“Simone told me that you’d be there. I asked her to make sure of it earlier that day.”
“Well, that was dumb. She clearly had her own agenda, as you pointed out to me when you asked why I was never with Simone at parties.”
“It wasn’t until that night, or I guess the next day, that I put everything together myself. It never occurred to me that you didn’t come because no one - including your best friend - ever invited you. I thought you just didn’t like drinking or people or whatever.”
I laughed. “A lot of shit could have been avoided if you had just talked to me, you know?”
“I do. If I could go back and kick my own ass, I would.”
“Nah. As hard as it was to go through at the time, I’m glad everything happened the way it did,” I told him.
“Why the fuck would that ever be a good thing?”
“I am who I am today because there was no one here for me, well in Violence anyway. I had to join the Army to escape and it was the best decision I ever made. It turned out not to be an escape so much as a freeing myself to be more than the box I was shoved into back home. The forgotten daughter, the castoff friend, the girl who would never get the boy because her best friend decided she would make sure that never happened.” I shook off the past and looked back up into James’s eyes. “I became a better person because of the way those events shaped my life and pushed me into a direction I would have never chosen for myself otherwise. And it brought me Collette, Amberlee, and Finch. Those three are priceless.”
“I get it. I suppose the Kings wouldn’t have been in my life - at least not to the extent they are - if it hadn’t been for the way everything went down. I joined out of desperation, too. My life felt like was out of control and when Simone lost the baby so violently, it shook me.”
“I am sorry about the baby,” I offered quietly.
“I’m not. That kid would have been pawn for her to use and manipulate. I think nature did us all a favor there.”
“Still, I know that had to be hard at the time.”
He gave me a nod and then picked up my hand the way I’d grown used to. “We’re not supposed to be talking about Simone or the shitty parts of the past, remember?”
“Yeah, so tell me something else, and if it’s about your grandparents, I probably already know.”
“Well, shit, what else is there?” He laughed as he asked and I rolled my eyes at him again.
“Tell me about the club. I want to know how you adjusted to being a member. What was prospecting like? Did they treat you like shit and make you scrub toilets with your own toothbrush?”
“That’s fucking gross, Cass. Fuck no, I didn’t scrub toilets with a toothbrush, but I did have my share of bathroom cleanup duties and after parties, before some of the younger guys started to settled down, that was the worst.” He laughed and I chuckled along with him. I had only been around the club, as a whole, a few times during much tamer events than a full-on biker party and I could totally see that it might be the worst thing ever to deal with.
“Prospecting wasn’t so bad. There were moments when I wanted to throw in the towel, but then I’d watch them. All the club brothers had this bond. There’s always a bit of in-fighting here and there, but it’s like siblings going at it, you know? You fight, you make up, you have one another’s backs no matter what. The more I watched, the more I wanted a piece of that for myself. I had my grandparents for stability, but I never had a bond like that with my little brothers or my father. By the time Jasper patched in and was given his road name and welcomed into their brotherhood, I was so fucking envious. If only I’d listened to him and tried to join back when he asked me to before we stopped talking for a while.”
“You stopped talking because of me?”
Yeah, after graduation he told me I had my head too far up my own ass to see the damage I’d done or the truth that was right in front of my eyes. He always saw through Simone’s shit and he used to point out how different things were between you at school before the end. It was like he could see that you were no longer friends while I trusted my eyes, that she was there following you around, talking, and you weren’t telling her to go to hell, so it must have meant you forgave her.”
A dark laugh was my response. “I refused to give her any of my attention. If you had paid attention, you would have noticed that I never talked back, smiled, or even glanced at Simone during that time. I pretended like she didn’t exist. Her ‘talking’ was to try to annoy me into looking at her.”
“No wonder she seemed so happy when I blamed you for being her little helper.” James said. “Jesus I was a dumb fuck.”
“You grew up and figured things out.”
“Did I, though?”
“You’re here. You haven’t left my side since everything went down and we’ve talked more these past few weeks than I think we ever have. It’s helped me to understand your perspective, and I get it. You had your own baggage before Simone invaded your life. It made you prone to take care of responsibilities, even when you didn’t really want to. I don’t think anyone is wired to think that the person they marry - for whatever reason - set out to manipulate them from the beginning. Stop beating yourself up about it. Shit happened, lessons were learned, end of story.”
“I used to love talking to you because you had these things to say for every situation. It was like you were the least social person at school, but you always knew the right thing to do anyway.”
“I watched everyone else fuck up while I sat on the side and was ignored. It gave me a great window to that so-called wisdom I spouted.”
For the first time, neither of us devolved into old feelings when our shared past was mentioned. We both smiled at one another and James squeezed my hand. “Aren’t we a fucking pair?”
“If you say so,” I teased just as the door to my room opened and Nurse Honey Davis and Dr. Roberts came in.
“You’re making remarkable progress, Cassidy, but I want to keep you at least another week to make sure everythingcontinues to move forward in a positive direction. We’re also going to have our pulmonary therapist come by to speak to you about things you can do once you’re home to continue to aid in the healing. You recovered from the gunshot here, your lungs will still have months of work to do by the time you get to go home. No smoking, for God’s sake - no vaping, no inhaling anything that isn’t prescribed by a doctor and they must know your history before they prescribe anything. Avoid allergens and sick people while you’re building your lung back up. You did remarkably well while here and I won’t tolerate a backslide from you.”
