Lilly
As I approached Cole with a small smile on my face, he walked toward me. Lane stepped inside the garage and disappeared from view, leaving just the two of us with each other. I had made this walk knowing that many things could happen, most of them negative.
But perhaps in a sign of what our future held, the good thing happened. The man I hoped to see again was here. And he wasn’t looking at me with resentment or fear or annoyance. He was looking at me with happiness.
“Hey,” he said softly. “How are you feeling?”
I walked up to him, opened my arms up, and just fell into a gentle embrace with him. I didn’t feel that there were any words to describe how I actually felt right then. I just wanted to hold him, to feel secure in his arms, to know that the violence had ended.
“Well, my morning’s been interesting,” I finally said with a laugh when I stepped back. “I paid two rogue Saints to clean up the house.”
“You—”
“Relax,” I said. “They’re not going to do anything. There’s enough money in it for them to take care of it. I’ll probably come back with some of you for protection, but I know they’ll clean it up. And once that’s done, I’ll sell it. But that’s just a money thing. How I feel?”
I put my hands on my hips, trying to find the right words. It was much harder than I had thought it would be.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “There’s a lot to feel right now. I’m ready to move on out of here. I’m ready to start my life. But I know that it’s not like I can just leave my father’s death behind so easily. I feel fine now, but I’m sure it’ll hit me more later. How about you?”
Cole shrugged.
“Like you,” he said. “I’m happy this is over, but I can’t pretend I feel gleeful about it. I…”
He shook his head.
“What?”
“It’s going to sound ridiculous.”
“No, say it.”
He bit his lip, looked up at me, moved his jaw around like trying to get a crick out, and nodded.
“Your talk of moving to New Mexico got me thinking,” he said. “A year and a half ago, I ran away from here to get some space for myself. But I refused to engage the world. I wasn’t trying to build a new life; I was just trying to avoid an old one. But now? I think I’d like to try another new one. But I can’t do it here. Too many memories here, and there’s another Carter here anyway.”
He leaned forward, placing his hand on the small of my back and guiding me away from where Lane was, even though I didn’t think his brother was in earshot already.
“I think I’d like to move to New Mexico too.”
That sounded... wonderful.
Really, it did. Maybe I was replacing one constantly present man with another, but I didn’t see it that way. Cole had always supported me in what we did. He didn’t push me in anything; he just encouraged me to be. He was not my father, not in any sense of the word.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I said. “Let’s talk.”
I waited until we were outside the Black Reapers’ compound to continue talking, though given how there was literally no one else on the grounds, I wasn’t sure it would have made that much of a difference.
“You’re serious,” I said.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I don’t think I’d be running away from anything either. I think it’s something I just want to do.”
He chuckled for a second.
“Funny thing is, before recently, I would have thought that it was going against the wishes of my father,” he said. “One of his dying wishes was for my brother and I to be co-Presidents. But I think, knowing what I know now, he really just said that because he thought it would help us reach our full potential. He had good intentions, but I think my brother and I have to respect that we are too different to run the club effectively. We’re not going separate ways over butting heads, but from a solid space.”
“So... New Mexico?”
He got a guilty smirk on his face.
