules I needed to finish. My world shrank down to that familiar grief that had never left me, that crushing sadness I kept stored away most days. Even after all this time, just peeking inside that place where it had been hidden could erase the years and make it feel like I’d just lost her all over again.
Daz was feeling all of that right now. It was still fresh. Hell, it might not have even truly sunken in yet.
The moment when that initial denial faded away was the hardest part.
I wanted to help. I wanted to offer something that might make any kind of difference.
After long moments of standing there blankly, I found my phone where I’d left it on the desk. More time passed while I stared at the screen, as if words that could magically erase any of this tragedy might come.
They didn’t.
I simply wrote the best thing I could come up with, even though I knew it could never scratch the surface.
Me: I am so sorry.
It felt almost painfully underwhelming. Like it couldn’t even begin to say what I wanted to, but it also said it all. It was the only thing I could offer outside of taking care of business here so he could return to a club that was running smoothly in his absence.
So, after taking a moment to collect myself, I got busy doing just that.
“How the fuck do I do this?”
I was so fucking tired of that question. It felt like I’d asked myself that same thing a thousand goddamn times over the last couple days. There was never an answer, not one that meant a damn anyway.
How the fuck did I keep it together?
How the fuck did I comfort my grieving sister-in-law and nephew?
How the fuck did I say goodbye to my fucking brother?
So much of the time that passed after Doc told me Joel was gone was a blur. Somehow, the two of us had gotten to the airport. Somehow, he’d kept me from losing my shit on the plane. Somehow, we’d made it to the hospital.
That part stood out in stark clarity.
They’d taken me to Kate. Joel had been…gone too long already. It had been too late by the time they got him to the hospital, so he’d never gotten a room. They were delicate about it, trying to say in the best fucking way my brother’s body was downstairs in a fucking cooler in the morgue. But the harsh truth was there was no good way to tell me that shit.
There was no good way to tell me not only had I lost my brother, but I’d had no chance to say goodbye until we put together a funeral.
Fuck.
I’d cut the poor girl off who was trying to tell me all that shit. If she kept going, I was going to lose it. She was just doing her job; she didn’t need to deal with me having a violent
fucking breakdown in the middle of the hospital.
She’d let me into Kate’s room. She was upright, awake, yet she was gone.
There was not the barest inkling of recognition that someone had come into the room. Her face was drawn, her expression empty. There was puffiness and the lingering trails of her tears, but she wasn’t crying anymore.
I’d missed that, too. I hadn’t been close enough to be there for the woman my brother loved more than anything. From that moment on, I would be.
You hear me, Joel? I fucking promise I’ll take care of her, of both of them.
Owen was asleep, curled up in a little ball on the bed, his pillow propped against his mother’s crossed legs. He looked so small, so fucking fragile. For the first time, I realized the miracle I hadn’t focused on yet.
They were in the car with Joel. It could easily have gone another way, and I’d be saying goodbye to both of them as well. There were a couple scratches on Owen’s little arms, and more significant cuts and bruises forming on Kate that punctuated that fact.
Fucking swear, Joel, I repeated the vow. Until the day I was struck down, I’d take care of these two like he would have himself.
“Kate,” I whispered. Nothing. Not a damn reaction at all. “Katie,” I tried again.
She blinked twice, off the beat she’d been maintaining. It was the only reaction I could catch. I didn’t want to touch her, not when she didn’t seem to be aware of my presence. I didn’t want to startle her, and I was even less inclined to do it when that meant she’d probably jar and wake Owen.
I had no fucking clue what my nephew knew—what he could even understand at his age. Did he know his dad was gone? Had he fallen asleep from the trauma, or was he just napping, unaffected by the horrible things happening around him? Until I knew—hell, maybe for as long as I could let him once I did know—I wanted him to sleep.
Not knowing what the fuck I was supposed to do, I grabbed a chair from against the wall and pulled it closer to the bed before sitting. I’d just wait, however long it took, until one of them noticed me. There was no fucking rush. Forcing all of us to face the shit that was our reality wouldn’t change anything. We had the rest of our lives to deal with it, and we wouldn’t have a damn choice.
I sat there for a while, trying to keep my mind blank. Trying not to think about my brother, about what came next, about the two people who already meant the world to me and were now my sole focus.
Then, Kate spoke.
“He can’t be gone.”
Her voice was like sandpaper, brittle and rough. Her words were like a fucking blow.
Because he was. No matter what I tried to say to comfort her, no matter how much she and I railed against the fact, against the world, against fucking God for taking him, he was already gone.
“Kate,” I responded, at a total loss of anything helpful to say.
“He can’t. I can’t lose him. Owen can’t.”
Can’t, as if it hadn’t happened yet. As if there was still a chance.
“Katie, sweetheart,” I started, but she cut in.
“No. Don’t say it. I can’t hear it. I can’t. Not again,” she begged, finally looking my way, tears streaming down her face. “It’s all I hear. Since the second they said it, it’s just on repeat in my head.”
Joel didn’t make it.
I knew what she meant. If I didn’t fight it, Doc saying that shit came back to me every other second.
“I’m here,” I told her. “For you, for Owen,” for Joel. “Whatever you need.”
