Page 43 of Road to Absolution

Ah, fuck. Road name… “Giver.”

Everyone looked to me. Especially Lilah.

“They call him Giver,” I told her. “Babe… he’s the one who pulled me from the fire.”

Fire… My legs on fire…

I blinked, then quickly looked for Lilah. Her beautiful eyes were full of so many emotions. What I saw was sadness, regret, compassion, knowledge, gratitude, love, and that she already knew who had saved me.

Tucker must have seen it, too. “Nooooo!” he screamed before spinning and slamming his hands against the wall behind him. “This can’t be!”

From my bed, I watched as Viola ran to her man. From behind, she wrapped her arms around his waist, leaning her cheek to his exasperated back. “Shhhh…”

Tuck moved so fast I barely registered it. He held Viola’s face in his shaking hands. “Babe, did you know he was alive?”

Her long blonde hair waved back and forth as she swore, “No. My word.”

John was yanking his hair with his hands. “Why? Diesel, why offer this asshole a new life? You should’ve let him burn—” John’s eyes raced to me.

I should’ve been dead.

His hands fell to his sides. “Oh my God.” He went pale again. “A life for a life.”

A life for a life…

As if witnessing a woman on a path to absolution, I watched as Lilah Hutton walked to Diesel, taking his hand in hers. “Thank you for hearing me that night.”

Diesel looked tragically vulnerable when he told her, “The way you sat on my couch, holding that urn, moaning like someone was shredding your insides, and” he croaked, “there was nothing I could do to stop it.” He swallowed. “At that point, the only power I had was,” tears dripped into his beard, “to fulfill a wish.”

This is the wish Viola was talking about.

Lilah nodded. “I asked you to give him… freedom.” She reached up and kissed the cheek her father had just punched, then faced that father. “Kenny was, and still is, the kind kid you welcomed into our home. But… he is also living with a condition that he has no control over.”

Mouth gaping, John’s brows bunched.

Lilah explained, “When he was young, before he knew the love you offered, he was tragically abused.”

Diesel told John, “He’s a broken kid with a past so dark it’s unfathomable, even to me—a biker who lives on the edge.”

Lilah laid her hand on her daddy’s chest. “The only way Kenny’s mind could handle it was to… split. It created personalities. Some young, some older, and… some that get angry.” From over her shoulder, my wife solemnly told me, “That is who… hurt me. Not Kenny.”

Her heart… I knew it was boundless, but at that very moment, I saw its integrity and loyalty on a whole new level. Wow. She is an angel.

Tucker wasn’t experiencing or witnessing what I was. He was unraveling. His body jerked and jolted as if being electrocuted and needing a safe place to run to.

Viola tried to assure him, “It’s okay. We will get through all this.”

Lilah quietly added, “As a child, it wasn’t only Kenny who was being hurt. It was his little sister—”

Tucker winced as his head moved to the left then the right as if he was trying to unsee something. “Jenny. Oh, Jesus. At night, he would say her name.”

Disturbed, Diesel agreed, “Those weird nighttime zone-outs he would have, they were all signs.”

Lilah sighed quietly. “So many missed signs.”

Kenny had been Tuck’s childhood best friend—the brother he never had. All Tuck was learning that day in the hospital room was simply having him think and feel far too much. Maybe it was compounding guilt I didn’t understand yet.

Tucker finally caved to the pressure. He pushed past Viola and stormed out of the room.