Page 4 of Making Choices

The visions that crowd my head.

Blinding fury stabs me with every mention of her malignant existence.

Yet, I know that if I went out to the front bar and announced any of that out loud, every single person would judge me for it. Even the hard men who kill without a second thought. They’d try to talk sense into me. They’d minimise what she did with excuses about the pressure she was under. They’d throw around diagnoses that she didn’t have in the hope of making me understand her motivation for murdering the helpless human we’d created together, even after I pleaded with her to let me have him when she decided she didn’t want him after he was born.

Not one person out there would have the guts Cherub just displayed to tell it as it is.

Jenna punished me for not wanting her, then she killed herself to escape the consequences.

And the hole in my chest, the empty space that rages at me to feed it with violence, seethes with ineptitude because there’s nothing that I can do to change what happened.

Jenna made her ultimatum.

I called her bluff and lost.

He didn’t even have a name, yet my son paid the ultimate price for my failure to protect him.

As I finally allow myself to acknowledge the truth I’ve been trying to avoid for days, my arms drop around Cherub’s shoulders and I return her embrace. She shivers, sniffs, then hiccups. I squeeze her as tight as she’s squeezing me.

“I know I shouldn’t have said mean things about Jenna, even if they are true, but, please, don’t make me go,” Cherub whispers. “I can’t face them all right now. Their stupid clichés. Their even dumber promises. The crappy excuses… it’s all fake. Mum is dead and the moronic lies they tell me about heaven being some wonderful place isn’t making me feel any better… the only place I can truly feel her is here if they shut up long enough for me to find some peace. Not that the club will be mine for much longer anyway so I’ll lose that soon, but—”

When she abruptly stops speaking and tilts her head back to look up at me, I see my own outrage at the hollowness of our society’s grieving process reflected back at me. If I’m not allowed to talk ill of the dead, then Cherub is definitely unable to verbalise her anger at being treated like a dumb kid whenever she’s offered useless platitudes.

“You can stay,” I promise. She offers me a watery smile as her tears start to dry on her cheeks, then presses her forehead to my heart. “For as long as you need to hide out, this room is yours. I want you to find your peace.”

“How nice of you,” she quips in a semi-mocking tone. “Considering we both know my stay will be short since your patching in ceremony is in less than an hour. Why do you think Zeke brought in the big guns? He was worried you ‘wouldn’t drag your arse outta bed for it.’”

Biting back a grin when she nails Zeke’s bossy tone perfectly, I take hold of her shoulders and hold her out from me. “That’s not for another two days.”

“Nope. It’s this afternoon.”

“Fuck me.”

“Again, pass,” Cherub states with a smirk. She knocks my arms away and swipes at her damp cheeks to clear away any residual tears. “Right. You need to get your butt in the shower because you smell like nicotine and dandruff. I’ll dig through this pit to find something clean for you to wear.”

Although her excitement is contagious, my hope dies when I remember that I haven’t undertaken my prospect duties for almost a month.

“Brutus won’t—”

“Yes, he will.” Hands on her hips, Cherub narrows her gaze at me as she says, “Do you really think the Shamrocks will deny you your top rocker over this?”

Inclining my head, I avert my eyes when I tell her, “Maybe not all of them, but Brutus could. You know he’s a hardarse when it comes to provin’ yourself worthy… I haven’t exactly put the club first lately.”

“Hardarse or not, Dad isn’t in charge any longer.”

Before I can question Cherub about her cryptic comment any further, she shakes her head at me and hits me with a look I know well. She means business. If I don’t get moving, she’s liable to employ one of her more vicious methods of getting her point across. Being the only girl surrounded by eleven boys who range from the ages of nineteen like me, Zeke, and her oldest cousin, Benedict, to five years old like her youngest brother, Nathaniel, Cherub has had to get creative to keep us in line.

Right now, she’s favouring the classic nipple cripple.

“All right.” I hold my hands in the air. “I’m going.”

“Good… and I don’t want to see you until you smell like a human instead of an ashtray.”

“Fuckin’ bossy,” I mumble as I turn to close the door to my ensuite bathroom behind me.

Something solid hits the door with a thud. “I heard that.”

As the water is heating up, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the basin. To my surprise, I’m smiling. My gaze remains haunted by the loss I figure I’ll carry with me forever, yet the hunched shoulders and the downturned mouth that have greeted me every time I’ve ventured into the bathroom over the past couple weeks are gone. Even the handgun that sits on the toilet tank no longer calls to me.

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