Page 123 of Fury

Being with Serena had made me be the man I’d always wanted to be. Daring, determined, brave. Devoted. We’d reveled outside in the sun together. Now, what was I without her?

I went to the cash register and tossed two one hundred dollar bills on the counter. My gaze returned to Dig’s old lady who absently smoothed a hand over the leather saddle of a brand new Fat Bob. She strode to the other end of the brightly lit showroom where a young upscale couple were lusting over a new bike.

“Okay, here’s your change. Sir?”

“That saleswoman over there? The one in black?”

His gaze darted over at Sister. “Grace?”

“She been with you a while? She seems familiar. I know I’ve seen her somewhere.”

“She just started here. Came up from Texas. Worked at a Harley store in Dallas.”

“Must be it,” I replied. “I go through Dallas a lot.”

“Well, don’t bother trying it on with her. She’ll only shoot you down.”

“Oh yeah? Thanks.”

“Sure thing.”

Grace had run away. Grace was on the carousel of go round and round and make it all a blur.

Dig was dead and gone; that was absolute. Like my and Serena’s baby.

A baby…

We’d had a baby...

My brain couldn’t even begin to wrap around that one. Something stung in my chest, wrenching there like a flaming poker.

In jail, my first bunkmate was obsessed with Hinduism and meditation. He’d yelp about reincarnation and karma as I’d be smashing cockroaches in our cell. Had my baby’s soul been waiting for its cue to come to us? After the miscarriage did his soul go somewhere else, to another family? Does he belong now to better, more deserving parents?

Stop. Stop. Shut the fuck up.

Serena had suffered all that on her own while Reich had sent me to prison—Motormouth finding her, her killing him, then losing our kid. All of it on her own. I should have been there. I should have found a way for us; a better way than hiding and biding our time. Had we wasted our time? At least she was still alive. Unlike Dig. Unlike the robot that was Grace right now.

Grace let out a long breath, her head nodding as she pretended to listen to her customers’ chatter. What if I were dead, and Serena was stuck in grief, shuffling through her life like Grace?

I didn’t want that for Serena.

I rubbed an aching hand across my jaw. I needed to let Lenore have her “normal.” Let her have a life the way she chose. After everything she’d been through before me, with me, she deserved to have what she wanted, even if it didn’t make sense to me.

Even if it killed me.

She was marrying another man, and I was heading back to Nebraska, back to what I knew, back to the life I’d carved out for myself all these years. A life I was born into. One I liked, and one I’d intended to make richer, fuller, complete with her in it. Now that was over, and I had to accept it. I had to accept we might be better off apart, no matter how insane and how painful that felt right now. Maybe she had a point. Maybe there was too much pain, too much sorrow dividing us along with the scars.

I charged out of the store and got on my bike, swinging through the back section of the parking lot where I figured the employees kept their vehicles. There it was. Texas plates. I memorized the number.

I could keep a look out for Grace. No one knew the real reasons Dig had gotten assassinated. On the outside it seemed like a drug deal gone wrong, but you never knew. The rivalry between the Demon Seeds and the One-Eyed Jacks had revived with his murder, and things were shit all across our territories now. Yeah, I would do that for him, check in on his woman. I would. He was dead, and she was smoldering like a full blown bonfire put out too early.

Smoldering, like I was.

35

The concert was packed.

I was selling my dope to my usual customers at the May Day Rock Fest just over the border in Colorado. Drac stuck by my side, keeping an eye out for anything or anyone questionable, any potential agents of the law. People had endured a long, cold winter, and they were starving for the sun on their skin, riding, and partying outdoors. The few spring music festivals there were around rocked for business heading into the summer tidal wave. It was low grade action, but steady. The civilians wanted their party supply, from high schoolers to college pricks to upper middle class white collar types. Plus, a number of my Flame brothers and members of other clubs from far and wide ordered up bulk amounts ahead of time.

---