My world shatters and I fall forward, placing my hands on the wall to support me and the world on my back. I rest my forehead on my forearm and I clinch my eyes tight, longing for peace but finding none.
There is the blow that I was waiting for. Delivered and hit its target dead center in my heart. I fight my instincts to use my words like poison and bite my tongue. The emotions swirl around in my head and I work through them as best I can.
Finding some strength, I push off the wall and face the tiny little devil. “How?” I am not even sure what I am asking, just surviving.
She nods her head. “Think about the truth, Pawn. Accept it for what it is and embrace the pain. When you are ready, talk to your mom about how you feel. Be prepared for the pain that this will inflect on her. Only talk to her when you are calm.” She hesitates and lightly smiles. “Maybe, come talk to me again after you have had some time to heal a little.”
This Jenn is not the woman that I met years ago. “There’s just so much.” I confess, “I really fucked up with Tami. She may keep my kid away from me.” I rub the back of my neck and chuckle. But it’s all nerves and guilt.
Jenn easily recognizes it, “Give Tami some time alone. She won’t keep Cash from you. You can apologize when things are better for you. A fight would cause you to hit the drugs hard. Work on you. Start at the bottom and let’s work your way up.”
“When did you get so smart?”
Jenn toes the dirt with her boot and rests against the wall behind her. “It’s no secret about why for me. But how? I started working on my drug counseling certificate. I’m not finished, but I volunteer to help. It helps me too. None of us are perfect. Just some more sick than others.” She slides her shades back down, “I expect a text soon, or I will come find you again.”
“Are you using me to make yourself feel better?” I tease.
“Absolutely. When we all are happy, we’ve won the war, let’s take down this battle. I’ll be your friend, your support, and when I need it, you’ll be mine. But if you tell anyone I’ve grown soft and shit, I’ll stab you.” Jenn points a finger at me and leaves with, “See you around, dude.”
Sighing, I drop years’ worth of shit at my feet and stand with my hands on my hips, watching Jenn walk back to her car at the Brewery. We walk through the fire in this life, will I come out the hero after the ashes have fallen?
Chapter 21
Tami
I’ve fallen in love with two men in my life. Both of them having their own unique meaning to me. Each so different in their own way. I sit in the grass, cross-legged, by the grave where Solo rests and think of the words I want to share with him.
“I miss you terribly, especially when I have the crappy days, like yesterday. There’s so much that has gone on and more in my head. But first, I need to tell you something and it’s big. I think you already knew, on some level.”
A black bird lands on the ground a few yards around me and hops around pecking at the bugs. I’m not sure why, but it’s comforting to see it. It’s beautiful and carefree when it flies. The wings are strong and graceful, Solo always said he wanted me to have wings and fly. To be brave and to be me. My heart rate picks up and I want to reach out to the sky. Instead, I sit and let the peace wash through my veins and calm me.
“I think we felt love for each other. Never before experiencing it in my life, I didn’t know the differences or emotions. What I know I felt now, is that I loved you more as a friend. I would have settled. I loved you, but I wasn’t in love with you. I think you knew that all along and you felt it even when I didn’t. I was blinded by the thought of love, but you always knew and wanted me to find my own way. Who knows how bad it would have gotten before you left? I would have stayed by your side and dragged you down. I did love you. I did. Just not that all-consuming heart-wrenching love that tears you apart.” The truth stings, but at the same time it brings freedom. The truth gives me wings. Freeing the guilt, I have held myself captive to.
The black bird hops towards me and I crack a small grin before continuing, “I wish I loved you like that. After you died, I had to forgive myself for that truth. How could I feel that way about the man I promised my future to? Solo, you were the best man and I will forever honor you. I think I found my answer. You never fought for me sooner because you weren’t in the mad love rush. We had a convenient love, born from a friendship that never evolved passed that.”
