Scars of Yesterday (Sons of Templar MC #8) - Anne Malcom Page 0,74
lips. “Apart from death.”
She glanced at me then back out to her yard. “Yeah, apart from death.”
“And you’re going to move on to another member?” I questioned, trying to take the focus away from me.
She laughed in that throaty way that communicated she’d been a smoker for longer than I’d been alive. “No, honey. I’m not going to do that. I had a whole lifetime with Steg. As an Old Lady. I’ll always be her. I’ll always be his. But I get away with sayin’ shit like that because I’m old enough that I don’t have much of a life to squeeze that in to the few years I’ve got left.”
I scowled at her as the bottom fell out of my stomach. “You’ve got a lot more than a few years. I’m not letting you die too.”
She smiled. “I’m not about to leave the party early, that’s not what I’m sayin’. I’m also not sayin’ that I’m not gonna get laid.”
I smiled back, thinking of everything that had happened these past years. When I was a fifteen-year-old girl, trying to find sleep after finishing a book at two in the morning, I’d write my own versions of my life. Imagining wild things that would happen to me. Wild adventures I’d take with some man who would sweep me off my feet. We’d have struggles because all the best couples did, but we’d also have a story for the ages. It would change me.
All of that happened with Ranger. And not just the things I’d imagined for myself. In so many other good ways.
And then one of the worst.
“I wanted to die,” I confessed, looking back at her.
I hadn’t talked to anyone about this. Hadn’t spilled my ugly grief at anyone’s table. Even though any one of my friends would’ve taken it. Would’ve wanted to hear it. To help. Maybe because I was trying to forget. Or because I just hadn’t wanted to say it out loud.
“Not at first,” I continued. “There was too much to be done. The funeral. Telling the kids. All that practical stuff. It sounds insane, but I was distracted enough to forget about what this was going to do to me. But that didn’t last long. When life started to get back to normal, the grief hit hard. I didn’t let it show on the outside. That’s the craziest thing. There was so much normal. The kids went back to school. I had to get them up every morning, make them breakfast, pack them lunch, drive them. I still had to pay the bills, clean the bathrooms, cook dinner. Shower. I had to do all that stuff and then it suddenly became so starkly apparent and so inescapable that Ranger wasn’t a part of my normal anymore, I wanted to die. With every part of me I wanted to.”
I paused, sitting in companionable silence for a beat. “The parts of me that belonged solely to Ranger wanted me to give up. But I couldn’t, of course. Because there are other parts to me. I’m a mother. It is my responsibility to stay alive for my children. It’s my duty. So no matter how much I wanted to, I didn’t die. I lingered in limbo for a while, of course. But there was a time limit on that. So I had no choice but to live. For them and them only at first. Then, a long time later and much, much slower, for myself.” I drained my drink. “Though I don’t think I’m fully there yet.”
Evie stared at me for a while, really thinking about my words, listening in that way of hers.
“I’m too strong and too stubborn to forfeit my life because my Old Man is in the ground, but I get wanting to die. Thing is, you did die. Parts of you, at least. Parts that are never going to come back to life. Parts that lie in the coffin with Ranger. But you’re being reborn. In some ways. Not ‘cause of any man you’re fucking, though, that surely helps you recognize that life is worth living and worth living well.” She sighed. “We’ve all got seasons of our lives. Your winter was brutal, honey. Not gonna lie. But looks like spring is here. Happy to see you start to bloom, baby.”
I blinked back the tears at her words, because you didn’t cry drinking whisky with Evie. You ovaried up.
I did that by getting up to pour us another whisky and informing the kids we