Epilogue — Dean
Monday, the day before Perry’s funeral.
The notebook page is a mess of crossed-out lines and ink blots where the pen sat too long in one spot.
Perry was a good brother.
Scratch that.
Perry served Vigil for eight years with—
Can't finish it. Don't know how to finish it.
Hamlet is curled up on the couch where Zoe left him earlier.
The house already looks different with her things in it, more lived-in, less like a place I'm just passing through.
I drop the pen. It rolls across the kitchen table and stops against my empty coffee mug. The clock on the microwave says 10:47 PM.
I've been sitting here since eight. Two hours and forty-seven minutes staring at paper and coming up with nothing that matters.
The funeral is tomorrow at ten. Clint asked me if I'd say something.
Didn't order it. Just asked. Because Perry and I rode together sometimes.
Because we came up around the same time.
Because someone has to stand up there and make his death mean something beyond the fact that Marrow put three bullets in him at three in the morning.
I hear Zoe moving around in the bathroom. Water running. The cabinet opening and closing. She's been quiet since we got back from the grocery store this afternoon. Not distant. Just present in that way she has where she's watching without making it obvious.
The water shuts off. Footsteps in the hallway. She appears in the kitchen doorway wearing one of my old shirts. Gray fabric worn soft from years of washing. The hem hits her mid-thigh. Her hair is damp from the shower and pulled back from her face.
She looks at me. Then at the notebook.
"Nothing yet?" she asks.
"No."
She walks over slowly. Stands beside my chair and looks down at the ruined page. Her fingers rest light on my shoulder. Not pressing. Just there.
I stare at the scratched-out words. "I don't know what the fuck to say."
"What do you want to say?"
"Something that matters. Something that—" I stop. Run my hand over my face. "I don't know. Something that makes it mean something."
She's quiet. Her thumb moves in a small circle against my shoulder blade.
"Did you know him well?" she asks after a moment.
"Not well enough." The words come out rough. "He was quiet. Kept to himself. You could sit with Perry for two hours and he'd say maybe ten words. But they'd be the right ten words, you know? He thought before he spoke. Didn't waste air on bullshit."
"What else?"
"He liked westerns. The old ones. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood.
He had this whole collection of VHS tapes at his apartment.
I went over there once to help him fix his truck and he had them lined up on a shelf alphabetically.
Must've been fifty of them." I pick the pen back up.
Set it down again. "He had a sister in Pennsylvania.
Older sister. She called him every Sunday at four o'clock.
He always answered. Didn't matter what he was doing.
Didn't matter if we were at the clubhouse or on a run.
Four o'clock on Sunday his phone would ring and he'd step outside to take it. "
Zoe doesn't say anything. Just keeps that steady presence.
"He did good work," I continue. "In the garage.
With his hands. Patient work. The kind where you don't rush the job because rushing makes mistakes.
He could take apart an engine and put it back together and it'd run better than it did before.
He never complained. Never asked for anything he hadn't earned. "
"He sounds like a good person."
"Yeah. He was." My throat gets tight. "And I didn't know his favorite meal. Didn't know what he did on Sunday afternoons after his sister's call. Didn't know if there was someone he wanted but never told anyone about. I knew him for eight years and I didn't know him at all."
The admission sits there like something physical.
Zoe moves around the chair. Sinks down onto the floor in front of me. Her knees pull up to her chest and she wraps her arms around them. Looking up at me in the harsh kitchen light.
"You can't know everything about someone," she says.
"I should've tried harder."
"Maybe. But you can't fix that now."
"I know." I lean back in the chair. It creaks under my weight. "Chuck found him at five in the morning. Perry'd been dead for probably two hours by then. Just lying there in his apartment parking lot. Three rounds center mass. Execution style."
Zoe's face does something complicated.
"Marrow left a playing card," I say. "Their calling card from back when they wanted credit. They wanted us to know it was them. Wanted us to know they could reach us when we were alone."
"That's why Dad moved me to your place."
"Yeah."
She's quiet for a long moment. Then, "What are you really trying to write?"
I look at the notebook. At all the failed attempts. "I'm trying to say something that makes his death matter. That gives it meaning. But everything I write sounds like funeral bullshit. He was a good man. He served the club well. He'll be missed. None of it means anything."
"So don't write that."
"What should I write?"
"I don't know. The truth maybe."
I almost laugh but it comes out wrong. "The truth is he died alone at three in the morning and nobody noticed he was gone until Chuck did a routine check two hours later. The truth is we failed him. The club failed him. He gave eight years and died by himself in a parking lot."
"Is that what scares you?"
The question catches me off guard. "What?"
"Dying alone. Is that what you're actually afraid of?"
I don't answer immediately. Can't. Because she's right and I don't know how to say it.
She waits. Patient. The refrigerator hums in the corner, and outside a car drives past on the main road. The sound fades.
"Yeah," I finally say. "That's what scares me."
"Why?"
"Because I've seen it happen too many times.
Brothers who don't have anyone waiting for them.
Who live alone and die alone and the only reason anyone knows they're gone is because they miss church or don't show up for a run.
And I've spent seventeen years making sure I don't have anyone to miss me because that's safer.
Simpler. You can't lose what you don't have. "
"But now you do have someone."
"Yeah. Now I do." I look at her sitting on my kitchen floor in my shirt with her knees pulled up. "And that's—" I stop. Try again. "That terrifies me."
"Because you might die?"
"Because if I lose you, it'll destroy me. And that's a kind of vulnerability I've never let myself feel before."
"Then we'll both be careful," she says quietly. "Both of us. I'll wait for you to come home, and you'll fight to get back to me. That's the deal."
"You don't know that. You can't promise that."
"Yes I can." Her voice is steady. Certain. "I can promise that I'm choosing this. That I'm choosing you. That I know what I'm getting into and I'm doing it anyway."
"You're choosing to love someone who might not come home one night. Who might end up like Perry. Who might—" I can't finish the sentence.
"I know what I'm choosing."
"Do you?" The words come out harder than I mean them.
"Because knowing it abstractly and living it are completely different things.
You've been with me for five days. Five.
That's nothing. You haven't lived through months of me coming home bleeding.
You haven't sat through me leaving for a run and not knowing if I'm coming back. You haven't—"
"I was kidnapped eight months ago." Her voice cuts through mine. Calm but firm. "I know exactly what this world is. What it costs. I'm not walking into this blind."
"That's not the same as—"
"You're right. It's not. But I'm not naive. I'm not some civilian who wandered into this thinking it's romantic and dangerous in a fun way. I know people die. I know you might die. I know that every time you walk out that door I might not see you again."
She stands. Doesn't step away but creates space between us.
"But here's what you need to understand," she continues. "I'm more afraid of not having you than I am of losing you. I'd rather have three years with you than fifty years safe and alone. I'd rather be terrified and yours than comfortable and empty."
The words sit in my chest like weight.
"Perry didn't have anyone," I say. "He died alone.
And I keep thinking—" I have to stop. My voice is breaking.
"I keep thinking about how I went into that warehouse on Saturday knowing I might not come back.
And for the first time in my life I wanted to survive not because I had shit to do but because someone was waiting for me.
Because you were sitting on my couch scared and I wanted to come back to you. "
Zoe's eyes are wet now but she doesn't look away.
"And that's new," I say. "That's different.
For seventeen years I've ridden out knowing that if I died it wouldn't matter beyond the club losing a member.
But now—" I reach for her hand. She gives it to me.
"Now I have something to lose. Now there's someone who'll grieve me.
Someone who'll sit at my funeral and not know what to say because all the words are inadequate. "
"So don't die."
"I'm trying not to."
"Try harder." She squeezes my hand. "Fight to come home. Every single time. Not for the club. For me."
I pull her closer. She comes. Lets me wrap my arms around her waist and press my face against her stomach. The shirt smells like my detergent and her skin underneath.
"I don't know how to do this," I say against the fabric. "I don't know how to want something this much and still do my job."
"What do you mean?"
"The club has been my whole life. It's what I am.
What I'd die for. But now—" I pull back enough to look up at her.
"Now I have you. And I don't know how to be what the club needs while also being what you need.
I don't know how to walk out that door and risk everything when I have something this important to come back to. "
She touches my face. Her palm warm against my cheek. "You do it the same way you always have. You go. You're careful. You come back."
"And if I can't? If something happens and—"
"Then I'll grieve. I'll be destroyed. I'll probably fall apart for a while." Her thumb moves across my cheekbone. "But I'll survive it. Because that's what you do when you lose someone you love. You survive."
"I don't want you to have to survive me."
"I don't want it too." Her voice breaks a little. "But I'd rather risk that than not have you at all."
I stand and pull her fully against me. My arms around her back. Her face pressed against my chest. We stand there in my kitchen under the fluorescent light while the clock ticks past eleven and neither of us says anything.
After a long time she pulls back. Looks up at me. "What are you going to say tomorrow?"
I look over at the notebook. At all the failed attempts to make Perry's death mean something. "I don't know."
"Yes you do."
"No. I really—"
"Dean." She touches my chest. "You just told me. You've been telling me for the last twenty minutes. You just have to say it out loud in front of everyone else."
"I can't say all that. Clint wouldn't—"
"Then say what you can. Say the parts that matter." She takes my hand. "Come to bed."
"I should finish—"
"You're exhausted. You've been staring at that page for three hours. Your eyes are bloodshot. You need sleep." She tugs my hand gently. "Come on. You'll figure out what to say in the morning when your head is clearer."
I let her pull me away from the table. Down the hallway. Into the bedroom where the bed is unmade from this morning. We climb in fully dressed. She curls against my side immediately. Her head on my chest. Her arm across my stomach. Her leg hooked over mine.
My phone glows on the nightstand. Text from Cain. Update on Marrow movement. I should check it. Should stay on top of intel.
"Dean," Zoe says.
"Yeah?"
"Put the phone down."
"I need to check—"
"Tomorrow. Check it tomorrow." Her hand spreads flat against my ribs. "Right now just be here."
I set the phone back down without reading the message. My gun is in the drawer beneath it. Tomorrow I'll bury a brother. Wednesday or Thursday or next week I might have to ride out again. Marrow is still planning. Crane is still dangerous. The violence isn't finished.
But right now Zoe is warm against my side. Breathing steady. Real and solid and here.
"Will your dad be at the funeral?" I ask after a while.
"Yeah."
"You okay with that?"
She's quiet. Then, "No. But I'm going anyway."
"You don't have to. Nobody would blame you for staying home."
"I'm not staying home." Her voice is firm. "You'll be there and I'm not letting you do this alone."
"Zoe—"
"No." She lifts her head to look at me. "You don't get to protect me from this.
You don't get to tell me to stay home so I don't have to see how hard it is.
I'm coming. I'm going to stand next to you and watch them bury your brother and I'm going to be there when you break.
That's what this means. That's what I signed up for. "
My throat is tight. "Thank you."
"For what?"
"For staying. For not running." I touch her face. "For choosing this even though it's hard."
"It's not just hard. It's terrifying." She leans into my palm. "But I'm still here."
"I love you." The words come out rough. Raw. "I'm in love with you in a way that scares me because I've never felt anything this big before."
"I know." She kisses my palm. "I love you too."
She settles back against my chest. I can feel her breathing slow. Feel her body relax into sleep.
I stare at the ceiling, and think about Perry lying in that parking lot. About the warehouse. About Roan's face when we told him. About the funeral tomorrow. About standing in front of the club and trying to find words.
Perry died alone at three in the morning with nobody there. Nobody to hold his hand. Nobody to tell him it was okay. Nobody to care that he was gone until two hours after the fact.
I won't die alone.
Even if I'm by myself when it happens, I'll die knowing someone was waiting for me. That I mattered to someone beyond my patch and my service record. That I was loved.
That doesn't fix anything. Doesn't bring Perry back. Doesn't make tomorrow easier.
But it's something.
Zoe's breathing evens out completely. She's asleep. Her weight settled against me, and her hand still spread across my ribs.
I close my eyes and let exhaustion take me under.
Tomorrow I'll figure out what to say. Tonight I just need to breathe.
Thank you for reading!