“Yeah, yeah, I never will. I got it. Guess I could always handcuff her to the bed and wait for her to develop Stockholm syndrome.”
“Glad to see you have a plan.” He chuckles before walking over to the bar.
I head to the corner table where Havoc, Circus, and Capone are talking. Havoc looks up when he sees me approach. “Hey, everything sorted?”
“Yeah, I’m heading to the hospital now.”
“We can cover you for a week or two, but after that, we’ll need to figure something else out.”
“I know. Hopefully by then she won’t want to stab me in my sleep and will listen to reason.”
Circus snorts. “Yeah, good luck with that.”
“I gotta ask, and I know I’ve been out of the loop a little, but what’s the general consensus around here about Del? I don’t want to work on bringing her back into the fold only for her to be treated like a traitor.”
His jaw clenches, and I know he’s thinking about the parallels between Delphi and Lola, his ex.
“Still haven’t heard Del’s side of things. I don’t know her well enough to make a judgment call on this without at least speaking to her first. Especially when Blade seemed pretty sure when it happened that she was involved.”
“And what’s he think now?”
“I haven’t told him she’s back on the scene. I just brought her up in passing. He admits he reacted in anger. But when I asked him if he thought she was capable of the shit he accused her of, he said he didn’t think Bear or Snake were capable of the shit they pulled either, and there wasn’t anything Del wouldn’t do for Snake.”
I run my fingers through my hair, feeling frustrated. I’d hoped things weren’t quite so up in the fucking air. I believe her. The fucked-up thing is, looking back without the anger, I believed her back then too. I just had blinders on.
“Once I get her settled, come see her. Feel her out.”
“I will. I’m just saying, as much as you want this to be smooth sailing, there are going to be bumps in the road. The shit with Snake and Bear caused a ripple effect. Blade will have a hard time with this. Some of the old timers will too.”
“Well, they’d better figure their shit out, or I’ll remind them exactly why I’m the club’s enforcer.”
Chapter Three
DELPHI
I sitin the wheelchair waiting for the nurse to come back for me. She watched me get into it before she was called out to help with something, which was just as well. Just getting into it had left me a hot, sweaty wreck. I had no idea how I was going to navigate the upcoming weeks, but I had to figure it out since I was out of options. My brother was working on his rig. I had managed to get hold of him, but I’d downplayed everything that happened. He’d lose his ever-loving mind if I told him about the grenade. As far as he was concerned, I’d been in a car accident and was making a full recovery. Anything else was on a need-to-know basis, and he didn’t need to know. I kept the story the same with my father, just vaguer on the details. I was in a fender bender and staying with a friend while I got better.
I hadn’t mentioned Raven Souls in any way, shape, or form. My family might not be the most attentive, but they sure as shit banded together real quick when it came to them. They were there for the aftermath of what happened with Snake and me, effectively being kicked out of the cool kids’ club, like I was nothing more than trash. They didn’t know everything. I wasn’tdumb. I wasn’t going to put them in danger, and knowing too much was always a dangerous thing.
I wipe the sweat with the back of my hand, cursing when I bump the still-healing wound on my forehead. I can’t remember how many stitches they said I had—a lot of the earlier days are still patchy. I do remember them saying it wasn’t particularly deep and would likely scar, though they’d done everything they could to minimize it. The theory was that some debris had hit my face, but honestly, I wasn’t sure it mattered. My days of caring about attracting the opposite sex were over. Now, I dress for myself. Who gives a fuck about a scar? Legs and the baby were okay. I’d take a dozen scars to keep it just that way.
Eventually, the nurse comes in. She sees that I’m ready and moves around to push the wheelchair for me, chatting away in that perky, upbeat way new nurses do before the hours, low pay, and asshole doctors beat them down. I tune her out, which isn’t hard when she talks at the speed of light. Instead, I take in the people we pass. The sick ones waiting to be seen, the worried visitors hoping for good news, and the traumatized faces leaving after hearing the worst. All of them lost in their own pain-filled worlds, but they each have something in common, something I don’t have—someone to share the burden. Out of everything, that’s what I struggle with the most. Losing Lee was gut-wrenching, especially when I found out that the man I loved was a monster. But to lose the family I’d been so entrenched with, who should have been the ones to pull me through what was arguably the worst time of my life, was devastating. I went from having the whole world in the palm of my hand to feeling like an insignificant speck in the universe. Loneliness wove its way into my bones and took root, anchoring me in place as everyone else moved on with their lives.
Looking back now, I can’t pinpoint when I broke free. It wasn’t a simple process of snapping the roots that bound meand swinging away. Neither grief nor healing is a linear thing. Sometimes I crawled forward at a snail’s pace, sometimes I curled up in a ball and didn’t move for days. There were even times when I went backward, when the guilt and anguish dragged me under and buried me alive. For so long, death seemed like it would be my only escape from my dark, intrusive thoughts and harbored feelings of failure. I don’t know how long it took to claw my way back out. I just remember waking up one day, and my first thought wasn’t of dying. I woke up and wanted to see the ocean. That’s the first conscious thought of stepping into the light.
It’s still there—the darkness, that is. You don’t come through it unscathed. It’s an ever-present shadow, looming behind me like an endless abyss, ready to swallow me whole once more.
“Your ride will be here soon, yes?”
Her question snaps me out of my musings as she wheels me outside.
“Um, they’re meeting me at the house. I’m waiting for a cab.” I look up at her.
She frowns at me. “That is?—”
Her words cut off as a shadow falls over us.
“Change of plans, Del.”