“You grew tired trying to fill that void you felt, and I see how we started to grow apart in just a matter of months. Thank you, for everything. A part of me wants to ask for your forgiveness. But it is me that I need to forgive. Love you, always.” As the last words leave my lips, the blackbird flies away and is lost in the nearby trees.
It is true, I will always love him, the person and friend he was and the lover I had for the briefest of times. I believe in love and things happening for a reason. If my life isn’t a testament to that, I don’t know what is. Abandoned at a young age and almost sold to sex traffickers, I didn’t just coincidently end up here and I didn’t just end up with Solo on accident.
I needed him and he was mine for a reason and for what it was. He was only meant to be here for a short time on this earth and I am happy that I got to spend some of those beautiful days with him. I wouldn’t take any of it back because I learned so much.
Pulling my knees up to my chest, I think about Pawn and what happened between us yesterday and the night before. I’m pissed and disappointed that he did what he did, getting high and forgetting about his best friend and son. I circle back to the letter that Solo wrote, and with Pawn, I don’t know how he has so much trust in him. How could I even trust him after everything? Hooking up with strippers like I mean not a damn thing to him. Forgetting about his son and brothers. Will this be the dad Cash has growing up? The thought makes me sick to my stomach and my walls go up higher and stronger.
He has always been able to draw the utmost incredible emotions from me. Anger, doubt, passion, and love. Trust though, I hide from him because I have my issues with trust. I feel it’s not if but when he will destroy me, and I chose Solo to protect myself. I was right and the sadness sweeps in like a cold winter breeze, the man I really wanted to love me doesn’t at all.
Chapter 22
Pawn
Things have gone back to the way they were before. I pick up Cash from someone else and drop him off without seeing her. The loneliness has crept in tenfold. I miss her more now than ever. Every time I pick up Cash, I can smell her on him. I needed time to think over the conversation that Jenn had with me. I was too angry at my mother and life to talk with anyone. Tank has let me work alone in silence, until now.
He calls me over to the mini bar and sets down a few beers. Tank then settles into the chair next to me and hands one over. “Have a seat,” he invites, but it’s more like a demand.
Tank smirks, “Your face is looking better.” He pulls the beer up to his lips and takes a swig.
“Yeah, thanks for noticing. I just started breathing through my nose again.” Sarcasm was never needed more than now.
“Well, I won’t say I didn’t mind teaching you a lesson, and you deserved it.” He tilts his head to the side, “It’s been a few weeks, have you talked with Tami?”
I shake my head, “No, I figure that we needed some time to cool off. I really fucked up. We hooked up the night before and then I pulled that shit.”
Tank spews his beer from his mouth all over the floor, “You are lucky that I didn’t know that. Shit would have been a lot worse for you.”
Raising my hands, I defend, “I like my face, it won’t happen again.”
“Did you fuck the strippers right afterwards?” Tank’s eyes squint, and he is preparing for the worst.
“No. I got very fucked up and loaded. My dick didn’t even jerk. My head isn’t the same. I can’t bury the shit anymore.”
“Why, brother? You had her in your arms, why would you let go and not hold on tight? Isn’t that what you wan
ted this whole time?”
“It’s fucked up, Tank, I know. I’m trying to figure out who I am and not fuck it up all at the same time. Then there is my mom.” I fill him in on what Jenn and I talked about the other day.
He scratches his chin, “Jenn has a good point. Although, the way I see it, your mom is just that— your mom. You don’t need to talk to her about how you feel now about her choices in life. You know why you feel what you do. Maybe you need to just forgive her and move on. Leave that shit in the past. You don’t have shit to prove to anyone.”
Tank holds onto his words carefully before finishing. “You are going to miss out on a lot of good if you don’t bury the past and choose to look forward. Tami makes you feel weak and that would scare the shit out of any man. Let me tell you, I feel more alive with Kat than I ever have in my life.”
“Your woman didn’t choose your best friend over you.”
