Chapter Fifty-Three
DREW
“So, you gotta treat her right,” Deeks said for the hundredth time, his finger pointing right at me as he leaned forward, resting his gut between his parted legs.
“I heard you, brother.”
“You don’t get second chances with angels like her, you understand?”
“More than you know,” I said, slapping his shoulder firmly and gripping it tightly. “Thank you.
“For giving you a lecture?”
“For loving her almost as much as I do.”
Deeks dropped his finger, his shoulders relaxing, and his familiar smile rising into place. “If I’d have been twenty years younger…”
“Don’t make it weird.” I laughed, and he laughed, too. That’s all any of us had done: laughed. No dark cloud hung over Babylon that night. Our town was clear, the stars shining bright overhead, blessing our day with a new sky, a new air—a new road to ride upon.
Man, my heart had turned from stone to feathers, the lightness of it a joy, so full with the fluttering twirling around inside my chest.
I’d spent the night talking and laughing with friends who were more than friends. They were family, and where I once thought the responsibility was mine to carry them, it felt good to let them carry Ayda and me for a night.
Deeks was halfway through telling a shit joke when Slater and Jedd came up to me with a huge tumbler of whiskey, thrusting it in my face for the fifth time in the last hour.
“Come on, you pussy. Just one.”
“Fuck off,” I told them again, pushing the drink away carefully. “I’ve told you already. I don’t want to drink tonight.”
“Remind me why not…” Slater slurred, the effects of all his consumption enough to make him sway when he walked now.
Resting my forearm on the table, I looked up at him and pressed my free hand to my knee. “I always said you were too pretty to be intelligent, too.”
“Is that why you’re ugly as fuck, brain box?” He grinned.
“If I didn’t love you so much, you’d be seeing stars right now, brother.”
“Come on, Drew.” Slater jabbed my shoulder with a weak fist. “Tell me, your best friend, and tell Jedd, your VP, why you won’t have one teeny, tiny, lil drink with us after all we’ve been through.”
“Because, shithead. This is a day I want to remember forever. Every detail. So much of my life has been a blur. I want tonight to be crystal clear. All of it.”
“You’ve changed.”
“God, I hope so.”
Kenny and Moose joined us, Ben not far behind, and the rest of my brothers soon gathered around. The night was growing darker, and I’d yet to spend any reasonable amount of time with Ayda. Every time I looked her way, she was beaming, talking to someone with enthusiasm and an energy I wished I could bottle for my darkest of days. In this world of mine, where darkness had always been present, she hadbecome the bright light I couldn’t look away from.
I imagined a nice country boy—someone with a plot of land, a homely ranch, several horses, and a mom who could take Ayda under her wing and drag her into a loving family. Into a home where they ate together every Sunday and baked pies for each other just because their love was pure. I imagined someone loving her who wasn’t me—a man without any stains on his heart or blood on his hands. When I looked at her, I knew with every part of my soul she deserved that man.
But none of that mattered.
Because when I looked at her, I also knew no one, no cowboy, no straight-laced, church-going momma’s boy could ever love Ayda the way I did. They could never cry out to the universe for them to rain pain down on their lives every day, so long as they got to curl up in bed with her at night and fall asleep in her arms with her lips pressed against their head.
She could have done better.
She never would get better than me.
Together, we were perfect, a fantasy I never realized I’d had until I saw her laughing with her friends, wearing a wedding ring that marked her as mine for life.
