Page 58 of The Heart We Guard
17
BUTCHER
Greer is in bed, and I’m attempting to sleep on a sofa that is three sizes too small for my frame.
But every time I close my eyes, I see her being harassed by a motorcycle club for reasons I don’t know or understand yet. If I had to guess, it’s something to do with that patient she had.
And the re-emergence of the Midtown Rebels.
Then, my thoughts drift to how she’s been since she found out about the baby…pale skinned, nervous and alone, taking the pregnancy tests. I see the steely resolve she has, to do this whole thing on her own.
And the scary part? I know she totally can. I don’t know that many other women who find themselves pregnant and without a job would suddenly uproot themselves, sell their home, travel to a new city, and move on like the pregnancy was just a hiccup.
She said she’s flying away from me tomorrow and told me I could leave.
Then, she climbed into bed, and I plopped my stubborn ass down here. Which is why I’m stuck watching the occasional reflection of light from outside on the ceiling.
There has to be an angle I can try tomorrow to get her to come home with me.
Some way of convincing her that we could…
Maybe you should just tell her how you feel.
I shake my head at that voice. What should I tell her? That in those few days I spent with her, it consolidated the kind of man I want to be? That I can’t imagine being anything more than I already am without her? That I feel like she’s my salvation wrapped up in one prickly package?
For her, I’ll study all the lessons I need to learn in life, over and over and over again until they stick.
But then, I wonder if there are ways to combine that kind of family life with the one I have now. Some of my brothers seem quite certain. Hell, I’ve trusted my daughter to Atom, a man who better figure it out because I really don’t want to have to kill my enforcer if he doesn’t.
Maybe change is all about setting yourself up to succeed. Like Catfish was yapping one time about this book he read about habits. How you need to make the things you should be doing easy to do, and how you should be making the things you shouldn’t be doing harder to do.
There’s a reason I don’t have a packet of smokes on me right now. Too easy to pull one out and take a long draw on it.
I feel like figuring out how to be there for Greer and our child should be easy enough to do. But dropping the bad shit, the girls on demand, the alcohol, things I struggle to do in limited measures given my addictive personality and need to lose myself in something when shit goes wrong…that habit might be harder to break.
The sheets rustle as Greer turns over onto her side, and I hear the gentle sigh that tells me no matter how hard she’s trying, she isn’t asleep either. The muttered curse that follows confirms it.
In all the nights since I returned to the clubhouse, no amount of sexoralcohol has helped me sleep. After making love with Greer, sex with club girls seemed empty and meaningless. The first time Karlie came to my room when I got back, I had to close my eyes and pretend it was Greer sucking my cock to get off.
Mortality isn’t something we overly think about on a day-to-day basis beyond the general observation that there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. But getting shot did something to my internal makeup. It reset my system. Showed me that the timer on my life is clicking down, and tomorrow isn’t certain.
I’ve wondered about the choice I’d have made if Greer hadn’t been in that parking lot. I wasn’t joking when I said that prison is worse than death. I experienced it once. For six months.
I’m not sure I could handle it the way Grudge’s father does. Life in a cage isn’t for me.
Would I have just looked up at the sky, let it be the last thing I saw, before I closed my eyes?
Would I have thought about Ember and the future grandkids I’d never get to meet?
Or would I have clung to life like a shipwrecked passenger clinging to a life raft? Would I have thrown myself at the mercy of the hospital and prayed that I could have somehow made it back out of there before the police came to question me?
All of which means that the last time I slept like a baby was the night I was holding Greer in my arms. Maybe that’s what we both need now.
There are some big, life-changing decisions in our future, probably requiring sleep and mental agility to make them. Perhaps the best thing for both of us is to forget about all of it for a few sacred hours and get some rest.
I slip out of my steel-toed boots that have served me well over the years. They saved my feet when I fell off my bike. And I’ve kicked more than a few deserving people with ‘em.
My cut follows, and I hang it over the back of the chair at the little round table. It’s perhaps the most valuable thing I’ve ever owned. Black leather and fabric patches that only have significance and importance because men like me choose to believe in them.
