Chapter 41
Gracie Mae
I’m still trying to reconcile with the fact that the mom I adored and loved never existed. The woman I fought so hard to get back, the one I held onto hope for, was never real.
It’s a hard pill to swallow.
Every sweet memory I’ve had from my childhood with her is now seen as an act of betrayal.
She made me believe a beautiful lie. A lie, where she had wanted a daughter. A lie, where she had wanted a family. A lie where she had loved me unconditionally.
“Cupcake, you sure you’re okay?” Sasha asks with concern dripping from her voice like honey. Her amber eyes meet mine and I offer her an attempt of a smile.
“I’m-”
She points her manicured neon orange finger at me. “Don’t you dare say fine, Gracie Mae.”
My eyes twinkle as amusement flickers inside me. “Uh-oh, you’re using my full name. I must be in trouble.”
Her hand comes to grasp mine against as her eyes stay leveled with concern. “It’s okay for you to miss her.”
My eyes evade hers as I swallow thickly. My heart flares at the mention of her, causing a burning ache. “How can I miss her when none of it was true?”
She squeezes my hand in reassurance. There’s a sympathetic smile on her face. “It doesn’t take away how you felt. You had loved her at one point in your life, Grace. And your love for her was real, it was true. Just because hers wasn’t doesn’t mean what you had felt wasn’t.”
I squeeze her hand back as my eyes begin to mist. “Thank you.”
She then pulls me in a warm embrace that makes my heart fucking swell and weep at the same time.
God, I am beyond fortunate to have such kind and incredible people in my life.
Feeling a soft nudge on my shoulder I release myself from Sasha’s embrace. She shifts closer to me on the couch and lays a comforting hand on my thigh.
Snake comes to sit down on the coffee table in front of Sasha and me. I fear it just might snap under his weight. Although Snake isn’t as grandiose as Oak, he still isn’t a small man.
“You know everything is going to be okay, don’t you?
” Snake’s voice is surprisingly soft and gentle.
But then again, ever since leaving my mom’s hospital room Snake has been nothing but cautious around me.
Perhaps cautious isn’t the right word. He’s been more open with me.
Not afraid to show his softer side, a side only Alice and Oak have seen to its true extent.
Snake is acting how I imagine an older brother would.
“But there is a chance.” My voice wavers along with my hope.
“The chance of him getting out of this is greater, Grace.” His eyes then flick over to Sasha.
She must read something in them because she squeezes my thigh before pressing a kiss to my cheek to leave Snake and I alone.
Snake doesn’t move from his spot. He does, however, lean in, with his elbows resting against his knees. “Oak is the closest thing I have to a brother. And I don’t mean that with disrespect to my brothers at Vipers MC, but none of them know me like Oak does.”
I know how much this is true. And anyone can see that Oak and Snake share a special bond with each other.
Their love for one another runs deep. It’s beautiful, really.
It’s beautiful how two broken, misunderstood and flawed men who carried guilt and self loathing found themselves in one another and were able to be seen.
“Oak and I, we’ve always been two sides of the same coin,” he laughs half-heartedly.
“Both of us wearing a mask to hide our pain. Both of us finding ourselves not worthy of anything good. You see, my mask destroyed the people I loved. Alice was a casualty of my deep rooted insecurities that my father made me believe were true. I wasn’t a good man, I had demons.
And those demons made me believe I wasn’t good enough for someone like her.
That my darkness would ruin her. That she would eventually see that I was a monster.
” He shakes his head, regret and sorrow swallowing his eyes.
“I always feared of her one day looking at me like the villain. And then I became the thing I feared of the most. I saw it in her eyes, Grace. And that, that destroyed me. It tore apart my soul. It battered my heart and left me so fucking hollow.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed roughly.
I can tell that he’s holding back tears.
The roughness in his voice proves it. “And yet somehow, someway, she still saw the good in me. I don’t deserve her, Grace.
I never have and I know I’ll be spending the rest of my life, and even when I’m dead, proving to her just how worthy I am. ”
“You’re everything to her, Snake. You’re her god damned world,” I assure him with a fierceness in my voice. “She’s her happiest when she’s with you. You deserve her, Snake. As much as I despised you in the beginning, you’ve proved yourself.”
