Chapter Twenty-Three
Harley
Edge’s terrible words cut through the aftermath of the bliss that clouds my brain like a thick, heady fog.
“What?” I blink at him, so shocked I can’t even begin to process. I must have heard him wrong. This time, I watch his lips more carefully.
“It was the best thing.” Edge’s hand rakes around protectively to the back of my neck. I’m still sweaty back there, and when he sweeps my hand away and rests his warm fingers there, it feels like a relief.
His eyes glisten with pain, even though the rest of his face remains neutral.
He can try and lie to me, to sell it to himself, but his body language won’t lie, and it’s what I’m attuned to most. I can see his pulse point jumping at his neck, the way a vein in his forehead throbs, the way the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth deepen.
“Why? Why would you do that?”
He shakes his head and glances away, but he doesn’t turn his face, so that I can’t read his lips properly.
“Because it needed to be done. Sometimes this shit is bigger than just ourselves. I swore that oath when I patched in, an oath that says I’d fight and die for my brothers.
That means, to me at least, that I’ll always do what’s best for them and right now, leaving the MC was definitely the right thing. ”
“Because of my dad?”
Edge hesitates. I know he’s trying to figure out a way to spare my feelings, and I don’t want him to. I want him to tell me exactly what is happening.
“Edge?”
“Yeah.” He sighs hard, so that his shoulders shake.
“Yeah. Yeah, because of Steel. Because he’s not gonna get over this any time soon and the club needs a leader.
He’d tear the club apart over this, and right now the Riders are facing a bunch of bullshit with that other club.
Steel needs his head in the game, not up his ass.
He can’t be worrying about me constantly and when I’m there, all he sees is red.
I can’t force him to change his mind or the way he feels.
It’s gonna take time and the club might not have it. ”
“You think they’re going to war then?”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that, but we…” he pauses. “They need to retaliate, something like that in our own town can’t go unchallenged. Steel and the rest of the guys need to be focused. I won’t have this vendetta getting in the way, costing men’s lives.”
His words hit me like a blow. They settle in my chest, heavy and weighted, sweeping through my veins like a poison spreading with every heartbeat.
My mouth goes bone dry and I’m completely at a loss for words. The MC was everything to Edge. They are everything to him. I shouldn’t say anything at all, should just let misery have silence as company, but I can’t help myself.
“But- but, Edge, the club is your whole life. It’s everything you’ve worked for. It’s everything you wanted. It’s a place where you felt like you belonged. You had family there.”
His lips press into a thin line. “You’re my family now.” The warm hand at the back of my neck tightens protectively. “Don’t need anyone else.”
“But what are we going to do?”
He shrugs so casually that I know he doesn’t feel it.
I have to wonder if he went for a ride before he came home and raged at the road, the sky, the wind rushing up around him, to calm himself for when he came back to me.
It made sense, the passion riding so high that he had to take me the way he did.
I don’t feel used, I feel the exact opposite.
Like I was the one person he knew he could turn to in the world, his home when he’d just lost everything he knew and loved.
I feel honored that he’s sitting right now, baring his soul to me.
“I’ll talk to my father—”
“No.” That hand squeezes so hard that I gasp and Edge quickly loosens his fingers.
“Fuck… I just… no. I don’t want you getting involved with this.
If you want to talk to Steel about anything else, about us even, that’s fine.
He’s your dad and I feel fucking terrible for being the wedge to come between you. ”
“You’re not.”
“I know but he sees it that way and I know not being able to go back home and sit down and talk with him like you did your whole life before is killing you. It guts me when I look at you, because I see him in you, and I know how close you are to your family.”
“They’ll come around,” I reassure him gently.
I splay my hand flat across his chest, and smile when his warmth burns into my palm right through his t-shirt.
“It might just take some time. I want you to tell me what you want, though. If you know. I mean, where are we going to go? Your money is all wrapped up in the club.”
A groan rattles through Edge. I feel the vibrations deep in my own chest, we’re so close, connected by bone and muscle and spirit. “How the hell do you even know something like that?”
