Now, sitting on the couch alone, nursing a headache of my own creation, as Lane chatted with Patriot about something, it was obvious that at best, things had evolved past that, and at worst, things were never like that.
Patriot shook hands with Lane and headed out. I couldn’t tell Lane the truth now. But I felt like I had to do something to bring us closer together, even if that thing was a protection against the truth.
I walked up to Lane with an offer I had not made in not just the past year and a half, but what felt like years beyond that.
“Hey, man,” I said. “Wanna go grab a drink somewhere? Just chat?”
Lane’s eyes registered shock. How could they not? Our meetings the past several months were merely business, never personal.
“Wish I could, but I promised Angela a date night at the beach,” he said. “With things getting as hairy as they are, I promised her I’d spend an evening away from the madness, and so—”
“I got it, no worries,” I said.
Once again, Lane had to disappear because of a great woman. I wasn’t as jealous of Angela as I had been of Shannon, perhaps because Lane wasn’t a shithead anymore, but still.
“Maybe tomorrow or this weekend,” he said.
“We’ll figure it out.”
I headed home, leaving with only a pat on Lane’s arm. I had no other reason to stick around at the clubhouse, no other business to attend to. And when I got home, well, it was as I should have expected it.
Empty.
Other than the blankets and pillow on the couch, there were no signs that Lilly had been here last night. There was no toothbrush left in the bathroom, no hairband left on the dresser, no cup used in the sink. The little things that would have said she’d spent the night didn’t exist.
If I had forgotten about her, it would have been just like most other nights. Alone.
Oh, sure, I could call up many a girl and have them come over for sex. That wasn’t an issue. But I was a weirdo compared to other bikers in that sex just never did it for me as much as having intimacy did. I guessed…
Well, I knew why I wanted the closeness more than the sex.
I just didn’t like to admit it out loud. It sounded so... so immature, so overly psychoanalytical, like something I should have gotten over a long time ago.
I would just say, even to myself, that when the one woman that should have loved you more than anyone died because of you—because of your mere birth—you had a hard time not clinging to the first person that popped up in your life to show you some level of trust.
The empty place started to put me into a tailspin. I did a great job of hiding this from the club members, and when it came time to roll, I could kill and defend as well as anyone, but in these moments alone…
Maybe, on some strange level, I hadn’t saved Lane so much to help him as because Angela had reached out to me.
Maybe I had welcomed the return of Jess, even if she came to Phoenix, because it was a familiar face in a new life.
Maybe I had chosen to take Lilly in not for intel purposes, but…
This is fucking stupid. I need a fucking drink.
Phoenix might have gone to Tom’s Billiards to see Jess for company, but he was going to have to accept the presence of a third wheel.
And maybe, just maybe, I’d also get a little bit of company.
Just enough to tide me over for a little longer.
