This loud, chaotic, beautiful family that shows up for each other no matter what.
“You okay?” Ingrid asks, appearing beside me with that maternal intuition that always seems to know when I need her.
“Yeah,” I say, and mean it. “I’m good… really good.”
“Hurricane would be so proud of you,” she says softly. “Of how strong you’ve been, how you’ve kept his family together.”
“We’ve kept each other together,” I correct her. “That’s what family does.”
Trina lets out a squeal from her high chair, and I look over to see her with cake smeared all over her face, clapping her hands with pure joy. Lynx is beside her in his own high chair, more cake on his clothes than in his mouth, but he’s grinning from ear to ear.
And in this moment, watching my babies,our babies, celebrating their first birthday surrounded by all this love, I make a decision.
I’mnotgoing to spend my life mourning Hurricane.
I’m going tocelebratehim.
Every day, in every way I can.
Because my kids deserve that.
His family deserves that.
His club deserves that.
AndIdeserve that.
If there’s one thing I know about my husband, it’s that he would want me to be happy. He would want me to live fully, love boldly, and raise our children to do the same.
So that’s what I’m going to choose to be…
Blissfully, unashamedly, defiantly happy.
Like a fucking hurricane!
Suddenly, gasps fill the backyard. A glass breaks as it drops to the ground. Ingrid screams. I turn around to see what the hell is going on, and my heart slams into my chest, and my breath is knocked from my lungs when I see a man standing at the edge of the yard. Hesitating by the gate, his tall stature so familiar, but his face is marred by burns. His arms too. Immy runs to me, hiding behind my legs, unsure of the man standing, waiting, like he’s hoping for something.
Goose bumps pebble along my arms, that same electrical charge I feel whenever I am near Hurricane ignites, and I let out a small sob. “It can’t be?” I whisper.
The man softly smiles, taking one meager step forward. “Hey, Sha.”
Chapter Seventeen
KAIA
Those ice-blue eyes that I’ve seen every single day in our daughter’s faces and in our son’s curious gaze.
“Hurricane?” The name leaves my lips as barely a whisper, broken and disbelieving.
The man,my husband, my love, the father of my children,who I buried a year ago,takes a step forward. His scarred face twists into something that might be a smile if it didn’t look so painful.
“Kaia,” he says, and his voice cracks like shattered glass. “I’m s-sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Oh fuck!” My legs give out. I don’t feel myself falling, don’t feel the impact when I hit the ground. All I can do is stare at this impossible apparition, this ghost made flesh, while my mind tries desperately to make sense of what I’m seeing.
Hurricane moves toward me, dropping to his knees in front of me, and suddenly I can smell him. That familiar scent of leather and whiskey and something uniquelyhimthat no amount of scarring or time could erase.
“You’re d-dead,” I whisper, tears streaming down my face. “You’re dead. We had a funeral. I... I went into fucking labor at your funeral, and you weredead.”
