I could already feel them pressing close as my bag slipped from my fingers and the front door clicked shut behind me.
Not actual spirits. I didn’t believe in any of that crap. This was something so much worse.
Memories.
That house used to be my haven. A place for me to escape to. Full of laughter and love.
But that was before she died. Now it was nothing. Just an empty shell.
Bricks and mortar.
There was no love and happiness there anymore. There hadn’t been for a long time. But it was home.
Kind of.
I might spend most of my time at the clubhouse, but my house was the place I had missed the most. For all the sadness it evoked in me, it was the place I felt closest to her.
“I’m home.” My voice echoed through the empty rooms. I didn’t expect an answer. But I would never stop saying the words. They were ingrained in me now.
Ritual.
Maybe they were the reason I felt so haunted, because I couldn't let her go. Even after all those years, there had never been anyone who came close to her.
And there probably never would be.
I had been ‘dead’ for months. Months of not feeling her memory press close to me, whispering that it was my fault, that I had done it to her. Telling me I had cut short her life before it had even begun.
Loving me had put her into her grave before she was thirty.
I had missed the guilt, the sadness, the loneliness. All those things were what made me who I was. So I wrapped myself in them, used them as a cloak and fashioned myself into someone I knew she would hate.
Because she should hate me, even in death she should hate me.
I was to blame for my wife’s death, and I couldn't let myself forget it.
I needed that guilt to survive.
6
Gypsy
“You don’t looklike someone who is involved with a biker.”
The woman wiping the dust from shelves behind my bar paused, throwing a glance over her shoulder. I expected her to look angry, but the smile she had on her face was dazzling.
“Don’t I, sweetheart? What did you expect us to look like?”
I froze at the question. What had I expected her to look like? Honestly, I didn’t know. “I don’t know. Just not like…” I motioned to her with my hand. Blowing out a breath that lifted my hair from my sweaty face, I tried again. “Sorry, that came out so rude. Let's start again. I’m Gypsy and I speak without thinking.”
Throwing back her mane of dark hair, she laughed. “You’re ok, Gypsy. I like a woman who says it how it is. Means you can stick up for yourself. But to answer your question, we are just women, the club is just men. We all have different backgrounds and different lives. For me personally, I come from a good, Christian family - devout and God-fearing. You know the type?” The hand holding her duster fell to her side. “All fire and brimstone. My dad was a piece of work. Very handy with the back of his hand if you get me?”
“Your dad hit you?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “It was a long time ago. Pope got me out when I was eighteen. Me and him have been together forever.”
Pope, her man. He had dropped her off four hours earlier, and though he hadn’t come in, I had seen their passionate embrace curbside. And he definitely didn’t look like any pope I had ever seen.
“He seems like a nice...man,” I added lamely.
