Chapter twenty-six:
3 months ago
Jesse
The air was thick and heavy, the Georgian heat hanging heavy in the sky. The past week had felt just like that—like we were waiting for something, but none of us knew what.
Butch’s death had been signed off as misadventure—riding under the influence. His blood sugar and alcohol levels were too high, and by the skid marks on the road where he’d gone off, not to mention the mangled mess his bike had been in, he’d been speeding. Took a sharp corner and slid off the road.
It didn’t make sense to anyone, but it did to me.
I had done this.
I wasn’t arrogant enough to think it was all my fault—after all, he was a grown man and had made that call himself, but it should have been me on that job. I was supposed to have been checking on the warehouse, not him. Worse still was that I was the one that had put the thought in his head to drink that night. I’d told him to bring more beer, to have one for the road, and I’d told him to speed and get back quickly.
And I had given him the keys to our bike. I had built her to ride faster than anything I’d ever built before. I knew the bike was dangerously fast.
The shame I felt made me feel sick and clawed at my skull every time I closed my eyes, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone. Laney kept telling me I was strong and brave and she was there for me, but I wondered what she’d think if she knew the truth. If she realized what I coward I was. What a killer I was.
We stood by the graveside while the priest said some words that were supposed to comfort. I couldn’t speak for anyone else, but I felt nothing from them. I was empty, numb, and barren of anything. Laney was next to me, her hand clinging to mine while mine limply held hers.
We took turns in walking forward and throwing dirt on the coffin, but when it came to my turn I couldn’t do it, so I stood there, staring at the dirt hole that contained my brother’s body. Hardy hadn’t spoken to me since Butch’s death, and it felt like he knew what I had done and was punishing me for it. But of course there was no way he could have known.
He came and stood by my side, and we stood silently for a moment as the crowd of bikers and women began to disperse.
“That should have been you in there,” he said, so quietly I wondered for a moment if I had imagined it. “He was always better than you. You, you were always trouble. Killed your mom and now you’ve killed your brother.”
I heard the words, but it took a moment to understand what he was saying, to grasp the full atrocity of his accusation. I swallowed and slowly turned to look at him. His eyes were dead. His expression blank. The man was made of stone, his heart and soul nonexistent.
“What the fuck did you just say to me?” I growled out.
“I said this, this is all your fault, Jesse.” He waved his arms at the hole in the ground. “You were always worthless, but your mother, she saw something in you and wouldn’t let you go, even when I told her you were no good.”
“I was a baby—a fucking child,” I said, my body shaking, trembling from head to toe. The anger that had been flickering in the pits of my stomach since finding out Butch was dead flared to life and became its own entity.
“You were poison,” he said, his voice hushed. “Always were and always will be.”
Laney came to stand next to me, her hand taking mine. “You okay, baby?” she asked, her tone suggesting she was at breaking point and was going to cry at any moment.
“Yeah,” I replied. I looked over to where Gauge stood, and caught his eye and he nodded and came over to us. He wrapped his arms around Laney’s shoulder and gently guided her away, and I let her go.
“You’ll kill her too, you know. Everything and everyone you touch turns bad or dies. You should let her go if you really love her. Walk away from her and all of this before it’s too late, because I’d rather die than hand the gavel down to you.” Hardy turned and walked away, done with talking to me.
It was the most he’d ever said to me in weeks. Maybe even ever. The deepest thing he’d ever said to me in years. I wanted to hate him for saying those things, deep down knowing he was just fucked up and evil. Knowing that I couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with my mom’s death. She was a drug addict—and that was all on her. She didn’t love any of us enough to stop, to stay with us so we could be a family. The call of drugs was more important to her than family.
Everyone had gone, and I finally had my moment alone with Butch. I walked to his graveside and crouched down, grabbing a handful of the dirt, but instead of throwing it, I held onto it and then I spoke to him. Laying it all out on the line for him to hear. Baring my soul to him.
“Not sure why it’s you down there and not me, Butch.” My words came out choked, and I cleared my throat and continued. “Because you’re a better man than I’ll ever be. Everyone is thinking it, so it seems sort of twisted that it’s happened this way, you feel me, brother?” I stared at the dirt in my hand, at the small grains of soil and minerals, wondering how long it would take before Butch was a part of the earth too.
“I don’t know what to do now that you’re not here,” I said with a shake of my head. “I don’t know who I am without you, brother. Or how I’ll carry on without you. You were my whole family and now I’m alone. Hardy is right—I’ll kill her if I stay with her, so I have to walk away.”
I threw the dirt onto his coffin and stood up, and I shoved my hands in my jeans pockets and pulled out a scratched key. Laney would never let me go though, not unless I made her. Unless I made her hate me.
It was the only way to keep her safe—to keep her alive.
“You said this bike was for me,” I continued. “That you wanted me to have something that always reminded me of you if anything ever happened to you. That it would show me the way to carry on and always pull me back when I started fucking up. But I don’t want it, Butch. You keep it. It’s what killed you in the end—I’m what killed you. And if it was so important to you—ifIwas so important to you—you wouldn’t be dead.”
I threw the key into the grave, listening to the sound of the metal hitting the wood of the coffin lid, and then I walked away. The anger burned brightly inside of me, the hate and the guilt for what I had done, and who I had become making it almost impossible to see straight. Voices whispered in my ears and I tried to catch my breath.
