I clear my throat in hopes to sound collected but as I respond, “I’m here.” It comes out as anything but.
“I know it’s been a while since you saw him, and I wanted to warn you.”
It really hasn’t been that long, but it sure does feel like ages.
One month.
I haven’t seen him in one month.
Every time that Connor and I make a visit to the Vipers MC in Stonesville, Pennsylvania he’s either busy or not there.
I have a sneaking suspicion that he’s avoiding me.
And to be honest it fucking hurts.
Especially when I thought that him and I had made a connection.
It wasn’t that long ago when Oak was assigned to watch over Connor and I while the war was happening between The Crowned Devils MC and Vipers MC.
I can still remember the nights where I would find him wide awake in the middle of the night standing outside my trailer.
Every time I found him during that hour, he always held a haunted look in his icy blue eyes.
I pried, once.
And it felt like an olive branch between us.
Then somehow it snapped.
After Snake woke up in the hospital, I thought Oak was growing distant but pegged it to be my imagination.
Except it wasn’t.
And that . . .
Well, that hurt more than I thought it would.
And while I thought Oak and I had something more I knew at the baseline we had become friends.
I throw on a smile that I don’t feel. “Thanks, but it wasn’t needed,” I tell her.
She sighs. “I saw the two of you, Gracie Mae.” Alice only calls me Gracie Mae, when things are of a serious matter. “There’s something there. Even a blind man can see it.”
Instead, I ask the question I always ask when it comes to him. “How is he doing?”
I hear rustling over the phone and think that I’ve lost her. “Alice? You there?” A pause. “Alice?” I hear her and Snake talking but I can’t make out what they are saying.
After a minute I finally hear a voice clearly on the other line, but it isn’t Alice who answers. “He’s a good man, Grace,” says Snake. There’s another pause and I know what he’s about to say next is going to be a big fat lie. “He’ll eventually come around.”
It’s the same answer he always gives me when I ask about Oak and quite frankly, I am tired of hearing it. Especially when I know it’s not the truth.
“Well, I have to go. Enjoy your physical therapy.”
Before the phone hangs up Alice comes back on the line. “He trusts you; you know.”
“Snake?”
“I’m not talking about him, and you know it.” I swallow. “I saw it back in the hospital room. He trusts you.”