“After all this time I never did apologize to you.”
I swallow. “You don’t have to.” And I mean that. He doesn’t owe me an apology. He owed one to Alice. He owed one to himself. And he did both.
“You’re wrong. I apologize, Grace, for all of it. And I fucking thank you for being there for her when I wasn’t. I’ll never forgive myself for that, but I am glad she had you.” There’s a rawness and vulnerability to him that I have never borne witness to before.
Tears burn at the back of my eyes.
“And I want to thank you for fighting for Oak as fucking hard as you did,” he says gruffly.
He clears his throat but he can’t hide the mist in his hazel eyes.
God, the love Snake has for Oak is fucking palpable.
“He’s a good man, Grace,” he pauses, shaking his head adamantly, “fuck, he’s not just a good man, he’s the best man that I know.
And it fucking killed me watching him punish himself for shit he couldn’t control. ”
“He was never to blame,” I say softly.
“No, he wasn’t,” Snake agrees, his voice just as soft.
“I could never get him to see that. Just as he could never get me to see past my own insecurities. Him and I suffer from being strong headed and insufferably stubborn. And it took even stronger women, an even stubborn women, to get our heads out of our asses.”
“I’m not the one to take credit for that, Snake. At the end of the day it’s up to us to decide what we want. And Oak wants more.”
“He wants more because you kept pushing him. Because you kept fighting for him. You don’t want to take the credit, that’s fine. But you, Grace, you brought the dead man back to life. You gave him something none of us could. Not even me when I tried my fucking hardest.”
The tears that I have been fighting back break free. But they aren’t tears of sorrow, they’re tears of sheer happiness.
Because I felt it when the FBI had taken custody of Oak that Friday evening. I saw it in his face, I felt it in my soul. Oak’s mind is finally free.
And that, that is what I have wanted all along for him. For him not to forget his past, but to forgive himself.
Now selfishly, I want him free to spend the rest of his days with me.
I want to see the smiles on his gorgeous face. I want to hear his robust laughter. I want to see his eyes that will no longer be swallowed by pain but love.
“Do you honestly think after everything you have given him that anyone, even the fucking feds will keep him from you?”
I know the answer before it even leaves my lips. “No.”
Snake smiles at me. It’s a bit mischievous, a little dark and a lot confident. “You have your answer, Grace.”
“Who knew you’d be the one cheering me up?” I tease him, my heart feeling lighter.
He rises from the coffee table, his hands absently running down his thighs as if he’s trying to get lint off them. After collecting a cigarette and putting it between his lips he then takes a matchbox from his inner Vipers MC cut and strikes a match.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Alice is going to be pissed when she catches you.”
He shrugs with a wicked smile. “It makes for hot sex.”
Okay, ew. My face pulls with disgust. “I don’t need that information, thank you very much.” Sure, Alice and I discuss our sex life but that doesn’t mean I want to hear about it from him. It’s different. Don’t ask me how but it just is.
“While there is truth to that I also feel as if my own limb is missing without Oak here. So, I know she’ll let me slide.”
He inhales the nicotine in a long pull and exhales with a cloud of smoke obscuring his face.
“You should shower before your hot angry sex with Alice,” I suggest to him as I wave my hand in the air trying to dispel the smoke.
He chuckles in the midst of taking another drag. After the second drawl he takes the butt end of the cigarette and exposes the flames between his thumb and pointer finger. He doesn’t even wince.
My eyes stare at him widely with shock and confusion. “Did that not hurt?”
He rubs his pointer finger and thumb together, the ashes falling on the ground.
“No.” It’s a simple answer that leaves me with too many questions.
Honestly, I’m not sure if I want them answered.
As if he can read my mind he shakes his head with a lopsided grin.
“I don’t feel pain, Grace. Don’t hurt your head thinking too much about it.
” He taps my head then and I roll my eyes up at him half annoyed and half amused.
As he begins to walk away, surely to reunite with Alice because he can’t seem to stay away from her, I call out to him. “Snake.” He pauses, turning his head to give me his side profile. I then say so softly I’m afraid he might miss it, “Thank you.”
He nods his head and continues to walk to wherever he’s headed, not before I hear him reply, “Anytime.”