“Did she? Or did she choose the easy way because she was a chicken shit just like you and you gave her no damn real reason to pick you? You folded and let her run.” Tank snorts and adds on to rub it in a little more, “You were never a second choice, just a bad choice.”
I’m about to tell him to fuck off, but I know he’s right. Never did I run after and take her like she belonged to me, that I would protect her like we both craved. Can I forgive my mother, Tami, and myself for all these choices we have made?
“Pawn, you can choose to analyze why all day long. Or you can accept that we all make mistakes. Tami needed to grow and, honestly, you did too. What is important in your future? Having her in it or not?”
“Really Tank, just like that?”
“You are looking at a man who’s lived it. Now I own her ass and it’s everything. I am the king of my own castle and my shit is in order. You don’t know how Tami feels about you or Solo. Did you ask, or, are you just going to assume your whole life that he was her love of a lifetime? Trust me, the story is much deeper on the inside and often messy.”
His words catch me off guard, “What do you mean?”
“Tami loved Solo because he was easy, and she could predict him. There was no passion, Pawn. Tami was inexperienced. She didn’t know what love is, and until you live it, then don’t you understand it. She just started to see it, how she only cared for Solo and then he died. Can you imagine the guilt she had after that? Then the other man she cared for left her alone. She loves you with that passion, I see it in the way you fight.”
Unease encases my mind, “How do you know this?”
“Did she and Solo ever have an explosive fight? Want to rip each other’s clothes off and fight to the orgasm? Fuck no. They had those easy feelings. I know because I’m old enough to watch you all, and most of all, I’ve lived that shit.”
I take a long chug of my beer and the information swirls around like a hurricane and something starts to build. Shit I have never felt, and it is scary. Hope.
“What would you do, or did you do?”
“I trusted that I know myself to handle the bad times. Those are guaranteed to happen, eventually. I trusted that my brothers and Kat had their reasons for the things they did. I had faith, brother, to see it through and travel the road with no regrets.”
I stand and toss my empty bottle into the trash and before I leave, he throws out, “There’s only one way to be you, Pawn. Start living and do better than yesterday. Things will work out.”
I nod and throw my hand up and head out for the day. I throw my leg over my bike seat and crank it on, revving the engine a few times, feeling the power between my legs. Knowing I need a few minutes to air out these feelings, I hit the open road. I think over the past, the future, and most of all what is important to me. I guess this whole time I have been waiting for something to show me the path I should take when I have known it this whole time. The letters, I have never thrown away. They have been with me this whole time and I am done pushing away the things I crave, my family and the woman I love.
It’s been in me and the biggest thing I realize on this journey is, it’s me. I am the man that creates my way and chooses my destiny. I don’t want to be the coward that runs from the hard times anymore. I want Cash to be proud of his father.
Pulling over to the side of the road, my body trembles at what I am about to do, read the letters and look at the pictures I have hidden. Pulling them out from the saddlebag, my fingers run over them all. I see it now, the hard pull in Tami’s smile. She was being strong for us.
Jenn was wrong; this is the moment when I hit rock bottom. I abandoned her and I can see the truth with my own eyes now that it isn’t masked by my own bullshit and lies of what I wanted to see. Desperately, I wish I could go back and do things differently and protect her from me.
My heart rate picks up as I open the first letter and read her words. For Tami, it narrated like a robot. Going through the motions of the day-to-day tasks of being a mother and how Cash is doing as a baby, her heart completely missing.
Mine pounds with every lost piece of her exposed without her knowing it. She’s stronger than I’ve ever seen, and I abused her love. Letter after letter, I read them all. Tami is right when she yelled at me that she can live without me because she has. I just can’t live without her.
My hands tremble and the shame I feel for not being the man she deserved has been seared into my body. Never again. I’m coming for her, and Tami won’t have to know what it is like to live alone anymore. This time, I’m doing everything right.