“Do you need to ask?” I say softly.
“No,” he admits. “I don’t. I know that you know probably everything about the Riders, even if you shouldn’t.”
“It’s not like I listened in or anything. I mean… how could I? You used to talk to my dad about stuff right in front of me. You always have, both of you, ever since I was a kid.”
“Right. Because we knew you could keep a secret.”
“No. It was because you thought I couldn’t read your lips, and later, it was like you’d been doing it so long, you both never stopped.”
Edge blinks back at me. He reaches up and scrubs a hand over his face. “I don’t know, Harley. We’ll go wherever you want. There’s lots of things for me to do out there. I could get a job at a garage. Fix bikes or whatever.”
I untangle my hands from Edge’s neck and grip his hand, twisting our fingers together. I love the contrast between them. I love the scars, the callouses, the size, and the roughness.
“I love you. I’d go wherever you want me to go, wherever you want to take us, but Helena is our home.
You know that even if you weren’t in the picture I’d want to stay I came back here after college.
I always planned to return. It’s home. The place where I’m always going to be surrounded by family, women that I love, my sisters. ”
“We could go to Jacksonville or Miami. It’s not so far.”
“It’s far enough.”
“Depends who you’re asking.”
I feel the defeat in him, the hopelessness, the agony at the decision he had to make, and it rips me apart inside. I know he’ll probably say no, but I turn my eyes up anyway.
“Leah invited me for a spa day with her and Christine. I’ve never had a pedicure. Always thought they were gross. She begged me though, and I said yes.”
“You can go, Harley,” Edge prods, mistaking my intent.
“Yeah, I know. I know you’d never stop me from seeing my sisters, just because you left the MC. Neither of us even knows what that means yet. But Leah… she loves my dad. He listens to her. I’m not saying I’d ask her to do or say anything, but if she were to…”
“Don’t. You don’t think she’s been working at it already? For your sake?”
I dip my head, ashamed. “Yeah,” I mumble. “I know she has. But I could—”
Edge holds me back, at arm’s length. He studies me and a sad, wistful smile curls up his lips. It’s not a real smile and I miss the genuine ones, the ones so full of life and laughter that it makes me ache all over just seeing it, makes me feel so damn happy that I’m a part of his joy.
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about me. About us.
We’ll be fine. I promise that I’ll take care of you.
No matter what. You go on that spa day, and you have fun getting your toes picked at or your nails painted or whatever it is you need to do.
Go have fun. See Leah, I can’t imagine what this has been like for her caught between the two of you. You need to unwind.”
“Like you do? Riding into the wind? Or when you walk off towards the swamp and unload your gun into the muck there?”
His lips twitch, this time a real version of a smile, and my heart leaps. “Yeah. Something like that.”
The shadows that flicker over his face, the uncertainty and the raw pain that I see when his composure slips just a little, eats away at me. It shreds my heart and I wish that I could just stitch this whole thing up, bandage it together like my arm, and heal it that way.
I caress Edge’s cheek and he lets me. He’s a proud man, yet he doesn’t stop me when I’m the one who wants to try and comfort him.
He’s not afraid of showing me that he loves me and appreciating what I give him.
Maybe it’s because we had to sneak around, even the simplest of touches were all we had.
Whatever the reason, when he leans into my touch, sharing and giving back that trust that I gave him so blindly, it melts me.
He brings my fingers to his lips and kisses them gently before he drops his hands and signs to me, perfect, amazing, incredible signs.
I love you, Harley. Everything will be fine. You’ll see.
I wish I could believe him. It’s not that I don’t, but I’m not just willing to sit around and hope that everything works itself out.
It occurs to me that maybe I can be the thread, Leah and I, working together, to stitch up the raw, gaping wounds between two men who were supposed to be brothers until death.
I sign back that I love him.
And then I turn my head and lay it on his chest, right above his heart. I love listening to that steady beat, but I also can’t risk that he’ll see all my plans laid bare before him with a single knowing glance.