Chapter 6 #2
I slip into bed beside her, careful not to let the mattress shift beneath my weight. She doesn’t acknowledge me. Just curls tighter into herself. A silent wall where there used to be warmth.
I reach over and turn off the lamp off. The room sinks into shadows, but the streetlight outside pushes in a thin line of silvery light across the sheets, slicing through the dark just enough for me to watch her.
At first, her breathing is tight. Each inhale measured, carefully controlled. Gradually, it begins to ease. Her shoulders lose their tension. Her lips part slightly. I know the exact moment sleep takes her.
I lie on my back, staring at the ceiling, my jaw tight as hell as I listen to the rhythm of her breathing.
I want to pull her closer. Wrap my arm around her waist and feel her body give beneath mine.
I want the version of her who melts against me in sleep.
Who sighs my name without waking. Who always finds my chest in the dark.
But I don’t reach for her. I know this feeling. It crawls up my spine and settles in my ribs, old and familiar. I’ve lived this before. Another woman. Another bed. Laura.
We spent months like this. Our entire marriage was like this.
Nights thick with silence. Her body tense, locked down.
Her back to me like a fucking fortress. Every time I thought the distance couldn’t stretch further, she’d find a new inch.
Me lying beside her, trying to pretend I didn’t feel the way she flinched when I touched her.
Like I was the one ruining everything and she was too tired to explain why.
I didn’t understand it then. Now the same ache burns low in my chest. It curls tighter every time Marlowe shifts further away, even in sleep. I thought she was different. No. She is different. She’s not Laura. But the space between us tonight says otherwise. It brings me right back to Laura.
Bridger, Cody, and I were trying to hold on to something then.
Cross & Sons. A motorcycle shop with our names on the lease, but still stamped with our father’s signature.
His men swinging by too often. Reminding us who the place really belonged to.
I wanted out. Wanted clean. But the bills kept piling up, and Clay’s fist squeezed tighter, even from his prison cell.
So I worked longer. Stayed out later. Said yes to shit I should’ve walked away from, just to keep the lights on and Laura fed.
While I was chasing all that, Laura was crumbling.
I came home one night, oil and sweat clinging to my clothes.
She was already packing. She didn’t even try to be quiet.
Drawers yanked open like accusations. Cabinets slammed shut like verdicts.
My mother stood in the middle of it all, helpless, watching me walk into the sound of my own life falling apart.
Laura didn’t look up when I stepped inside. “Oh, what a surprise. You’re home,” she said, flatly, her back to me. Her voice wasn’t angry. Not yet.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t move. I just stood there, boots still on, keys still in my hand, listening to the chaos of her leaving me, piece by piece.
“You spend more time with Joel and those thugs than you do with me,” she said. Her voice sharp, each word cutting clean. “You weren’t working in the shop, Damian. You were running around doing shit you swore you were done with.”
I stood there, frozen. Dirt under my nails from fixing someone’s busted engine all day.
For us. For her. But I didn’t say that. I glanced at my mother, stiff in the corner, silent tears tracking down her face, trying to pretend she wasn’t hearing any of this.
But Laura kept going. She wasn’t whispering.
She wasn’t careful. She spilled every dirty piece of our life right there, loud and raw, and all I could do was stand there like a goddamn stranger in my own house.
“She doesn’t know, does she?” Laura snapped, turning to my mother. “You don’t know what he’s doing when he leaves. You think it’s just motorcycles and honest work. But it’s not, is it? He’s going to end up just like Clay.”
“Laura,” I growled. The warning low in my throat.
She laughed, bitter and broken. “You’re still working for him. Still running shit under your father’s name like you haven’t learned a goddamn thing. You say you’re trying, but all I see is someone real comfortable being a criminal. You Cross brothers just love violence.”
“We needed money,” I said. “The shop’s still his. The mortgage is high. Your medical bills. None of it’s cheap.”
“You needed money, so you chose them?” she spat, eyes wide. “I needed you, Damian. I was sitting here, after another miscarriage, and you were out with men who’d sell you for a payday.”
My mother covered her mouth with her hand. I didn’t look at her long. I couldn’t. I never told her about the last pregnancy. There were too many losses. She had already mourned enough things that never had the chance to live. I thought this time Laura needed to grieve with me alone.
“You think I wanted to be out there?” I snapped.
