Chapter 4 #2
Five words shouldn’t have affected me so much.
Harry’s absence wasn’t just something I noticed.
It was all around us. There was a piece of the club missing, and I guessed none of us knew how to move on from that.
I hadn’t been around long after Pete died.
I took the coward’s way out, choosing to spend half a decade in solitude, selfishly healing from grief by taking random beatings, and randomly beating others, too.
I had no idea how my brothers operated after death.
“How do you do that?” I asked him quietly as I moved to the other side of the bar—the place Harry loved to stand with a towel over his shoulder, sliding shot glasses up and down the overused mahogany counter.
“What?” Jedd asked, looking up at me through his thick, dark brows with his heavy, burdened eyes.
“How do you remind yourself you’re still alive?”
“I start by inhaling and exhaling.”
“Sounds easy.”
“Does it?” He arched a brow. “Feels like torture.”
“That I understand.”
Jedd blew out a breath through his nostrils, never taking his eyes away from mine. “Why are you up at this time?”
Right on cue, Slater walked into the bar, rubbing his bed hair and sliding his heavy, boot-laden feet across the wooden floor to meet us.
“We having a party?” he asked, sleep tainting his voice.
I reached behind me for two more tumblers and set them down in between my VP and me as Slater pulled up on a stool next to Jedd.
“This is more like rehab,” I told him dryly.
“Even more reason to hit the hard stuff,” Slater said through a sigh, resting his cheek on his fist and turning to look between Jedd and me. “Get ready, Jedd. Tucker woke me up and said he needed help.”
“He’s only weeks late,” Jedd responded.
I poured us all a drink, rested the bottle on the counter, and threw my Jack Daniels down my neck without even letting it touch the sides before slamming the glass back down on the bar and gasping. “I just fucked Ayda like she was some kind of whore,” I told them honestly.
Jedd froze, his glass resting on his bottom lip as he looked at me, wide-eyed. Slater choked on his drink.
“What?” Jedd asked quietly.
“I said… I just fucked my fiancée like she was some kind of Hound Whore, using her up for my benefit, even though I knew it hurt her. Worst thing is, at the time, I felt no remorse. Not until I saw her start to cry once it was over. She…” I sighed heavily.
“She said she enjoyed it. I guess it’s the first time we’ve, you know… ”
“Fucked since Harry died?” Slater winced, smacking his chest as the liquor ripped his throat out.
“That,” I said, pointing to my brother while looking at Jedd.
“And?” Jedd asked, scowling ever so slightly.
“And that’s when I knew I needed to speak to one of you.
I’m losing myself, boys. I’m drifting. I can feel it.
Its Pete, take two, in my head, only this time I can’t do what I did to survive his death.
My automatic reaction is to find the biggest nuclear bomb I can, strap myself to it, light it up and set myself off into the sunset for a few years in a blaze of twisted glory.
I spent almost five years in prison fucking up my head, fucking up my life, and fucking up this club.
Even after that, I came out more damaged than I went in.
I can’t… I can’t let myself go down that route again, and I’m telling you with all the honesty I am capable of, brothers, I’m hanging by a very thin thread.
I want blood again. I can taste it. I’m literally swimming in it some nights. ”
“Whose?” Slater asked, straightening his spine and clearing his throat.
“Anyone I can get my hands on.”
“Kids?” Jedd dared himself to ask.
“Fuck.” I scowled. “No.”
“Women?”
The cries of Jon Taylor’s wife rang in my ears, and I looked down at my empty glass and decided I needed to pour myself another one.
The silence was my answer.
As was the shot of liquor I threw down my neck.
“What do you want us to do, Drew?” Slater asked. His voice held no judgment, unlike my VP’s.
“Pull me back if you see me drifting too far left instead of right.”
“And if we can’t?”
“Then shoot me in the fucking leg, strap me to a chair, and keep me there for five years until I get over Harry’s death if that’s what you have to do.”
“Don’t tempt us,” Jedd muttered.
I watched him, really watched him, and for the first time in my life, I saw tiredness haunting my second-in-command’s eyes. I understood every part of it.
I was exhausted, too.
None of us had any idea where this life was going to take us, but each week, month, and year seemed to take us even further away from any kind of dream we had. Wherever there was light and happiness, taunting darkness soon followed.
“If Ayda can’t pull you back, how do you expect us to?” Slater asked quietly.
Locking my eyes on his, I said the one thing I needed these two men to hear.
“‘Cause you’ll do what’s best for me, even if it means hurting every inch of my body if you have to.
She loves me too much to be cruel. You guys have my permission to do whatever you have to do to keep me grounded.
Even if it means you damn near killing me.
” I stood tall and pushed my shoulders back.
“Don’t let me hurt her again. Anyone but her. ”
I didn’t need to say anything else. One didn’t know what I was doing. The other was scared he knew all too well.
So, I left, pushing my gun down into the back of my jeans waistband, and pulling my cut down into place before I hopped down the steps of The Hut and straddled my bike.
Amid all the confusion of the love and grief cocktail that was my life, only one thing was crystal fucking clear: I needed the road.
I always needed the fucking road.