Snake comes to sit down on the coffee table in front of Sasha and me. I fear it just might snap under his weight. Although Snake isn’t as grandiose as Oak, he still isn’t a small man.
“You know everything is going to be okay, don’t you?” Snake’s voice is surprisingly soft and gentle. But then again, ever since leaving my mom’s hospital room Snake has been nothing but cautious around me. Perhaps cautious isn’t the right word. He’s been more open with me. Not afraid to show his softer side, a side only Alice and Oak have seen to its true extent.
Snake is acting how I imagine an older brother would.
“But there is a chance.” My voice wavers along with my hope.
“The chance of him getting out of this is greater, Grace.” His eyes then flick over to Sasha.
She must read something in them because she squeezes my thigh before pressing a kiss to my cheek to leave Snake and I alone.
Snake doesn’t move from his spot. He does, however, lean in, with his elbows resting against his knees. “Oak is the closest thing I have to a brother. And I don’t mean that with disrespect to my brothers at Vipers MC, but none of them know me like Oak does.”
I know how much this is true. And anyone can see that Oak and Snake share a special bond with each other. Their love for one another runs deep. It’s beautiful, really. It’s beautiful how two broken, misunderstood and flawed men who carried guilt and self loathing found themselves in one another and were able to be seen.
“Oak and I, we’ve always been two sides of the same coin,” he laughs half-heartedly. “Both of us wearing a mask to hide our pain. Both of us finding ourselves not worthy of anything good. You see, my mask destroyed the people I loved. Alice was a casualty of my deep rooted insecurities that my father made me believe were true. I wasn’t a good man, I had demons. And those demons made me believe I wasn’t good enough for someone like her. That my darkness would ruin her. That she would eventually see that I was a monster.” He shakes his head, regret and sorrow swallowing his eyes. “I always feared of her one day looking at me like the villain. And then I became the thing I feared of the most. I saw it in her eyes, Grace. And that, that destroyed me. It tore apart my soul. It battered my heart and left me so fucking hollow.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed roughly. I can tell that he’s holding back tears. The roughness in his voice proves it. “And yet somehow, someway, she still saw the good in me. I don’t deserve her, Grace. I never have and I know I’ll be spending the rest of my life, and even when I’m dead, proving to her just how worthy I am.”
“You’re everything to her, Snake. You’re her god damned world,” I assure him with a fierceness in my voice. “She’s herhappiest when she’s with you. You deserve her, Snake. As much as I despised you in the beginning, you’ve proved yourself.”
“After all this time I never did apologize to you.”
I swallow. “You don’t have to.” And I mean that. He doesn’t owe me an apology. He owed one to Alice. He owed one to himself. And he did both.
“You’re wrong. I apologize, Grace, for all of it. And I fucking thank you for being there for her when I wasn’t. I’ll never forgive myself for that, but I am glad she had you.” There’s a rawness and vulnerability to him that I have never borne witness to before.
Tears burn at the back of my eyes.
“And I want to thank you for fighting for Oak as fucking hard as you did,” he says gruffly. He clears his throat but he can’t hide the mist in his hazel eyes. God, the love Snake has for Oak is fucking palpable. “He’s a good man, Grace,” he pauses, shaking his head adamantly, “fuck, he’s not just a good man, he’s the best man that I know. And it fucking killed me watching him punish himself for shit he couldn’t control.”
“He was never to blame,” I say softly.
“No, he wasn’t,” Snake agrees, his voice just as soft. “I could never get him to see that. Just as he could never get me to see past my own insecurities. Him and I suffer from being strong headed and insufferably stubborn. And it took even stronger women, an even stubborn women, to get our heads out of our asses.”
“I’m not the one to take credit for that, Snake. At the end of the day it’s up to us to decide what we want. And Oak wants more.”
“He wants more because you kept pushing him. Because you kept fighting for him. You don’t want to take the credit, that’s fine. But you, Grace, you brought the dead man back to life. Yougave him something none of us could. Not even me when I tried my fucking hardest.”
The tears that I have been fighting back break free. But they aren’t tears of sorrow, they’re tears of sheer happiness.
Because I felt it when the FBI had taken custody of Oak that Friday evening. I saw it in his face, I felt it in my soul. Oak’s mind is finally free.
And that, that is what I have wanted all along for him. For him not to forget his past, but to forgive himself.
Now selfishly, I want him free to spend the rest of his days with me.
I want to see the smiles on his gorgeous face. I want to hear his robust laughter. I want to see his eyes that will no longer be swallowed by pain but love.
“Do you honestly think after everything you have given him that anyone, even the fucking feds will keep him from you?”
I know the answer before it even leaves my lips. “No.”
Snake smiles at me. It’s a bit mischievous, a little dark and a lot confident. “You have your answer, Grace.”
“Who knew you’d be the one cheering me up?” I tease him, my heart feeling lighter.
He rises from the coffee table, his hands absently running down his thighs as if he’s trying to get lint off them. After collecting a cigarette and putting it between his lips he then takes a matchbox from his inner Vipers MC cut and strikes a match.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Alice is going to be pissed when she catches you.”
