Page 65 of A Love So Hard

I couldn’t hear it though.

I didn’t want to feel his arms wrapped around me.

I was angry with him too.

I was so god damn angry. My son didn’t need to be lost to us. It was all so preventable.

“He shouldn’t be dead,” I whispered.

“I know,” he returned just as quietly.

“He shouldn’t be dead!” Louder now, the words erupted from me.

“They shouldn’t be dead!” I was shouting now and watched as Gretchen pulled up short half way to us. She stopped and stood there with Kane Youngblood at her back. He was glaring my way. She was swiping at tears as they fell. I turned in my old man’s arms and smacked him to get him away from me. “If you had done your fucking job they wouldn’t be dead!” The words were wrenched from deep within me, exploding out because I couldn’t hold them in any longer. I glanced around at everyone gathered.

“You all killed my son!” I screamed at them.

“Lucy!” My husband yelled at me, but I ignored him.

“I was hidden away from my real father, because a woman posing as a whore in your clubhouse and a nurse at the hospital tried to steal me as a baby. That wasn’t enough of a price to pay though. Growing up with a lie and father who wasn’t really my father wasn’t enough for any of you. No,” I carried on, letting it all roll out.

“No, because then you let the whores rape my man. You let him get drugged, let him meet death a couple times himself before he came back. You let the misunderstanding of what happened carry me away on legs too fast to catch the truth. You let us miss four years together. You took the birth of our son from his father. You took his first steps.” My words were strangled screams at the people I held responsible for my damaged soul.

“You nearly let another whore take my daughter. The one good woman in all of this, and you shunned her the way you should have been doing to the whores that are a taint on your clubhouse. You treated her the way you should have treated them!” Someone grabbed hold of my arm by the elbow, and I violently shook them off.

“Now, you let them take my son. My grandchild. They’re gone. Gone. I can’t get them back. You can’t get them back for me!” I was being picked up and carried away at that point, but I didn’t have the strength to fight the physical. That didn’t stop me from throwing more anger their way. “You all killed my son! I begged! I begged for you to get rid of them. The whores who have been slowly killing and taking from my family my entire life. Look what you’ve done! Look what you’ve fucking done!”

I felt a pinch in the side of my arm and then a slight burn before I managed to look down and see that a club brother from the Dakota Chapter who had been introduced to me years ago as Doc, was pulling a needle back from my arm. “She’ll be out for a while. Take her home, and I’ll stop by to check in on her in a bit. I’ll get a prescription ready for her in case she needs it when she waked up.”

“You,” I started to say as everything became a little fuzzy.

“I gave you a sedative,” I heard, but then the rest of his words fell away, taken by the wind.

Chapter 28

(Lucy – age 43, Double-D – age 46)

Lucy was out of it when Ever and Deck showed up. He had dropped Anna off at the clubhouse with Merc and J-Bird to watch over her. It was for the best. I was sitting at the kitchen table just staring off into space wondering where everything had gone so wrong. Just days over a week ago he’d had his whole family, everyone happy for the first time in a long time. The light and the levity had finally lifted the stones of regret from his body. They were back now, and heavier than ever.

“Dad?” Ever’s voice caused me to look over to see her and her husband standing there.

“She’s still knocked out,” I answered thinking that was the implied question. I should have known better. Ever and I had never been close, and while we had been working hard to change that I still didn’t know her well enough to anticipate things like that. Ever shook her head and moved over to me.

“I figured that. Doc told us what he gave her. I wanted to know how you were holding up after everything.”

My eyes lifted and met hers, so like my own when I looked in the mirror. I don’t even know what it was I saw there, but it broke me. My shoulders began to shake with the effort of holding it in and I just couldn’t do it any longer. “I lost my boy,” I managed to get out. “She blames me for that. She blames the club.”

“You know it wasn’t your fault,” my daughter argued.

“It was,” I told her. “She begged me to get the club to change. She’s asked it of me for years, and I’ve brought it up but I never put any fight behind the request. I never made it a damn demand. Even last week, when I made Toby tell Merc and Sandman about what had been going on with Seneca. Aside from banning her, we put off the decision again for another time.”

“You had to do that,” Deck informed me of what I already knew. “You need a full club vote for something like that. It was set. You did all that you could.”

“Did I? My son’s dead. There was something else…” My voice trailed off as Ever came over and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, holding me to her as I wept openly for the son I couldn’t protect.

“Dad, I know you think the blame should be placed on you, but that could have happened to anyone, anywhere. He could have met that girl somewhere else and her infatuation – which wasn’t in any way healthy or sane – could have developed. This wasn’t a club issue.”

“He would never have met her if she wasn’t there available.”

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