“You think I wanted to be anywhere but here? I held you every night for three weeks. I cleaned the blood out of the sheets. I sat with you through every fucking appointment, every ER visit, every goddamn hour, while you stared at the wall like I didn’t exist.”
“Because I was hurting,” she screamed, her voice cracking. “Inside, outside, everywhere, and you just disappeared the second I got quiet enough for you to pretend I was fine.”
The room shook with her words. Or maybe it was just me. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have the words then. I was young, and angry, and so fucking bitter. Laura looked at me like she was already gone, like there was nothing to explain, nothing to fix.
She turned back to the drawers and threw in the last of her things. My mother whispered her name, her voice a helpless sound.
“He said he was out,” she yelled, arms crossed over her chest like she was holding herself together. “He told me we were starting over, that we could have a normal life.”
“We have money now,” I said. Useless. Empty. “That’s normal.”
She laughed, and it gutted me. There was no joy in it, only bitterness twisted tight around something broken.
“Do you think I give a shit about your dirty money?” she asked, starting to pace.
She yanked open more drawers and slammed them shut with the weight of everything she’d carried alone.
My mother stayed pressed to the wall in the corner of the room, her face pale and streaked with tears.
“This is who I am,” I said. “I never wanted you in this life.”
“But you pulled me into it,” she snapped, cutting me off.
“You dragged me down with you and left me here, wondering if tonight’s the night you don’t come home.
” She took a step toward me. Her hands trembled, her chest rising with uneven breaths.
Her face was twisted in something sharp: anger, heartbreak, exhaustion.
“You’re not the man I married,” she whispered.
“You’re something else now. Something darker. And if I stay here, I become that too.”
I wanted to reach for her, but I didn’t. She was right. I wasn’t the man she married. She married a boy. A nineteen-year-old kid who got his girlfriend pregnant and, for the first and only time in his life, wanted to do what was right, even if it wasn’t right for him.
She took another step closer. I thought she might touch me. Might scream. Might collapse in my arms. There was something rising in her, and I didn’t know what shape it would take. Rage or desperation.
It was rage. I saw it all over her face.
“Don’t,” I said. It came out harsher than I meant. It sounded like a threat when it was really just fear. I didn’t know how to hold on to her anymore without hurting her.
She went still. I watched her shut down. Watched her face go blank, folding herself into something small, quiet, and finished.
Then she slapped me.
It wasn’t hard, but the sound echoed—sharp, final—cutting through the air like the last word in an argument years in the making.
“Don’t follow me,” she said, her voice cold and flat.
“It’s over, Damian. I want out of this life.
” She moved to the coat rack, grabbed her jacket with trembling hands, and pulled it on like armor.
“I didn’t think you’d be home,” she said, her hand landing on the doorknob. “There’s an envelope on the table.”
Then she slammed the door so hard the frame splintered.
That was it.
That was the last time I ever saw her alive.
They said it was an accident. Said she sped straight into that overpass. The car flipped three times and landed in a deep embankment. They said she died on impact. But there were no skid marks. No hesitation. Just a clean, deliberate exit.
When I read her letter, it sounded a lot like she did it on purpose.
Like she wanted out. And she did. Just not like that.
I knew her better than anyone. She didn’t want to die that day.
She wanted out of life with me. She wanted something better.
Something quieter. Something less dangerous.
A version of herself that didn’t have to carry the weight of my name or my mistakes. She wanted air. I gave her a cage.
She didn’t see a way out.
And yeah, maybe the letter sounded like a goodbye. But it wasn’t to the world. It was to us. To the man I was. To the life she kept trying to survive.
But she didn’t get a choice.
My darkness took that from her. My trouble. The shit I let creep in and fester until it swallowed everything she had left.
So yeah. She’s gone because of me.
And that’s not the kind of guilt you bury.
It’s the kind that buries you.
And just now, when Marlowe pulled away from me, I heard that door slam all over again.
But this time, I won’t let it end like that. Marlowe can shut me out. She can turn away. Hell, she can try to run if she wants to. It won’t matter. Because Marlowe’s mine. And I’m never letting her go.
My phone flares to life, cutting through the darkness. I read the message:
Trailed Clay to a motel. Stayed an hour. Stayed behind after he left and I sent housekeeping to bring towels. Taylor answered the door. I think it’s safe to say your location is compromised. What would you like me to do?
Do what I paid you to do.
Kill him. Because I’m never letting anyone hurt her again.