33. Natty
THIRTY-THREE
NATTY
PRESENT DAY
The day we buried Red and Brooks was a somber event.
Simon Stone had arrived with Sasha on his arm, wearing his cut, nice dark jeans and his motorcycle boots. He was the first to place his hand on the casket with a wobbly chin and a tear-stained face.
I gripped Red’s black bandana in my hand and squeezed it as hard as I could while my husband gripped my other hand. Silas was a shield for me as grief stabbed at my chest, poking holes of vulnerability and instability.
Callie was quietly sobbing into Wes Ryan’s chest, her belly larger than ever. She wore a black dress, while Wes wore his cut over a black t-shirt. It was going to be weird for me not to see Silas in one anymore.
But I was also excited about that part of our life starting.
He was a farmer now, who catered to lemon trees and picked cherries and apples.
Our little cottage surrounded by trees and vegetation with bunnies, foxes and deer that frequented our little piece of paradise had me feeling strangely like the moniker Alec had always given me.
Artemis.
I tipped my head back as a breeze covered the crowd, and I focused on the singular casket over the oversized grave. When planning their funeral, we knew there was no alternative option. The two loved one another in life, and in death, their bones would hold each another until this earth ceased to be any longer. Their shared casket sat wider than the average coffin, but Red would have wanted that. They were buried wearing their patches and colors. Red wore her property patch, showing she belonged to Brooks, and Brooks wore his, showing he was eternally loyal to the Stone Riders.
Their joint headstones boasted of love, life and loyalty and etched into the beautiful stone was the sigil for the Stone Riders club.
We walked closer, and through all the ceremony, I hadn’t really listened, but now that I was closer, I heard the preacher reading something vaguely familiar. Something that had my head snapping up.
“Ombre light falls across the panes of my heart, whispering of all the darkness you draw upon. I have land to build my home upon but my soul has no roots. Apart from you, I’ll be forever without a place to dwell.”
My face swung over to Silas as memories came back of him reading that very poem to me the night we met, after I’d snuck into the cabinet with him and Sasha. We had to pass the time, so he found his mother’s phone, and used her flashlight to see the book of poetry.
“You, my darling light are a whisper on the wind. Here to love me, and gone with my last breath. I vow to carry you with me into the depths of death, wherever it may take me. I will carry your heart with me and it will allow me to live once more.”
Tears burned my eyes, a sob caught in my throat and I hiccupped.
These poems weren’t all from the book. Some of them were from Silas…these were his poems.
“I see flowers and think of your heart. Soft, resilient and beautiful, and I pray that no wind will come through and uproot you from my life. Yet I know, even in separation in this life, or death itself will not keep me from chasing you. Because the wind may try to take you, but I am vaster than the sky. So I will chain the swells of storms, I will blind the sun and bind the ocean if it means I get to keep you. I will ruin this very earth if it means you’ll be mine.”
Silas had pieces of this poem tattooed on his chest .
More tears flowed as I smiled up at my husband. He brought my hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss there.
“I had a feeling Red might like these as much as you do.”
He was everything I had ever hoped he’d be. Standing next to me, wearing black slacks and a nice button-down shirt. He looked like a civilian, not a motorcycle club president, or The Roman. I had to remember that before he was all of those things, he was mine.
“This is where it ends, Caelum,” Silas whispered in my ear, and I knew he was referencing the path we’d walked that led to their grave. But I heard something else.
I set Red’s bandana against the sea of crimson roses littering her casket and smiled.
“No, baby. This is where we begin.”