Page 92 of Snake

Yet the lot was still full of familiar vehicles, including a long line of Harleys. His people. Were they doing the wake thing at the church? No, he thought he remembered Autumn talking about that, saying one of the women had told her Horde wakes happen at the clubhouse.

Turning toward the cemetery, Cox understood: he’d missed the funeral, but hadn’t quite missed the burial.

He wanted to keep riding, but somehow the bike turned into the parking lot. He pulled it to a stop along the edge and sat there, watching a cluster of men in black leather and women in funeral black while a minister in religious black spoke over a white box hovering above a hole in the earth.

For a long time, Cox sat on his bike and watched what was going on over there. Fully aware that he should be where they were—he was the guest of honor, wasn’t he?—that idea, that sense of obligation and propriety, would not land.

He should stand beside that big hole so everybody could watch him be sad. That was part of the ritual, right? Performative sorrow. But he wasn’t sad, he was furious. If he got too close to that damn white box—who’d picked it out, anyway?—he’d kick it, spit on it, try to heave it into the sky.

What kind of asshole got so goddamn angry at his own mother for dying?

No, not for dying, for killing herself. For abandoning him decades ago and then leaving him forever. Leaving him alone in this shitty, fucked-up, pestilent ass of a world.

While he stewed in his overheated head, the people circling his mother’s eternal hole in the earth began to break up and head his direction, toward the parking lot. He watched them come, watched them see him. They shifted their direction, began to aim for him, and Cox’s first, nearly overwhelming impulse was to fire up his bike and beat hell away again.

But then he saw Autumn, still at the gravesite, talking with the minister. Handling his shit as she had all week. A woman he barely knew, who’d known his mother not at all, had planned her funeral.

It was probably Autumn who’d selected the white casket. She’d probably asked him, and maybe he’d even answered, but he had no memory of that exchange at all.

He’d checked out and let a virtual stranger take over his life.

He wasn’t interested in checking back in, but he wasn’t interested in anybody else running the show, either.

Badger and Adrienne came to him first. Cox watched them come but didn’t bother to cue up any words or shape his face in any particular way. He stared at them through his sunglasses as they reached his bike.

Adrienne got one good look at him and stopped before she got close enough to try to hug him. Badger came right up to him and set his hand on his shoulder. “It was real nice, brother. She did your mom proud.”

Cox shifted his attention back to Autumn, now walking with the minister toward the lot. He didn’t acknowledge Badger. Finally, the president and his queen walked on.

All the other Horde came by and set a hand on his shoulder. Most made some kind of meant-to-be-comforting bullshit statement and moved on. Most of the women said something sweet, but they didn’t try to touch him.

Cox sat and let it happen. But his eyes were fixed on Autumn. A decision was forming in his mind, something with the heft and shape of truth. It hurt, the hurt cut deeply through his fury and scared him, but that was why it was true. The rage in him would destroy everything around him. Like the sorrow in his mother had destroyed everything around her.

Autumn was on the parking lot now, twenty feet away. Close enough that Cox could see the pallor of her complexion, the way her eyes were outlined in red.

“I tried to wait,” she said when she was close enough to speak to him without raising her voice. “I didn’t know what to do, but everybody was there, and I couldn’t reach you. I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t blame her for not waiting. In fact, it was a relief. The thing was over, and he hadn’t had to sit in a pew and feel a whole town’s eyes on him, every one of them knowing that he hadn’t been enough for his own mother.

Of course, they’d known already. They’d had twenty years to understand that truth.

Autumn reached for his hand. Cox pulled it away.

“You need to go back where you came from.” The words were out of his mouth without his realizing he’d chosen them.

And they hurt. They burned into his chest like a brand. The only full breaths he’d taken in days had come while she held him; if she went away, where would air come from?

He didn’t want—no. Didn’t fucking matter what he wanted. Never had.

Autumn snatched her reaching hand back as if she’d touched live fire. “What?”

The words he’d said hurt, hurt them both, but they were the only ones he knew anymore that felt true.

So he clung to them. “I don’t need you running my life. Go back to your own.”

He fired up his bike.

“COX!” she cried, skittering back from his roaring engine. Through that curtain of noise, he heard the pain in her voice. Through the shade of his lenses and his rage, he saw the same pain on her face. The fiery brand of need for her in his chest sank deeper.

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