While I was chasing all that, Laura was crumbling.
I came home one night, oil and sweat clinging to my clothes. She was already packing. She didn’t even try to be quiet. Drawers yanked open like accusations. Cabinets slammed shut like verdicts. My mother stood in the middle of it all, helpless, watching me walk into the sound of my own life falling apart.
Laura didn’t look up when I stepped inside. “Oh, what a surprise. You’re home,” she said, flatly, her back to me. Her voice wasn’t angry. Not yet.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t move. I just stood there, boots still on, keys still in my hand, listening to the chaos of her leaving me, piece by piece.
“You spend more time with Joel and those thugs than you do with me,” she said. Her voice sharp, each word cutting clean. “You weren’t working in the shop, Damian. You were running around doing shit you swore you were done with.”
I stood there, frozen. Dirt under my nails from fixing someone’s busted engine all day. For us. For her. But I didn’tsay that. I glanced at my mother, stiff in the corner, silent tears tracking down her face, trying to pretend she wasn’t hearing any of this. But Laura kept going. She wasn’t whispering. She wasn’t careful. She spilled every dirty piece of our life right there, loud and raw, and all I could do was stand there like a goddamn stranger in my own house.
“She doesn’t know, does she?” Laura snapped, turning to my mother. “You don’t know what he’s doing when he leaves. You think it’s just motorcycles and honest work. But it’s not, is it? He’s going to end up just like Clay.”
“Laura,” I growled. The warning low in my throat.
She laughed, bitter and broken. “You’re still working for him. Still running shit under your father’s name like you haven’t learned a goddamn thing. You say you’re trying, but all I see is someone real comfortable being a criminal. You Cross brothers just love violence.”
“We needed money,” I said. “The shop’s still his. The mortgage is high. Your medical bills. None of it’s cheap.”
“You needed money, so you chose them?” she spat, eyes wide. “I needed you, Damian. I was sitting here, after another miscarriage, and you were out with men who’d sell you for a payday.”
My mother covered her mouth with her hand. I didn’t look at her long. I couldn’t. I never told her about the last pregnancy. There were too many losses. She had already mourned enough things that never had the chance to live. I thought this time Laura needed to grieve with me alone.
“You think I wanted to be out there?” I snapped. “You think I wanted to be anywhere but here? I held you every night for three weeks. I cleaned the blood out of the sheets. I sat with you through every fucking appointment, every ER visit, every goddamn hour, while you stared at the wall like I didn’t exist.”
“Because I was hurting,” she screamed, her voice cracking. “Inside, outside, everywhere, and you just disappeared the second I got quiet enough for you to pretend I was fine.”
The room shook with her words. Or maybe it was just me. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have the words then. I was young, and angry, and so fucking bitter. Laura looked at me like she was already gone, like there was nothing to explain, nothing to fix.
She turned back to the drawers and threw in the last of her things. My mother whispered her name, her voice a helpless sound.
“He said he was out,” she yelled, arms crossed over her chest like she was holding herself together. “He told me we were starting over, that we could have a normal life.”
“We have money now,” I said. Useless. Empty. “That’s normal.”
She laughed, and it gutted me. There was no joy in it, only bitterness twisted tight around something broken. “Do you think I give a shit about your dirty money?” she asked, starting to pace. She yanked open more drawers and slammed them shut with the weight of everything she’d carried alone. My mother stayed pressed to the wall in the corner of the room, her face pale and streaked with tears.
“This is who I am,” I said. “I never wanted you in this life.”
“But you pulled me into it,” she snapped, cutting me off. “You dragged me down with you and left me here, wondering if tonight’s the night you don’t come home.” She took a step toward me. Her hands trembled, her chest rising with uneven breaths. Her face was twisted in something sharp: anger, heartbreak, exhaustion. “You’re not the man I married,” she whispered. “You’re something else now. Something darker. And if I stay here, I become that too.”
I wanted to reach for her, but I didn’t. She was right. I wasn’t the man she married. She married a boy. A nineteen-year-old kid who got his girlfriend pregnant and, for the first and only time in his life, wanted to do what was right, even if it wasn’t right for him.
She took another step closer. I thought she might touch me. Might scream. Might collapse in my arms. There was something rising in her, and I didn’t know what shape it would take. Rage or desperation.
It was rage. I saw it all over her face.
“Don’t,” I said. It came out harsher than I meant. It sounded like a threat when it was really just fear. I didn’t know how to hold on to her anymore without hurting her.
She went still. I watched her shut down. Watched her face go blank, folding herself into something small, quiet, and finished.
Then she slapped me.
It wasn’t hard, but the sound echoed—sharp, final—cutting through the air like the last word in an argument years in the making.
“Don’t follow me,” she said, her voice cold and flat. “It’s over, Damian. I want out of this life.” She moved to the coat rack, grabbed her jacket with trembling hands, and pulled it on like armor. “I didn’t think you’d be home,” she said, her hand landing on the doorknob. “There’s an envelope on the table.”
Then she slammed the door so hard the frame splintered.
