“Don’t. You don’t think she’s been working at it already? For your sake?”
I dip my head, ashamed. “Yeah,” I mumble. “I know she has. But I could—”
Edge holds me back, at arm’s length. He studies me and a sad, wistful smile curls up his lips. It’s not a real smile and I miss the genuine ones, the ones so full of life and laughter that it makes me ache all over just seeing it, makes me feel so damn happy that I’m a part of his joy.
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about me. About us. We’ll be fine. I promise that I’ll take care of you. No matter what. You go on that spa day, and you have fun getting your toes picked at or your nails painted or whatever it is you need to do. Go have fun. See Leah, I can’t imagine what this has been like for her caught between the two of you. You need to unwind.”
“Like you do? Riding into the wind? Or when you walk off towards the swamp and unload your gun into the muck there?”
His lips twitch, this time a real version of a smile, and my heart leaps. “Yeah. Something like that.”
The shadows that flicker over his face, the uncertainty and the raw pain that I see when his composure slips just a little, eats away at me. It shreds my heart and I wish that I could just stitch this whole thing up, bandage it together like my arm, and heal it that way.
I caress Edge’s cheek and he lets me. He’s a proud man, yet he doesn’t stop me when I’m the one who wants to try and comfort him. He’s not afraid of showing me that he loves me and appreciating what I give him. Maybe it’s because we had to sneak around, even the simplest of touches were all we had. Whatever the reason, when he leans into my touch, sharing and giving back that trust that I gave him so blindly, it melts me.
He brings my fingers to his lips and kisses them gently before he drops his hands and signs to me, perfect, amazing, incredible signs.
I love you, Harley. Everything will be fine. You’ll see.
I wish I could believe him. It’s not that I don’t, but I’m not just willing to sit around and hope that everything works itself out. It occurs to me that maybe I can be the thread, Leah and I, working together, to stitch up the raw, gaping wounds between two men who were supposed to be brothers until death.
I sign back that I love him.
And then I turn my head and lay it on his chest, right above his heart. I love listening to that steady beat, but I also can’t risk that he’ll see all my plans laid bare before him with a single knowing glance.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Harley
“So, what do you think?”
I grin back at Leah, who made sure she was angled in her chair so I could see her talking. Christine flanks me to my left, also angled in. The staff at the spa were kind enough to shift the chairs a little, at Leah’s request. Normally I hate people knowing about me being deaf, but Leah was so efficient and to the point that it didn’t make me feel uncomfortable.
“It tickles.” I flex my toes in the sudsy water. Thankfully, no one has started touching my nails yet, though I figure that’s coming next. I have really ticklish feet. I might end up nailing the poor girl, who’s barely older than I am, in the face when she attempts to file them or whatever they do.
“I think it’s relaxing,” Christine sighs. She leans back in the chair, her pink cast resting on full display. “It’s so freaking hard to do anything around the house with this stupid thing on.”
“It is relaxing,” Leah sighs. “I might not have a cast, but I needed a break from the bullshit going on at home.” I tense, and Leah casts me a contrite look. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to talk about that.”
“It’s okay,” I assure her.
I don’t really want to bring it up, but now that she has, it’s easier than me doing it myself. I think about Edge sitting quietlyon the back deck, overlooking the new garden. Just sitting, staring off into the swampy part of the yard beyond. He refuses to talk about it, but it’s been three days. Three days that felt like three years. I can feel the pain coming off of him in waves. It fills up the whole house, permeates the very air like an unseen force, deadly and dark.
“I- I heard that Edge… that he left…” Christine pitches in reluctantly. “I mean, everyone’s heard. It’s all anyone is talking about, even though they say they won’t.”
Leah’s smooth brow creases into a deep frown. I can’t take the guilt I see in her eyes, but I don’t know what to say to make it better.
“I’ve tried talking to Steel. About everything. A hundred times. I’ve never seen him like this. He won’t listen to reason. He just stomps around, in this horrible mood. I keep thinking he’ll just wake up one day soon and realize what an ass he’s being, but so far, that’s a fucking no-go. I’ve tried to talk to him about other things too, but he cuts me off before I can even get a word out. I need to talk to him, but he just assumes it’s going to be about everything that’s already happened. That I couldn’t possibly have anything of my own to tell him.”
“You really don’t need to—” I start, but I trail off. “My dad is stubborn. I want him to come around. I want to come home and talk to him, but I know he won’t hear me when he’s like this. So sure that everyone else is wrong and he’s the one who’s right.”
“It’s not even about being right or wrong,” Christine says gently. Thankfully, the spa people aren’t around, it’s just us three, our feet soaking in warm, soapy water. “It’s about him refusing to accept that you’re grown up and you can make yourown choices. I think that if it was anyone else, he would have had them pinned up on the wall by now, their balls in a vise.”
“You’re probably right,” I admit. “I never had to deal with this when I was younger, all the boys at school were too scared of my dad anyway. They never would have asked me out.”
“I’m sure they wanted to. Edge knows what a prize he has. That’s why he quit the club. If it wasn’t so terrible, it’s kind of romantic.”
I tend to agree with Christine, but I don’t want to think about it like that. “I hate that it was me that came between my dad and Edge,” I admit. “I hate that Edge felt like leaving the Riders was the only thing that he could do to make anything better.”
