Chapter 6 #2
After the boxes and the tie downs, after I lock up, after the long drive back through the city to the outer limits, Wizard does exactly what he said he was going to do.
He leaves his bike beside Odin’s, both parked by the truck, drops the tailgate, and plops down, legs spread, elbows resting on his thickly muscled thighs, boots dangling in the air like he’s hunkering down for the long haul.
He’s deceptively casual, but since the guys are also wearing their leather vests with the club patch on the back, they get some looks.
The gas station does have a diner attached.
It’s surprisingly busy, with people coming and going.
Wizard draws far more interested female attention than wary or curious male looks, but he acts like he doesn’t see any of it.
Atlas and Odin are back a few minutes later. “They’re swamped in the dining room. Said food’s a half hour wait at least, even if we get it to go.”
Wizard lifts a shoulder in a shrug. He should be exhausted, surly, impatient. He’d have every right to just want this night over and done with. He hasn’t slept in all this time, but he’s far from being worn out. Gas station lights flicker off his luminous green eyes and paint his smile golden.
“It’s all good. I don’t mind waiting out here. You guys go on ahead and order. Sit down. Have some soda. You both look parched.”
“Fuck you, I don’t,” Odin grinds, but he grins. “Maybe just a little. What can we get you?”
“Just a sandwich and a coffee.”
Atlas claps him on the shoulder, then motions for me to follow them in.
“I—I think I’m good out here. I like the air.”
Their eyes flick to Wizard. He shifts over on the tailgate.
“What can we get for you?” Atlas asks.
“This was supposed to be my treat.” I move for the passenger door, to get my purse where I left it on the floor by my seat. I realize how ridiculous that must seem after the club just bailed me out to the tune of two million fucking dollars.
“Nah,” Odin waves me off. “Don’t worry about it. Do you want a sandwich too?”
“Sure. Anything. And sweet tea if they’ve got it. Thank you.”
They move off, so different from each other, but with the same confident gait, their broad leather-clad shoulders announcing their brotherhood.
I’m wearing yet another fresh shirt and a new pair of leggings.
I changed right before I hauled my suitcase out of my old room.
I’m damp again. Because it’s hot out, and humid?
My heart hasn’t calmed down either. It’s still fluttering at a weird rate.
I’m no stranger to dealing with anxiety in some form, and fuck, this feels like a brain glitch, telling my heart that I’m locked in a room with all the threats.
My body still hasn’t seen reason. Maybe that makes sense. It’s been a lot of… change.
“The house is non-descript in that magazine aura way,” I say for no reason at all except that the words drop out of my mouth as I try to stand casually by the tailgate. “It seems perfectly staged. The realtor should be happy when he gets there tomorrow.”
That was what I built. The life I left behind.
Soulless. All those years packed up in a few hours.
I worked so hard for all of it, and I left it all behind.
It was surprisingly easy for me to lock up and turn my back on all of it.
Or is this what freedom feels like? Mostly elation with just the smallest amount of missing the bars because it was routine, and routine felt somewhat safe.
“We had separate bedrooms,” I blurt. Wizard didn’t get weird about it at the house, but I know he saw, and now I’m weird about it.
Also. Obviously. “We have for a while. Like, years. I… I’m not sure why I want to say that.
It just feels important. Maybe some part of me was trying to make it all right a long time ago, not just now, when it’s all crashing down.
That’s me though, isn’t it? I never could smell the fire for the smoke, or see the forest for the trees, or whatever those dumb sayings actually mean.
I was always so blind, making all the wrong choices and sticking with them. ”
Here I am, heading back to the one place I was in such a hurry to leave.
I’m about to hit all my memories face-first. There are the ones that are precious, though, because they were framed around Wizard and others around Reginald, Wizard and James’ grandfather.
I thought I had at least a few things figured out, but the reality is that I have one suitcase left of my past life and a whole lot more questions than I do answers.
“You put everyone else first,” I mumble, toeing my sneaker into the crumbling pavement. “You always did and you still do.”
Wizard’s knuckles whiten on top of his knees, he’s got his hands clenched so hard. “I don’t think that I’m the only one.”
“No. I never put anyone else first. That was the problem. We all eat what we’ve prepared for ourselves. This is my meal.”
“Your meal is gonna be the sandwich you asked for and some delicious tea and nothing else. You hear me, Esme? You’re allowed to feel how you want to feel.
