Page 65 of Walker

“You do, honey. You absolutely do.”

“Thank you,” he whispered against my hair as he held onto me a little longer. Before long, he softened and we were no longer linked together, so Walker helped me pull myself together again before he worried about tucking himself away.

He smiled as his hand reached out to me again. I didn’t even hesitate to give him my hand and he rewarded me by giving a tug as he pulled me into his embrace and danced us through the trees under the moonlight. The only music was the symphony the bugs and birds created around us.

“I kind of never want to leave this moment,” I whispered.

“Locking it away in my memories, baby.”

“Me too. How about if we ever get in a bad fight, we bring this moment out and relive it instead?”

“Yeah, that sounds about right, Ree.”

22 - Goodbyes are Hard

It took two more weeks before we could have Tash’s funeral. Just before we left to go we received the confirmation we’d been waiting for. Dina was not Josh’s daughter. Reesa stared down at the results for a few long moments before she looked back up. “He put us through all this for nothing.”

“At least you know. Maybe knowing that goes a little toward you being able to forgive him.” My woman was too smart to not have worked out what I already put together.

“He wouldn’t have scrambled to get that money to Terry if there wasn’t a chance that Dina was his. He cheated on me, and he did it early on before we even married. Who knows if he did it again later on? He had already gotten away with it back then, so he could have done it again.”

“At least Dina no longer goes to the school.” Terry had been killed in the crossfire between Trouble and the Martinelli Mafia. According to Trinity and Trouble, he had been the one to take her out and no one from our club felt the least bit bad about it considering she murdered Tash when she thought it was my woman, and possibly her children, in the car. The kids had been sent to live with a grandparent in Tennessee, and with any luck, they wouldn’t be back. None of us needed to run into a living reminder of what happened when we accidentally crossed paths with them.

We stood around at the gravesite and listened to some preacher talk about young lives lost far too soon and I wanted to punch the fucker and make him shut up. Spike stood stoically beside his boys. Each of them wore a similar outfit. They all three wore black jeans, boots, and a white t-shirt. Spike wore his kutte. Diesel wore his mother’s kutte, which swamped him. Griffon wore a prospect kutte for the Aces High MC.

Griffon technically couldn’t become a member until he turned 18, but he was a few months away from 17 and got his motorcycle endorsement on his license. Quickshot approved his request early so that he could wear a kutte at the graveside service. When it came time to say our final goodbyes, everyone moved in a line to drop a white rose on Tash’s casket. As it was lowered into the ground, Diesel took his mom’s kutte off and dropped it in with all the roses.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the crowd as all the women who had been friends with her started bawling when we heard Jamie call out from somewhere in the back, “Where is Tash? She should be here for this.” Ghost and Sweet, who had come back without his kids to attend the funeral, had to physically remove her before she upset anyone else.

It was like the women of their MC were mourning multiple fallen members. MiMi was gone too. She took her own life while in our cell. We were trying to figure out what to do with her, because in her own way, she was just as fucked up as Angel Girl had been. Her brain never fully came back from the last brutal attack she suffered at the hands of the traffickers the women of S.H.E. took out.

After Ghost took his daughter out of the cells, MiMi stripped naked and used her clothes as a makeshift noose. She hung herself in the cell and Quickshot found her the next day.

The girls lost her in the wake of Tash’s death and in a way, they had already lost their fearless leader to her disease. It was a tough day full of goodbyes. I made my way to the side of my best friend. “You ready to get out of here?”

“I can’t believe she’s gone.” I stood there with him staring at the hole in the earth that swallowed her coffin up a few moments ago. Ree had already swept the boys up and took them down to the line of Harleys that were waiting on Spike to lead them away from the final goodbye for Tash.

“Fuck, how do I leave her here? We wouldn’t have made it, man. She was dead set on ending things between us, but we were still friends. I still loved her. She’s my son’s mom and he won’t grow up with her now. I have so many conflicting feelings and I don’t know how to walk away and leave her in the fucking ground.”

“There’s no good way to do it. Let’s go get your son strapped in with you, so you can make sure he gets to hang onto the memory of her memorial ride with his dad.”

We turned and looked down the hill to where everyone waited on him. The two rows of motorcycles lined the entire road into the cemetery. Riders waited and once they noticed that Spike started down the hill from where Tash was buried, they started their machines up and revved them. The noise rumbled through the ground and rattled our bones as we made our way down to our own motorcycles. Once he was on, we helped Diesel into the seat in front of Spike and strapped him into the specialized harness he had made to make sure his son was safe on the ride.

“Hands up, son.” Diesel reached up and held onto the lower portion of the handlebar as his father straightened up and stood his Harley straight. He let Diesel reach up and rev the engine for him. That was the signal for everyone else to start it up again. The sound of all those engines roaring drowned out the sadness for just a moment. Then, Spike took off into the lead and I followed behind him with Griffon at my side on a much smaller bike. Quickshot and Keys followed and then JoJo and Steel.

I wished Ree was on the back with me for this ride, but she had volunteered to go back to the clubhouse early with and the prospects to watch all the kids that couldn’t go on the memorial ride. I had plans to thank her for the sacrifice. Those plans involved her on the back of my bike and a ride to the house I bought for us. It had a little more room for everyone and extra space to accommodate guests.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s a good surprise, just hold on and enjoy the ride, it’s part of the experience.”

“I wish I could have gone with you earlier today.”

“Me too, baby. Thank you for taking on the kids for everyone, though. I know the club appreciated it.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t be there tonight?”

I shook my head. There was a wake at the S.H.E. MC clubhouse, but we were skipping it because our little trip was time sensitive. Once I got Ree geared up with her helmet and the leather jacket that had my property patch on the back of it, the sun had already drawn down too low in the sky. I meant to get her there before sunset.

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