grudge, and let’s face it, with my record I couldn’t blame them. But I was a mom now. It had changed me in ways these guys were still learning, and this was one of them.
What was the point of wasting more time on something that couldn’t be changed?
I had Ama to think of now, and the future, too. We’d spent so long apart that anything that might add to more time spent separate wasn’t something I could deal with.
I just needed us to be together, needed for them to accept that I wasn’t going to be anything other than these sinners’ old lady.
If it seemed like I was rolling over, then maybe that was because I was. I was fucking tired. So tired. My grief was like a thunderstorm rumbling overhead, and I needed them more than I needed my next breath to help me chug along, to get to a point in the future where things started to seem brighter than they were now.
Without them, there was only darkness.
I’d die in that darkness. Perish. They weren’t saints, anything but, but they were my light at the end of the tunnel, and I couldn’t be without them a second longer.
“Agreed.”
I wasn’t surprised that Flame said it first. He was the one who found connections the hardest to forge, and him and me? Our connection went soul deep.
“Agreed,” Dagger rasped.
Of course, Axe wasn’t here, but I knew he was like them. He’d want to focus on the future rather than the past.
The salt in the wound here was the big bastard lying on the floor…
Swallowing, I looked at Wolfe and whispered, “What do you say?”
His eyes gleamed in the dark night, the wall light making the whites shine harder as he stared me down like the feral fucker he was.
My heart almost stopped as I watched his mouth open, and when he ground out, “Agreed,” I knew, somehow, everything was going to be okay.
Axe
A few days later
“Hey, Ama, don’t you want to head outside with us?”
When she stared at me like I’d grown another head, I almost laughed, but I was too concerned. Lucie was as well. She hadn’t left the clubhouse since she’d gotten here, had stayed inside all the damn time, and though she was adjusting, it was weird, right?
Hell, I didn’t know shit about kids, but they needed to play, didn’t they? The rest of the brats that were running around outside like they were high on Monster did, that was for damn sure.
The family BBQs on Sundays were important to the MC. It was where the dual lives of most brothers came to a head, and bringing them around for a helluva meal, some drinks, and a bonfire was a great way to do it. With all the kids around, I’d been hoping that Amaryllis would head outside and play, but she was cooped up in the family room, reading a book.
Cutting Wolfe a look, I took a seat beside Ama and watched as he took the sofa opposite. The TV was on, some stupid cartoon on the screen, and as he watched it, he murmured, “Ryan loved cartoons.”
We’d planned this. Lucie said it was too hard talking about Ryan, but that she didn’t want Amaryllis to forget him, so we’d come up with ways we could mention him so that Ama didn’t feel like she was alone in her grief.
I was relieved as fuck to notice her eyes drift from the book to the screen at his words.
“Yeah, he loved Cartoon Network, didn’t he?” I replied.
“The old shit. None of the new stuff.” Wolfe’s laughter was soft, reminiscent with memories. For a hard ass, he was showing a different side of himself around Ama. “Captain Caveman, do you remember that? That little dude with all the hair who ran around with a club solving crimes?”
Chuckling, I sank back into the sofa and relaxed—sure, there was a point to this conversation, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t think back to times that had been so simple it was surreal. “Yeah, I remember. But that was when he was real young. Amaryllis’s age, right?”
“Definitely. After, it was the Power Rangers.”
I snorted. “We were all Power Rangers.”
“I was blue, Flame was yellow because he had big enough balls to play that when the yellow one was a chick in the show, you were green, Dag was red, then we made up black for Ryan, remember?”
“That means momma was pink,” Amaryllis chimed in, and my eyes widened at her voice