Steele
As soon as I knew that Elizabeth and Tara had left, with my hands in my pocket and my head hung low, I sneaked out of SMAR, got on my bike, and drove off.
I needed to get away from anything familiar. I needed to get the fuck away from SMAR, from Santa Maria, from the Black Reapers…it wasn’t their fault, but just being so close to where Sheriff Davis had called me out caused me anxiety that made me so stressed, I could literally feel my head swelling.
After the way that Sheriff Davis had brought up the name Stan, I knew where I had to go. It was about five miles east, past Bandits territory, but in a safe space once I got there. I risked getting tailed and ambushed by the Bandits, but if I drove fast enough, I could avoid them.
And possibly also get a speeding ticket, but I didn’t give a fuck about that.
I drove…and drove…and drove. The moon and stars above provided a gorgeous backdrop, almost like the heavens themselves were shining a light on the road before me. Which, for where I was headed, seemed relatively appropriate.
I saw the sign for my destination, slowed down, took a right turn, and parked right in front of “Santa Maria Funeral Home.”
I turned off my bike.
All of a sudden, with complete silence around me, with nothing but the last remains of the motorcycle’s vibrations in my body and the distant howl of some coyotes, I felt much worse about being there than when I’d started my drive. Leaving was fueled by anger; driving was fueled by purpose; but arriving wasn’t fueled by anything other than emptiness and despair. What the hell would coming here do?
It’s not like the dead would speak. It’s not like the dead would give me advice. It’s not like the dead could comfort me.
Fuck, when had they ever? When had coming here ever done anything good for me?
“Fucking shit,” I mumbled to myself.
It didn’t feel like enough. I got off the bike, trudged to the side of the funeral home, and looked at the plot of graves behind it. A hill blocked the two that I had come to visit, but even still, it was as if I could see them as clearly as I could see the stars glistening above me.
I took two steps forward and stopped.
What the hell was the point of this?
To relieve myself of the anger I’d felt when the fucking sheriff had invoked that name? To free myself of the torment and pain that had haunted me since my childhood? Did I really fucking think that going to the physical reminders of that suffering would make me feel better?
“Fucking shit!” I roared.
I reached down, grabbed a rock, and chucked it as far into the distance as I could. It felt only appropriate that the sound that followed was not some loud thud, not a “wham!” against anything hard, but a barely audible thud, the kind of noise that someone nearby would think they had imagined.
It was like so many of my plans, like so much of my life. It seemed so well structured, so perfectly laid out. Everything would happen as I had planned it would…
And then it never, ever fucking did.
It was getting old. It was getting exhausting playing the role of perfect guy with the perfect plan, seeing as how life didn’t allow for perfect plans. If so, Stan wouldn’t be dead.
And neither would…
And I’d still be with Tara.
And I wouldn’t have to rely on fucking Elizabeth Rogers to defend me from the cops.
Elizabeth…
Of all fucking people…
If there ever was proof that there was no point in trying to predict the future, it was witnessing a girl I had once thought—and still thought—of as a prude standing between a pissed off biker and a corrupt cop.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
“Fucking shit,” I said with weary resignation.
I thought about moving forward. I couldn’t. I didn’t have the energy to muster. I lowered myself to checking my phone. It was Brock.
