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There’s a darkness underlying the tone of his voice, a shadiness that was never there before. It’s all part of the widow’s veil I’m trying to climb from under. I think maybe he’s doing the same thing.
“So you’re not here to keep an eye on me?” I ask. “As some kind of misguided favor to Jax, or maybe because you don’t think I can handle myself?”
I doubt my father sent him, but that’s actually not out of the question either.
He chuckles and shakes his head. “I know you can handle yourself, and as for Jax, I haven’t spoken to him in months.”
“Yeah, me either,” I say and sound a lot more bitter than I wanted to.
He nods slowly, sadness filling his eyes. For years, Jax, Hunter, Trixie and I were inseparable. We did everything together because we were the only ones who understood the love we shared. And when Trixie and Jax both started running away from it, Hunter and I were the only two people who understood that too. So much sadness. So much pointless sadness. And for what? Ten years on and Hunter and I are still in exactly the same place. Alone and sad. Left behind.
“I’m going to stay with my sister at the reservation for a while,” he says. “Maybe things will start making sense again in all that untouched wilderness.”
He’s got that same hard yet kind of lost look in his eyes he gets every time Trixie leaves him, but it’s harder and not so much lost as hopeless this time. Maybe what he’s trying to figure out isn’t how to find her, but how to leave her behind for good.
“But I’ll leave you be if that’s what you want,” he adds and finally smiles again.
I wrap my arm around his shoulders and kiss him on the cheek for good measure. I’ve never been able to stand seeing my friends and family sad and troubled, not when I can do something about it. And that’s part of the trouble now. Nothing I do is making anyone feel better.
“I’d love to have you there for my first gig away from home,” I say, actually feeling a huge stone roll away from my heart as I admit it—one I didn’t even know was there. It’s true what he said, I’ve never played a single concert without the majority of my friends and family cheering me on. And I don’t think Hunter’s missed a single one.
He grins and this time it does touch his eyes, just a little bit, but at least that dark hopelessness there is brighter now.
“It’s good you said that,” he says, his grin growing wider. “Because I’m not the only one who’s coming.”
He continues grinning at me as I gasp in surprise. “So all those goodbyes last night… what was that? A lie?”
He shrugs. “Don’t worry, it’s not everyone, everyone. Just Chance, and Summer, and probably Ariel and Ruin. Maybe a couple of the others. You know, the gang?”
He means everyone except Jax.
I nod slowly, not sure how to respond. Or more like, not sure how I feel. Happy. Mostly.
“Come on, when has any of us ever done anything on our own?” he asks wryly when I don’t respond.
He’s not wrong. All us children of Devil’s Nightmare MC members—real, adopted or fostered—grew up together at Sanctuary, the MC’s headquarters which spans an entire forested hillside much like the one we’re on right now. In fact, from the corner of my eye, I can see the very edge of it.
“It’s not so much that I want to be alone,” I say. “It’s more that I want to be away. Everything is just laced with so much sadness now. It started when Jax left and then you got hurt and then all that, you know… “
I let my voice trail off because I don’t want to talk about all the death that was sown.
“You mean Devil’s Nightmare MC once again being who they are after all these years?” Hunter says darkly. It’s not a question, despite how it sounds, but I nod anyway.
“I don’t know if they made the right call either,” he says in a monotone voice heavy with all the blackness and bleakness of death that I’m trying to escape.
“They were avenging you, Hunter,” I say and that’s just about the only positive thing that I can find in all that mess.
He shrugs. “I don’t know if I’d ask for that given the choice.”
I nod because I get it and say nothing because there’s nothing to say. Of course they’d avenge him, we all would, and of course it weighs heavy on his soul that it had to happen. I just lean against him and squeeze his hand in mine. What’s done is done. Now we have to get to the other side. All of us.
After a while of us sharing only silence and the sweet summer air growing hotter around us, he releases my hand and stands up, straightening his back gingerly.
“Speaking of Jax,” he says, but in a very careful tone, which leaves no doubt that what he’s about to say is something he’s been getting ready to say for a while and not a spur-of-the-moment thing.
“Let’s not,” I murmur as I stand up too.
“He’s been moved to a prison up north,” he says. “It’s on our way, so we might as well stop by and say hi.”