She looked to her son—a little boy who already looked so much like his dad, it was uncanny. Larson traits were dominant. Joel and I had always been damn near identical, both looking like our dick father. Owen was the same.
“He doesn’t get it,” Kate said softly. “Not really. He cried until he fell asleep, but I think that was just him feeding off my emotions. He’s still going to wake up and wonder where his daddy is. How do I tell him…” she trailed off before she could finish the question.
I tightened my fists until my knuckles ached, trying to keep everything in. The pain there gave me a point of focus that wasn’t the jumble of fucked up shit overloading me, threatening to explode out.
I had to keep it together, even if it was killing me.
For Kate.
For Owen.
The words, that promise, were going to be like a fucking mantra.
After a long time, I realized I hadn’t answered Kate, but she didn’t say anything. She knew as well as I did there was no good answer. There was only fighting to hold it together, doing anything to get by, because neither of us had the freedom to truly fall apart the way we both wanted to. Not with that little boy depending on us.
Now, I was standing in a fucking funeral home, waiting for some guy to come help us organize everything to lay my brother to rest. I’d tried—a bit, but I wasn’t about to push shit right now—to get Kate to come with. I wanted to give my brother what I thought he’d want, but I also wanted to give us all what we needed to say our goodbyes.
Problem was, I had not the first fucking clue how to do that.
“One step at a time,” Doc coached me. “They do this every fuckin’ day. They’ll walk you through everything. Just take it one question at a time. You need to stop, you fuckin’ stop. Not one person is gonna give you shit if you get overwhelmed by this. You need a breather, you tell me, you tell them—fuck, you can get right up and walk the fuck out. Yeah?”
One step at a time.
I could do that.
Maybe.
“Right,” I muttered.
I stood from the chair, needing to move. We were in a tiny fucking waiting room. It was a hell of a lot better than what I’d been braced for. I was sure we were going to walk into some kind of horror show of coffin displays. Maybe that shit was fine if you were picking out what you wanted when you did that pre-planning shit.
Seeing that in the state I was in would have made me snap. No question.
Still, the tiny room with its not-at-all-fucking-soothing neutral colors and landscape paintings was getting to me. Every fucking thing was getting to me the last couple days. Sitting, standing up, trying to sleep—every little detail felt impossible, every moment seemed to grate on my nerves.
Doc got up with me, and I felt my body tense. It was a familiar reaction at this point, but there was no stopping it. He’d been a fucking rock for me, but I was still bracing with every minute for the wrong words to come out that’d push me over the edge.
He knew, though. The man had known me since I was a fuckin’ kid. He got me, he got what Joel was to me. He wasn’t going to feed me meaningless lines or say something bad. No, he didn’t say a damn thing. He let me pace for a bit until the movement started to be what bothered me.
When I stopped and faced him, he took a couple steps forward to eat up the space I’d made between us. With one hand, he grabbed the side of my head and pulled me in until his forehead touched mine.
He’d done that the time my dad had been drunk off his ass and ran into me in the hallway late at night. The asshole literally walked right into me and had been at the whiskey too hard to correct himself. I’d hit the wall full force with a grown man’s weight driving me there. My side and arm had been bruised for a week. When Doc saw, I gave him the truth, like I always did, and he gave me that hold.
He gave it to me four more times over the years.
The day I graduated high school.
The day I got my Disciples patch.
And the day he picked me up from prison.
He gave me those because he was the closest thing I’d ever had to a real dad—outside of Joel taking care of me as a kid. He gave me those because the old man fucking loved me like his own, even if that shit wasn’t something we put into words. Words were cheap. The shit Doc had given me, the fact that he’d been the one with me at each of those moments to offer what he was right then—that meant something.
It might not have felt like
it, with Owen too young to grasp it and Kate checking out because she couldn’t take it, but I wasn’t alone. He wouldn’t leave me alone to take all this on.
Even though I lost my brother, I still had family at my back.
I gripped his arm, squeezing it tight for a moment, putting everything I didn’t have the words to say into that hold. Giving him my thanks for twenty odd years of being that for me.
“We got this,” he said as he pulled back.
We. We got this.
That was the answer to the question that had been plaguing me.
How the fuck do I do this?
Not alone.
I walked out of the house to the sight of my brothers, every fucking Disciple, on their bikes. They were all dressed in black and ready to ride with me.
Today, we were laying Joel to rest.
Some had their women riding with them. Ember, Cami, Quinn, and Max were all there. Ash, who was pregnant, and Deni, who had a baby in the house, had stayed behind, but the two of them had already called me that morning. They wanted to be with me because they were fucking good women my brothers were lucky to have—even if I gave the guys shit for it. I knew what it meant for Cami to be away from her and Gauge’s boy, Levi. Hell, for any of those women to ride with their men all the way here to be at my back was a sacrifice, but one they made willingly.
Having all of them there, all those people who became family to me over the years, was so fucking humbling.
I remembered then something I hadn’t thought about in years. I was probably ten at the time, just a fucking kid. The school had put on a “family day” where parents and grandparents and all those people could come. There was all kinds of shit set up, like a fair. Food and games and shit for all those happy people to enjoy together.
It was during the school day, so I’d been there for it since it meant I could still take the bus there and back. I was also pretty sure I was the only fucking kid wandering through it all alone.
“There you are. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”