Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 52357 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 209(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52357 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 209(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
BW watches me carefully. All of these emotions swirl inside me. I let loose. “She doesn’t need me! She needs anyone but me.”
He meets my glare, ignoring my desperation for him to let this go, he continues, “you know better than anyone that’s bullshit. She’s not a kid anymore. She wasn’t a kid when you left. She’s faced her heartbreak and gotten through it. This, though, she has no control. You broke something in her when you left and this is gonna shatter what remains unless you come back and be the glue she needs.”
I grip the glass tight, “don’t do this, BW.”
“You’ve always been her friend first.”
That is how all this shit started. She’s the only woman I’ve ever spent night after night talking the hours away. It has never been about sex even though she’s the best I’ve ever had. It’s Dia and me. The way we fit. The way we can say everything while saying nothing at all.
I left because staying would have broken me, broken her in a way no one could put back together. I chose the club. I chose brotherhood.
I’ve never looked back.
Until now.
“She’s not my responsibility,” the words come out in a whisper because even I know it’s a lie.
“Keep tellin’ yourself you don’t care. Maybe one day you can believe your own lies, but I don’t and I know my sister still matters to you the way you matter to her. I’m not saying you come home to step in for Clutch. He’s got his own piece of her, but what I am saying is my sister hurts and she needs her best friend. The one person who has never put some label or expectation on her. That’s you.”
“Tripp come with you?”
He shakes his head. “In the landing. He doesn’t know I’m here.”
I take a deep breath. “Fuck.”
BW finishes his drink. “I didn’t come here to twist your arm. I came here for my sister. She doesn’t know I’m here either.”
I sit back down rubbing my face with both hands. “I can’t go back there, BW. You know things will get blurry. I can’t go back there and not be in love with her. She doesn’t need that.”
“I know what going back means for you. I know it means pain. I can’t say what the future is for you or my sister. All I can say is my sister needs her best friend.” His eyes grow dark, edgy, “And fuck it all, your pain doesn’t matter to me. She’s worth it.”
And she is.
Always has been and always will be.
Except he’s wrong. I’m not the man she needs. Not then and not now.
Inside of me though, something stirs. The piece of me that still belongs to her. The part of me that can’t ever healed. The regret I carry because I said words I can’t take back.
“She’s going to have the same pain you got right now, brother. Except she doesn’t get to have another chance to ever hold him again. There is no comin’ back from death and that’s what Clutch has and Dia is stuck on the ride.”
Fuck!
“No one rides alone,” I mutter the words I believe to my core. “But especially not her.”
He gives my shoulder a squeeze as I feel my world explode inside.
This will either fix what I broke in her or kill me in a way I won’t ever recover from. Either way, Haywood’s Landing, I am coming home.
TWO
DIA
"A bear remains a bear - even when most of him has fallen off or worn away." — Charlotte Gray
I pace the small space of my townhouse. It’s like if I keep moving, I can outrun what happened. My feet drag across the living room rug, down my hallway, into my bedroom, and then back in a weird loop. I stop in the kitchen staring at a cracked tile by the cabinet. I wonder when it cracked. Possibly when I dropped the plate last night. I thought I could maybe eat, then I realized every meal I will forever have will be without him and I let go.
Not just the plate, my heart.
I let go of my hope. Of the illusion I can have it all.
I let all the pent up emotions explode around me. My world shatters just like the plate each and every day without him.
I should get it fixed. Maybe one day.
My eyes drift to the door, to the coat hooks beside it where his cut still hangs. He never really wore it right. Like it never gotten really broken in good. He was new—green, learning the ropes—but he was so proud of it. Even if the leather looked out of place on him, like it hadn’t yet molded to who he was, it was part of him, part of us. His scent is still on my sheets, still in my clothes. His presence is in every inch of my world.