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“I’m going after her.” Brad was the one to speak what I was thinking. My eyes snapped to him. How could he be thinking the same as me? “Tatz is a vice president, and he can’t just take off without giving notice. Which means she will be in town. Which means we can make her change her mind.”

The panic in Brad’s voice was clear. But I didn’t see any flaws in his plan. In fact, I’d be right beside him doing it.

“Count me in,” I started, patting myself down for my bike keys. “You got any idea where he lives?” I knew Layla would. I’d call her. Wasn’t how I was planning on using her number for the first time, but she would tell me, wouldn’t she?

Not if Hannah got to her first.

“Don’t.” Dad spoke for the first time, causing all eyes to go to him. “I promised her if she left she would be left alone. I won’t let you two be the ones to make me break that promise to her.”

Mum scoffed. “Yet you were happy to break it by hitting her?” Mum was only saying what we were all thinking. “How the hell is it fair I lose my daughter because of you?!” Mum’s hand reached into the bookshelf and threw the first thing she could grab at him.

Dad didn’t even dodge it. Though we all knew he could. Mum just so happened to throw a vase at him. The water and the roses went over him and Dad just took it.

“You fucked up, Reaper, and this time you can’t fix it because you went ahead and promised her we would let her go and accept her decision!” Mum threw something else at him. She wasn’t furious—I think Dad would have preferred if she was. Instead, she was upset to the point where there was nothing that could calm her down.

Maybe if Hannah came back.

I was watching my family crack into pieces.

“You know where I stand, Reaper. I’m not giving you fucking notice either. And I’m not listening to you when you say I have to stay away from her.” Brad was basically throwing his vice president patch at Dad. “I’m not letting her waste her life with a man like him!”

Andrea didn’t know what to say. I think she was wishing she never agreed to come to this family tea.

Eve stood up, her eyes going from Mum to Dad. “Well, I don’t want to see either of you. You are blaming him, Mum, but where were you when she stopped eating to begin with? Hell, where were you when Dad was promising her that he would let her go and not chase her down if she did leave?!”

Eve was never emotional. She always had this strong front when it came to her emotions. It was like Hannah showed every emotion and Eve showed zero. Even when Hannah and Eve were little, if you hurt Hannah’s feelings, Eve would be the one punching you for doing it.

It was like Eve was stronger when Hannah was around. And now Eve was looking at a future without Hannah, and that strength she normally had was gone. The emotions were clearly showing on her face. Just like she wasn’t used to showing them, she also wasn’t used to feeling them.

Mum was silent for a minute. I saw the pain that washed across her face. Mum knew she was partly to blame for this.

Then I saw Mum’s eyes go to Dad’s and he was staring right back at her. Like he knew what she was about to say. My stomach twisted tightly. I knew Mum was going to go through with what she’d said; she was leaving Dad. I saw his expression, and he knew it, too.

He knew what she was going to do.

Fuck. This was sick and twisted. This shit didn’t happen to us. We caused others pain. I was about to watch my parents split. I had just lost my sister. My other sister was a second from leaving as well.

Brad, the only other man I looked up to, was basically saying he was throwing in his patch and walking away from a club he had promised to follow for life.

Which would also result in him leaving our lives. Fuck, it wasn’t our lives anymore. It was my life. Dad was never going to come back from losing Mum and his daughters. The club was going to fracture. Mum was never going to forgive Dad for costing her Hannah.

The parents I’d always had would go in different directions. And let’s fucking face it, without each other they weren’t heading in a positive direction.

This wasn’t me being a little boy scared about his parents breaking up. This was me seeing my family split up. But what was worse was watching Mum and Dad split, because they needed each other.

I knew that. The whole fucking world knew that! Dad didn’t function without Mum. Simple. When they did fight, and their fights did get bad, you could watch with your own eyes the man that was meant to be known as fearless and feared by all men stop functioning.

I could only compare this to one other time in my life, but even then their fight wasn’t this bad. But it had resulted in Mum leaving him for a week. I was in my teens and was stubborn. I wouldn’t go with Mum. I stayed with Dad.

And fuck did I see another side to him. A side I don’t think even Mum had seen.

She came back. On her own. Even though Dad had been doing everything possible to reach her, she went off the grid. He couldn’t find her or Hannah or Eve who had both gone with her.

She came back the same day Dad thought she was gone for good.

The girls described Mum to be in the same state as Dad. But she somehow had pulled herself together to come back to him.

I still don’t know what he did to cause her to leave. All I knew was what she said when she came back. She said she hadn’t come back for him. She’d come back for us kids. She also said, which I remembered clearly to this day, that he’d broken her again.

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