Watching him until he can’t be seen anymore, the sound of the bikes fades into the Vegas morning, and the lot falls empty and quiet. There is nothing left of him except the echo of engine noise, the smell of exhaust, and the particular weight of everything he has taken with him.
Standing there in the empty lot just breathing, I hold it together the way I promised myself I would, the way I held it together when Ryan left for the mansion that last time, not knowing it was the last time, not knowing that holding it together was all I would have left of that goodbye. This time, it is known, and I hold it together anyway, because he needs to go without carrying my fear on top of everything else he is already carrying, and telling him‘Everything in your power’was the only honest thing either of us could say. Notcome back. NotI’ll be here. Just that, just‘Everything in your power,’the rest sitting out of both our hands where neither of us can reach it.
Turning to go inside, I almost walk straight into Raven.
She is just inside the door in the hallway that leads to the kitchen, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed and her dark eyes steady on mine. She says it almost conversationally, with the particular ease of a woman who has decided she has nothing left to lose in this conversation and is going to say exactly what she means. “You couldn’t wait, could you?”
The composure on her face is doing a great deal of work, holding together something underneath it that is raw, hurting, and has clearly been sitting on this for a long time.
“Your man is barely cold in the ground,” she says. “And you’re already in his brother’s bed.”
The words land exactly where she means them to, and I let them, standing there looking at her, at the dark eyes, the set jaw, and the pain of a woman who has wanted something she was never going to have and has just watched it walk out the door on someone else’s arm. That pain is understood, and I almost feel sorry for her.
Almost.
“You had one brother,” she says. “He died. So, you found another one.” Her eyes don’t waver. “Tell me how that’s different from what I do.”
Holding her gaze for a long moment, I say nothing because there is nothing to say that would reach her right now. She is hurting, and hurting people say the sharpest thing available to them, and the sharpest thing available to her happens to be the question I have been quietly asking myself for weeks.
Then I turn and walk into the kitchen.
Standing at the counter with both hands pressed flat against the cool surface, the kitchen is empty around me, just the muffled noise of the clubhouse beyond the door, and Raven’s words sitting in the quiet with me, taking up considerably more space than I want them to.
‘Your man is barely cold in the ground.’
‘You found another one.’
Is that what happened? Is that what the last two days were, grief reaching for the nearest familiar shape, comfort disguised as something more, the vulnerability of a woman who attaches herself to the only person who shows up? The thought sits in my chest like something cold. I press my hands harder against thecounter and breathe, trying to find the truth beneath the cruelty of it, the fear, doubt, and devastation of having the ugliest possible version of something said out loud.
And what I find is this.
I don’t know.
Not with the certainty I need.
And that terrifies me more than anything Raven has said.
Remy arrives so quietly I don’t hear him, just suddenly there in the kitchen doorway, taking in the scene and taking in me, his face doing the thing young faces do when they are trying to work out what has happened and how to respond to it. He crosses to the counter and stands beside me without asking whether that’s what I want, because Remy has always understood that some moments don’t need an invitation.
“He’ll come back.” He said it like that is what the tears are about, like he has already decided the only useful thing he can do is be certain, so I don’t have to be.
Not correcting him.
“My prez is the strongest man I know. The best man I know. And he’s coming back…” A pause, young, genuine, and completely certain. “I’d bet everything on it.”
Looking at him, at this young man who had worked construction in Phoenix, found his way to a motorcycle club in Vegas, and had spent weeks driving me around this city, talking to me like I was worth talking to and meaning every single word of it, I feel something loosen slightly in my chest.
“Thank you, Remy.”
He nods, looks at the counter for a moment, and then back up. “You want to go home?”
I think about the house, the flowers on the island, the painting on the wall, the pool light moving slowly across the ceiling at night, and the quiet of a space that had become home without me deciding it would. His home with me in it.
‘Your man is barely cold in the ground.’
“Yeah,” I say. “I want to go home.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine