Page 188 of Heartbeats & Highways

The teasing and joking lightened my spirits. All I wanted to do was stand with them for a while. To forget about the horrors of the world. To forget that we’d just buried a man who’d barely had a chance to live.

To forget the guilt that threatened to consume me.

Savage was standing in front of two graves, his back to me as I approached. I came to his side and took his hand. His warm fingers wrapped around mine.

I read the names on the stones.

“Lily and Cam’s parents?” I asked.

He nodded. “The night I took a bullet for Duke was the night Gray died.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It feels like it happened both yesterday and years ago at the same time.”

I squeezed his hand in comfort but said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say. He was reliving all his losses, all his mistakes. I saw it on his face.

Reckoning.

Without a word, he turned away from the graves and we walked to the car. We were the only two left; everyone else had already gone to the clubhouse.

My eyes were gritty, and I had a low-grade headache from being awake so long. “I’m really tired.”

“I’ll drive,” he said, opening the passenger side door for me.

Nodding, I climbed in. I sat on my cold hands as he got into the driver’s seat.

“We’ll stay at the clubhouse tonight,” he said. “Everyone else will too. Not just because of the drinking, but Prez is calling Church tomorrow morning.”

“Church?”

“He wanted to give it a day. Before we met and talked about shit.”

I swallowed. “Any idea how it’s going to go?”

“No.” He drove us away from the curb. “But I don’t expect it to be good. Everyone knows what I was involved in. Why we had a funeral.”

“It could’ve beenyourfuneral,” I murmured.

He shook his head. “No. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been in the ring, but I couldn’t stop him. He already made the deal.”

We’d never know the outcome of a hypothetical situation. All I knew was that the guilt we both felt was swallowing everything good.

I put my hand to my belly.

Life grew within me, despite the darkness.

We didn’t speak the rest of the drive to the clubhouse. When we got inside, trays of food had been put out and the liquor bottles were already open.

I’d never been to a traditional funeral or wake. Before my parents had joined the Seed Reapers, I hadn’t known anyone who died. But the way the cult handled death . . .

I shoved the thoughts away, wishing they hadn’t entered my mind.

“Food?” Savage asked.

“Yeah,” I said as I grabbed a plate. He went right for a bottle of bourbon.

“You mind if I go talk to Duke?” he asked.

I shook my head. He left the main room and headed down the hallway.

After I got myself a heaping plate, I took a seat next to Mia on the couch. “Where are the kids?”

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