Page 51 of Forsaking All Others

The confusion disappears from her face. The features I love—her eyes, those lips, the crease above her brow—it all goes hard.

Rigid with hate.

Her jaw tenses and she takes a step backward.

“What did you do?” she says through gritted teeth.

I don’t respond.

There is no need.

If she looks long and hard, she’ll find her answer.

The silence between us is cut by the sound of someone clearing their throat. Holly and I break our stare to turn and find Leftie in the doorway.

“The police are asking to talk to Holly.”

I glance back at the woman I love and watch a lone tear slide down her cheek. She roughly wipes it away and straightens her shoulders. Without giving it too much thought, I take a step close.

I want to touch her.

I want to force her eyes back to mine.

Not for reassurance or to plead my case, but because I know she’s about to go into that living room and lie through her teeth.

My fingers brush against hers, but she quickly pulls them out of my reach.

She glances at me, her eyes cold.

“I always thought it would be you,” she whispers. Then she turns her back to me and without another word she walks out of the kitchen.

“What does that mean?” Leftie asks.

My gaze cuts to him.

Just like Holly can read me, I can read her.

“She always thought it’d be me she had to put in the ground.”

On my knees, on my knees.

Chapter Fourteen

Holly Armstrong

Life is measured in days.There are ordinary days where we go about our routine thinking,oh, well, there’s always tomorrowand there are extraordinary days that change the course of our lives. Days where tomorrow doesn’t exist, and yesterday is all we have left.

My husband is dead.

There are no more tomorrows and yesterday we fought. We spent the entire day hating one another. Resenting one another. Cursing one another. I want to say it’s all because of a lie, but it’s not. Colt didn’t storm out of the house because I made up some elaborate story, that was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. He was tired of pretending his wife was one hundred percent devoted to him. He deserved better than I gave him and now I have to live the rest of my life knowing I failed a good man. I also have to live with the fact that my ex-husband somehow had a hand in his murder.

Maverick didn’t get into specifics when he said it was his fault, but the second I looked into his eyes, I knew he was responsible. He may not have killed Colt himself, but he did something and all the time he spent with me and Theo in the hospital was just him giving himself a clear conscience and a solid alibi. At least that’s what I told myself when the cops revealed Colt had been shot three times at a rest stop.

They asked me if my husband had any enemies, if there was anyone who wanted him dead, and all I kept thinking about was the first time I washed the blood stains from Maverick’s clothes. Tara was about Theo’s age and Maverick was out all night. When I woke up the next morning, there a white t-shirt in the laundry room and it was covered in blood. A normal woman would’ve woken her husband and asked questions, I just sprayed the shirt with stain remover and added an extra cup of bleach to the wash like it was no big deal.

Maverick chose a lifestyle when he took his father’s colors, one filled with chaos, crime, and carnage, and I chose Maverick. Washing blood from his clothes and his hands was part of that choice. It was something I accepted, something I made peace with, and we brought our children into that life too. I married another man, took another name, but I bleed red and black just like Maverick. I protect the patch and the men who wear it because it is part of my children’s legacy.

It’s who Tara and Shepard are.

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