Page 5 of Savior

The tree was long gone, lost to an errant bolt of lightning. It didn’t matter. If I squinted my eyes and stared long enough, I could still see us… two naïve souls, blissfully unaware of the problems life was busy stacking up against them.

If I would’ve known that dance was going to be our last one, I would’ve paid more attention. I would’ve moved my feet a little slower and traced the lines that time had left along Jamie’s face with my fingertips.

By now, they’d probably lowered him into the frost-covered ground. I shuddered at the thought of him being surrounded by dark and wondered if I could’ve given the funeral director something warmer for him to wear. It had only seemed fitting to send him off in the leather vest he loved so much, but maybe it wasn’t enough.

I knew it wasn’t rational.

Jamie was gone; oblivious to the fact that he now resided in a steel box. He didn’t care if it was pitch-black; a fear of the dark was something that only plagued me. I couldn’t sleep, convinced that the Sons would come for me the minute my eyes closed.

That was how they worked, wasn’t it?

Going after Mikey and Lauren in their own home… coming for Jamie at Dakota’s wedding. They struck close to home when it was least expected. It was how they’d been so successful.

And someone within the club had given up both Jamie and his son.

There was always the possibility that it wasn’t a man. For as much as I knew, it could’ve been the woman sitting beside me. Slim had always had a bad heart, but maybe Lou blamed the club for his early death. It could’ve been the woman who’d driven me home from the cemetery. A woman who had gone out of her way to make my life a living hell.

Betsy.

“Celia?”

I clenched my jaw with a jerky nod and pushed my thoughts aside before admitting, “Yeah, it was nice, but he would’ve hated all the flowers.”

She laughed. “I said the same thing at John’s funeral. Our men weren’t really the type to welcome being showered in roses, were they?”

Ignoring the pain in the back of my throat, I agreed. “They could be soft… but never in public.”

The breath hitched in my chest, but the tears wouldn’t come. It was just one more thing my husband had taken with him when he left.

“I didn’t ask, but did you spend any time with him? After he passed, I mean. They let me sit with John for about an hour. I just ran my fingers through that gorgeous long hair of his and kissed his face,” Lou paused and wiped the tears from her cheeks, thawing some of the ice around my heart.

“I knew he was gone; I’d known it when he went down in our bedroom, but just touching him again gave me a sense of peace. It let me know he was okay. He wasn’t hurting.”

There was no way she could’ve been the traitor. She’d loved Jamie almost as much as I had.

My nostrils flared, and I rubbed at my wrists before coldly replying, “No. The doctors wouldn’t let me back in the room. They said there was a lot of blood—I don’t know if it was a health code violation or what the exact reason was. By the time I met with the funeral director, I’d decided I didn’t want to see him like that. I didn’t want to remember him that way.”

She didn’t need to know that even the funeral director had denied me access to my husband’s body.

Jamie was bigger than life, and no matter how many people told me he was gone, I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that something as small as a bullet had taken my husband from me. He was the god of death… he should’ve been unstoppable.

Mrs. Quinn, we’ve done the best we can for him, but it’ll be a closed casket funeral. Trust me, it’s better this way.

Louisa turned away from me, shoulders curled over her chest. I didn’t understand why people went out of their way to hide their grief from me as if I was somehow unaware of my loss.

It wasn’t as if I was still expecting him to come down the driveway on his bike, covered in sleet and laughing about a mix-up at the hospital.

That would’ve been crazy.

“Are the girls coming back here?”

I nodded, studying the bare branches on the tree again, wondering if they’d always looked like this in the winter and I’d just missed it. “They are. They were still at the cemetery when Angel and I left.”

She rubbed her hands over the soaked sleeves of her coat to warm herself. “We really need to get you inside, Celia. You’ll catch your death out here.”

“Good.”

Her eyebrows drew together. “You don’t mean that. Your girls need you, just like David needed me. Sure, it’d be easier to admit defeat, but when have the two of us ever done things the easy way?”

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