Lilac let me sit with that without fixing it.
That was the thing about Lilac — she didn’t rush toward solutions. She’d learned, by necessity, how to let things beunresolved. She stayed beside me on the couch well past the point where I’d stopped making sense, and her phone buzzed twice with Colt checking in. She ignored it both times until I told her to answer it. Not telling me what to do. Not telling me what to feel.
Just making sure I wasn’t alone while I fell apart, until I felt strong enough to be on my own.
?
I went to work the next day because I didn’t know what else to do with myself.
My 9 AM was a new client—referred from the trauma center, first session, all the careful tentativeness of someone who hasn’t yet learned they can trust the room. I sat across from her and asked the opening questions. I listened and reflected. I did everything a competent therapist does.
My 11 AM was Valerie, three months into processing her divorce. My 1 PM was a teenager with anxiety. My 3 PM canceled.
In the gaps I sat at my desk and didn’t cry but didn’t go ice-cold either. I was just present, in a dull, flat way. Not performing calm. Not suppressing anything. Just existing in the aftermath of something I hadn’t had any say in.
That was the thought I kept coming back to. I hadn’t had any say.
He’d taken that from me too. Not cruelly—I believed that completely. He’d done it the way he did everything, with the conviction that he was making the right call, protecting someone he cared about, managing the situation. He’d probably told himself it was the least he could do.
But I hadn’t gotten to choose.
I was a person who’d spent years watching from a distance before I let myself choose him. Who’d thought carefully about every boundary, every risk and every reason it was complicated. Who’d sat across from Dutch and had the awkward conversation about where the lines were — specifically so I could choose him with a clear conscience.
Then on the morning after one of the worst nights of his life, he’d taken all of that away from me.
The professional part of my brain observed this and named it: he’d applied his Road Captain logic to our relationship. Assess the situation. Identify the risk. Determine the correct course of action. Execute before anything can go wrong. He hadn’t meant it as control — but it had the same shape as control. The outcome was the same. I was standing in my doorway with no choices left.
I knew why he’d done it. I understood it better than he probably gave me credit for. That didn’t make it okay.
The least I could do was give myself what I gave everyone else. The room to feel it. And someone steady to help me carry it. I reached for my phone and looked up therapist referrals in my area. Someone who could help me work through this properly.
Chapter 12
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— Holden —
I’d been drunk since Danny’s fucking funeral. I’d kept my face still through all of it — the service, the graveside, his mother’s hand briefly in mine — and when it was over I’d ridden back alone and not spoken to anyone for the rest of the day.
Three weeks on and the funeral still keeps coming back in flashes. Hitting me when I’m not ready for it.
I remember the procession. Thirty bikes, maybe more, riding two by two behind the hearse through the center of town. Hazards on. No helmets. I remember the sound of the engines, the way the formation held, the people stopped on the sidewalk watching us pass. Danny would have loved that part.
I remember the graveside. Cold. Lindsay in a dark coat, Indira’s arm around her the whole time. The line of brothers.
And I remember seeing Bea. Across the grave, standing near Lindsay, one hand on her arm, her eyes on the service. She’d come — I should have known she’d come, should have thought it through, but I hadn’t — and the sight of her had damn near put me on my knees.
I’d got Dutch’s attention. Told him someone needed to tell Bea she wasn’t welcome.
He’d told me, in no uncertain terms, that Indira had handled everything — the notifications, the arrangements, making sure the right people knew. Bea being there wasn’t an oversight. Indira had made sure of it.
I’d told him I didn’t care. That Indira had made a mistake and she needed to fix it.
He’d looked at me for a long moment. Then he’d taken me by the arm, quiet and firm, and walked me ten feet from the nearest brother.
I still remember every word he said. “I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just say that.” Flat. Low. “You didn’t just tell me to say no to my old lady. Your first lady. The woman who dragged our asses out of the dark ages — out from under King fucking Van Der Berg — and made us into men who respect the women in our lives.” He gave me a long hard stare. “I’m gonna pretend you said none of that, because I know that ain’t you. That’s your grief talking. And grief gets a lot of rope around here.” His eyes on mine. “But not that much.”
I hadn’t said anything.
