All of us were wearing our smiles like crowns, trying to prove to the person in the mirror that everything was going to be okay. That the life we were living was in fact worth living. It was all lies, and nothing but trickery from the Devil.
Happiness didn’t exist.
*
Cold.
I was so cold.
I wondered briefly why someone had thought to take all my clothes away. It wasn’t like there was much to see beneath the heavy folds of material anymore. Just a busted-down, burnt-up, torn-to-shit body. Even my muscles had wasted away. I looked like a ninety-year-old man and I felt like one too.
So why take my clothes?
And my covers.
And all the heat from the room.
Why make me freeze? Was it just another form of torture? Was it just another punishment from the Devil? Another way of making me suffer…
Was I dead now?
Could I finally rest?
I blinked, watching as Belle slept. She was in a different position now and her hair was tied in a knot on the top of her head. She still looked sad though.
*
Hot.
So hot I wasn’t sure why my bones hadn’t turned to molten lava, liquefying and dripping onto the floor. I felt like maybe I already had. Like I was a volcano and I had finally erupted. All the months of anger and hate had finally spewed out of me until all I was was melted bones and ash clouds.
The humming was back, but this time I recognized the song because it was accompanied by it playing on the radio or something similar. It was a song by Michael Kiwanuka called “Love & Hate.” I recognized it right away, and through the ebb and flow of the blood running through my veins and the pounding in my head, I remembered where I had first heard it. The memory wasn’t a good one, and it was one I’d tried to keep buried. Not because I was ashamed, but because I didn’t want to remember that part of my life.
It was a long time ago, just after I’d patched in with the club and I was just a smartass looking for a place to fit in in the world. I’d finally found my people—my family. I’d never belonged before. I’d never had a place that was mine or that I could call home. A place that made me feel safe. Until I’d found the Devil’s Highwaymen it had just been me against the world.
After I’d patched in with them, everything made sense in my life, but I still felt empty inside. One day I’d walked into a bar and that song had been playing in the background. I’d drunk my beer in silence, letting the song wash over me and thinking about where I was going to ride to next.
I’d saved up and gotten my first bike a couple a months earlier, and I’d been traveling up and down the country for the past week or so doing jobs for my president, Rider. For the first time in a long time, maybe in forever, I was happy. Or something similar to it. I’d just wanted to ride and see where the road took me. I’d never felt so free and so blessed in all my life.
And then I’d seen her—my mom. She looked almost the same, barring she’d aged to look almost ninety.
She recognized me right away, despite the fact that I’d filled out and grown taller. Tattoos ran up and down my arms and across my neck, and my long hair was loose around my shoulders. I was a man now, not the little boy that had run away from home, but she still knew it was me. She was drunk, as usual, and she stumbled over, hazy eyes pinned on me, skinny arms reaching until she gripped the muscles on my forearm, her eyes widening in appreciation.
“Son,” she’d slurred, a drunken smile on her wretched face, “where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting for you.”
Waiting for me?
I almost laughed in her face.
That bitch hadn’t been waiting for me. Not once, not ever.
That bitch had left me.
Continuously.
She’d abandoned me every night. Locking me in our shitty apartment with no food and no heating, so she could go and get drunk. The last time I’d seen her I was twelve, and I’d managed to break a window and crawl down the fire escape after being locked inside for five days with nothing to eat. I was hungry, dizzy, cold as shit, and lonely as fuck.
I’d gone in search of her, out of my mind with worry that she might actually be dead that time. Instead of finding her dead, I’d found her drunk and on her knees, sucking off a guy behind his car for twenty bucks.
