Chapter 2
Nevermore
I sit behind the desk, mindlessly thumbing through receipts to pass the time.
Another day in B.F.E., West Virginia. Another day without her.
It’s been years since our paths crossed, but even when they had, she didn’t know me.
Her eyes lingered longer than they should have on my face, but they didn’t ignite with recognition the way I know they would if she would just remember.
To her, I am a stranger. The memories of what happened when we were kids have since been long forgotten. She forgot me, but I’ll never forget her. I can’t.
Tea is outside fumbling around with the lift system.
He’s a bit noisier than usual today. Chatting randomly about nothing just to have something to say, if I had to guess.
There’s a woman. Anytime Tea is running that mouth of his, there’s usually a woman close by.
Either that or he’s drunk enough to let his guard down.
Last time I checked, he’s not one to day-drink.
Well, not alone anyhow. Our clubhouse is a different story altogether.
We all tend to overindulge when we’re there.
I flip the switch on the old Mr. Coffee maker and start a fresh pot.
These guys are notorious for drinking the last drop of coffee or leaving almost enough for a cup in the bottom of the pot.
Almost. Doesn’t matter which; none of them bother to make a fresh pot.
So, I’m constantly the one brewing more.
I don’t like stale-tasting burnt coffee.
It tastes like cardboard and ash. If I want that flavor, I could smoke a paper towel roll.
At least then I would know what I am getting myself into beforehand.
After filling my cup to the rim, I head out of the office to save my bumbling idiot of a brother from himself.
He doesn’t know when to quit. Can he not tell he’s aggravating that poor woman?
No. Of course, he can’t. He never can. Tea’s good looks make him a woman’s wet dream, or so I’ve been told, but as soon as he starts talking, you can almost see them shriveling in front of your eyes.
I stop at the door, laughing and shaking my head when he doesn’t leave her alone about sitting outside. At this rate, I wouldn’t blame her for punching him square in the nose. I wouldn’t stop her either.
The woman faces me, and I freeze. Her eyes lock with mine.
I’m speechless at first. How many months has it been?
Five? No, six months. It’s been one hundred thirteen days since those blue eyes curiously watched me.
But I see them every night in my dreams. I search for them on faces I know can’t belong to her, but I look anyway.
Hopeless, I know. I should have given up on her years ago, but there’s no forgetting someone like that.
I sip my coffee and tell Tea to leave her alone. My voice is harsher than it should be with him. He’s clueless. He doesn’t know who she belongs to. Neither does she, but she‘s mine. Even if she doesn’t remember, I’m hers, too.
Her fire-tipped tongue makes me smile; she’s holding back on Tea, I can tell.
That’s new. She was letting some man she called by name have it the last time I saw her.
What was his name? Sean or something like that?
It started with an “S,” I’m pretty sure.
I didn’t care enough to learn his name then, and still don’t.
We didn’t exchange many words when we saw each other, so I didn’t really get an idea of who she is. The woman she’s grown to be. I like how she blurts out what’s on her mind. A couch made of butter…she has a sense of humor to her. Good to see that part of her is still intact.
The longer we talk, the more I need. I fall into old habits, thinking of a million excuses to keep her here a bit more.
I’ve played out almost every situation between us in my head. Some are real, and some I imagined to hold onto my sanity without her. So, I need to touch her to know she’s real, that we’re actually this close, and that we’re not from another lifetime, or a dream.
I comment on her tattoo and breathe out slowly before taking her arm into my hand. She doesn’t notice how my fingers tremble against her skin. Good. I don’t want her to know how much it’s killing me inside.
Is she letting me touch her because she remembers?
Surely not. But if she doesn’t remember, why does she have a crow tattoo?
It doesn’t make sense. I got my road name because Calico said I was always staring at people’s faces, memorizing them, like crows do.
Of course, he didn’t know how close to home the name hit.
None of my brothers know much about me or my past before joining the club.
So, the significance of a crow is not something they would be aware of.
I smile at her, giving her my shop’s card.
“Thanks, but honestly, I’ll just lose that. So, there’s no reason to give it to me.”
I repeat the same thing to myself that I have for years.
She doesn’t remember.
She can’t.
She’s better off.
These words have echoed inside me for so long that they shouldn’t affect me. But they are just as painful today as they were when they were born.
She gnaws on her lip again, her fingers looping through the handle of her car door.
She hesitates before opening it, her eyes lifting to my face again.
Her conscious might think of me as a stranger, but the way she stands too close to me makes me think her body remembers.
Maybe her heart remembers the beats of mine.
This is the longest we’ve been together in a long time, and I don’t want to let her go. Never do. Never did. Every time she walks out of my life, it gets harder.
Don’t interrupt.
Let her live her life.
She’ll come back.
Eventually…
She always does come back, but never the same. When she finds her way back to me, she’s a little more damaged, and her heart is a little less mine to claim.
“I get it. Business cards are kind of outdated, huh?” I blurt out to prolong her leaving me.
She nods, a small smile playing on her lips.
“How ‘bout I put my number in your phone?”
“Sure. I guess.” She pulls her phone from her pocket, her attention instantly zeroing in on her left ring finger.
My eyes dart to the gold ring with a tiny, almost nonexistent diamond perched in the middle of it.
“Well, no. I guess I shouldn’t. Scott…” The way she says his name is like poison coming out of her mouth.
That is the asshole’s name that I intentionally blocked from my mind.
Scott. He didn’t appreciate her as far as I could tell, at least not in the way she should be.
The way I would. He rushed her out of the door, complaining that her pace was too slow for his liking.
She was quick to bite back, walking even slower than before.
I remembered thinking there’s my girl, but the thought soured when he looped his fingers through hers, and she let him.
“Scott the one who gave you that?”
“Mmhmm,” she murmurs, her baby blues slowly lifting from the ring and then to me.
Her lips crease together, and she breathes out slowly.
She acts as if the ring is an obligation she must force herself to remember, and not a symbol of a lifetime of promised love.
She didn’t smile when she spoke his name—the way one does when they think of the love of their life, simply because they can’t stop themselves.
I want to yell at her and ask her why she’s putting herself through this, but that wouldn’t solve anything. The only thing I would accomplish by doing that is pushing her further away from me than she already is. I refuse to put more distance between us.
So, I stay silent.
Closed off from her.
A severed love.
A lost soul unable to move on without its other half to guide it through life.
Always lost.
Always forgotten.
But cannot ever forget.
“Doesn’t seem like you’re exactly thrilled about him or the ring, Crow,” I observe, even though I should keep my mouth shut.
“I’m not, but I’m also not a cheater. Taking your number feels wrong.” That damned moral compass of hers has always pointed higher than mine.
I snatch her phone from her hand, holding it in front of her face to unlock it, and then I click to add myself as a new contact. She gasps but does nothing to stop me.
“There. Now there’s nothing to feel wrong about doing. You didn’t take it. You didn’t have a choice.” I wink at her, sliding her phone back into her palm. “Besides, you never know when you’ll be in a pinch and need to call a good mechanic.”
I brush her long strands off her cheek, dragging the tips of my fingers along her freckles like I used to do, and force myself to release her.
“I guess you have a point.”
She’ll find her way back.
She has to.