I race back to my place and barge through the door looking for my little guy. My mom is in town this week watching him for me while I have been at work. I find him playing in his room and the smile on his face is enough to confirm that no matter what, I know what the right choices in my life are. Cash and his mom, Tami.
I may always be the man that loves to smoke and do dirty shit on the side, but I’m not hiding behind the drugs anymore. He jumps up from his toys and I pick him up giving him a big hug before setting him back down. After some time is spent playing with Cash, I find my mom in the kitchen making dinner.
“Hey, baby.” She smiles, handing me a plate. I set it on the counter and I look at her for the first time not as my mother, but a woman. My heart hurts for how much she has been through and has never lived the life she wanted or expected. Instead of resenting her, I feel resigned to the hard times we live through. Pulling my mother into my chest, I hug her.
“Love you, ma.” She freezes before wrapping herself around me.
She pulls back a little and looks for any clues on my face, “You okay?”
“Better, mom. A whole lot better.” I don’t need the words like I thought, because I can feel it. Last thing I want to do is upset her.
“Okay, let me feed Cash and I’ll go drop him off.” She makes a slight movement to step around me, but my hand catches her arm.
“I’ll take him to his mom. You don’t have to do that.”
She squints, ready to pepper me with questions, but I hold up a hand. “He needs me to be better. I need that too, and I want to. Now, sit down and I’ll grab Cash.”
She plops down in her chair and I grab the whole world sitting in the room and take charge right now, starting today. I am going to be the man I want to be. Some days may be shit, but I’ll own those too.
Chapter 23
Tami
To say I am a little nervous is an understatement. I can’t imagine what I am going to say to make this seem okay without giving away what I am doing.
“Why are you talking to yourself out here?” Vegas’s eyebrows hit her hairline and expectedly waits for me to answer her while she opens the door to the brewery. “Are you quitting on me?!”
My hands fumble a bit and I dive them into my pockets. I have nothing but the truth, “Yes.”
Her bright red lipstick frames her teeth with a wide smile, “About time. What are you doing? I want all the details.” She ushers me inside and makes me a coffee in the machine by her desk and then one for herself before
setting across from me.
“I don’t know exactly what I am going to do yet. But I realized that I can stay here and work at the bar and be happy. But I want something so deep in my life that when it is the end, there is no doubt in my mind that I lived and I loved.”
Vegas’s eyes water. “I am so proud of you. You remind me so much of myself before I left California and took off on my own. I want to see you soar, honey.” She wipes a small tear away from the corner of her eye.
I’m shocked at her confession and she can see the questions swirling around the room. Vegas tells me about a young girl who knew of only the things that she was taught, raised in the life. But she wanted to experience life as her own. Craving the freedom and high to find the girl outside of the mistakes. To be the woman she could be proud of.
“We watch our mothers or the women around us and we think, that bitch knows her shit. But everyone sheds a tear before they find themselves. Tami, you are living and being you. Every day it cements that confidence in your heart a little stronger. Now go do the things that makes you crave to live. I am so excited to see what you do.”
Leaning forward, I hug my friend and sister, “Thank you. It scared the crap out of me to tell you.”
She pulls back and laughs, her body shaking, “I’m only a hard ass at the bar. Those men and prospects will get away with murder if I’m too nice.”
“I can work until you find a replacement,” I offer, feeling that I need to do that.
She waves her hand at my offer, “Nah, you go be you, start your new life today. It will be good for me to cover the shifts.”
Her eyes twinkle with a knowing look that I’m hiding secrets and she wants to ask but holds herself back, barely. Maybe one day I will share, but for now, it is all mine and I love that I have something just for myself.
After I finish my coffee, I wave goodbye as she hollers out “Good luck,” just as the door slams and I head home to get to work. I’m excited and I don’t know what I will find at the end of this, but it is intriguing, and I need it. These last few years have pushed me down, but I’m ready to fight back.
Loving You Forever (Battle Born MC Book 7) Page 11