Page 21 of Bones and Ashes

A lot more to this story.

CHAPTER 6

It's a strange thing to see yourself comin' at ya from across the room. Lazarus Kane isn't a twin, exactly. And if he wasn't tatted up and wearing colors, I could probably wrap my head around it better.

But he is tatted up, and he is wearin' colors, and it's… still a lot.

His smile is easier than mine. Not sure why.

Actually, that's not true.

It's the smile of a man who's always known his place.

His worth.

Not sure what June was hintin' at when she mentioned his mother dyin' young. Could be fate, could be tragedy. But he had people to hold him up after.

The same people June came from.

Hell, Legion. That skates over the entire point.

He wasn't taken in by June's people.

He was taken in by his people.

That's the difference.

He had a whole club.

I had two secret relationships with two generations of Ashby women. Women who didn't belong to me and never could.

Women who only existed peripherally.

Out of the corner of my eye.

In the margins of my fuckin' life like footnotes nobody was ever gonna read.

On certain days of the week.

Certain months of the year.

Certain years of the decade.

That's what I had.

Not a club. Not a family holdin' me up when the ground gave out. I had Eleanor Ashby payin' me to sit still in her studio while she turned me into somethin' I wasn't.

And I had her daughter meetin' me in a condemned grain silo like I was a prayer she couldn't say out loud in church.

Two women who showed up when it suited them and vanished when it didn't, and I stood there every goddamn time like a man waitin' on rain in a drought, grateful for whatever fell.

That's the thing about peripheral people. They're always almost there. Always just outside the frame. Close enough to feel, never close enough to hold.

And you learn to live on that.

You learn to stretch a Tuesday night into a whole week's worth of warmth.

You learn to make October last until spring because that's the last time she touched your face and meant it.