You’re allowed to be sad, or angry, or confused, or even hopeless, but don’t think for one second that you deserve any of this.
It’s okay to think you want something and then find out maybe it’s not all you thought it would be. ”
I lean so hard against the truck that my hipbone starts to throb. He’s wrong. It’s not okay.
“There’s no shame in starting over. You’re holding up a fuck of a lot better than most people would. No matter what happened, what the details were, what the years were like, that’s the past. Tomorrow is fresh and you’re allowed to go after it for yourself.”
I bite the inside of my cheek until my mouth floods with copper.
I have no right to allow this man to be so good to me after I watered down our friendship to one day a year, a token hug, a few nice words.
We were like two bodies passing each other, barely brushing up against one another.
That, after being friends who saw each other every day, who spent so many of our free hours together.
Wizard apparently is fresh out of fucks for the fact that I haven’t said a word.
He fills the silence for me. “You’re allowed to ask yourself what you want and to maybe give an honest answer.
I know you don’t like Hart, but Hart with the club is a lot better than when we were growing up and we didn’t have that in our lives.
It’s full of great people. It might even be tolerable for a little while, until you want to move on. ”
“I miss Reg.” Okay. On the list of things I shouldn’t say after not saying a damn thing at all, that one hovers near the top.
Wizard isn’t one of those people who can’t talk about the past—obviously. He makes a sound in his throat that passes as agreement.
“Me too. Always.”
“If I have regrets about anything, it’s about you and him. About not coming back to Hart as often as I should have.”
I don’t know much of anything. I’m not sure how this is going to play out, or where I’m supposed to go from the next step and the one in front of that.
I do know that I’ve missed having someone there who cares…
who gets me. I’ve missed feeling safe and understood.
I feel Wizard’s magnetic field. He’s a law of physics all on his own, sitting up there on the tailgate, boots nearly scraping the ground because he’s so tall.
I sneak a look at him and marvel again at the man that he became, in every way.
A man who fearlessly helps others. A man not afraid to speak his mind or open his heart.
Also, a giant of a man who is so far from the teenager who was all knobby knees and gangly awkwardness.
I loved that boy. I’m not sure where to put my eyes when it comes to the man.
I don’t mean to let them rake over his long legs, up thighs so huge and hard that his jeans strain against the muscle like soft denim butter.
I take in his tight waist with the abs straining against his t-shirt, his unzipped jacket hanging open at the sides and fitted against his broad shoulders.
I keep going, finally looking all the way up, into his face.
His eyes haven’t changed. There’s still the same soul shining out of his eyes, looking right back at me, drenched in summer moonlight and gas station lights.
His Adam’s apple bobs with a swallow. I don’t know why, of all things, that feels the most unguarded. It’s not like Wizard ever tried to put up walls. He didn’t. He hasn’t. He’s unequivocally let me right back into his life.
All my usual avoidance tactics have been stripped away. I don’t have work to bury myself in. I have no excuses. No distractions. I’m heading straight down an undetermined path with a big blank open space at the end, and I am terrified.
“Wizard, I—” Whatever was about to come out gets washed away when Odin and Atlas churn out of the double glass doors at the front of the gas station.
Odin waves two paper bags madly overhead. Atlas balances two drink trays.
“Sandwiches!” Odin calls. “Get your sandwiches here.”
Wizard slides off the tailgate and lets Odin spread everything out, pulling squares, rectangles, and what look to be wraps or burritos out of the bag. Atlas sets the drink trays down.
“We got a bit of everything. Dig in, kids.”
Kids. I think Atlas is younger than all of us. The little happy dance he does as soon as he unwraps a sandwich and bites into it still has my lips turning up.
A few nights ago, I thought that it would be impossible to ever smile again, but here I am, at some random gas station, with my choice of sandwich and drink, and three giants surrounding me with a truckload of shit I’ll never have to look at again.
One man is scary, the other looks like an extra straight off a movie set, and the third?
He was my soulmate, if soulmates aren’t actually a romantic notion at all, but a person who gets you straight down to your molecules.
I didn’t know two of the three existed before this morning, and the third, I’d basically cut out of my life forever.
Here they are holding me up, all three of them, with smiles and laughter, sandwiches and tea, and with the exact words that I needed to hear in order to start healing my shattered soul.
Maybe Wizard’s right. The Hart waiting for me at the end of the line tonight isn’t the Hart I grew up in. There’s no going back there. It’s in the past, and whatever the past is, it’s done.