Page 48 of Never Trust the Living (Battle Crows MC 7)

She blew out a hard breath that caused the frizzy hair on either side of her face to blow away from her face before saying, “I go on a walk every morning. I like to go before it gets too hot. Today, I walked out like usual, turned to lock the door behind me, and was hit from behind. One second I was standing, and the next I was curling in on myself to avoid blows. The mandown the street was running when he heard me cry out. He came up and scared whomever it was away but was stuck staying with me rather than chasing him down.”

Secretly, I was glad that he’d stayed. I wouldn’t have wanted her to be alone.

“Has anything strange been going on lately?” I asked. “Has anything happened that would’ve provoked that?”

Had her brother been alive, I might’ve seen it coming. But since I knew he was dead…

“Nothing.” She shook her head.

I sighed. “Did anyone else see it happen?”

She shook her head again, her eyes getting heavy. “Not that the police officers knew of.”

“And which police officers were these?” I asked.

I hadn’t seen any come around the entire time I’d been there, now that I was thinking about it.

“This town is quite tiny,” she said. “Smaller than even Intercourse. They have one part-time chief of police who also works at a refinery two towns over. And then there’s the sheriff’s department that apparently had quite a large drug bust at the docks. That’s where they all were today. They had one young guy come over about forty-five minutes after I got to the hospital, and then he left once he took my statement.”

Her words only served to piss me off more. “So this town is lawless or something?”

She shrugged. “I chose it because it was perfect. No cops. Nobody constantly watching over me twenty-four seven. But, I suppose, it’s not the best single woman capital of the world.”

Her words only pissed me off more. “You’re not single.”

Her eyes shot up to meet mine. “I sent divorce papers, Bram. I’m about as single as I can get before the judge approves it.”

“So what we talked about in the hospital. You’re not willing to give me another chance?” I asked.

My voice sounded wrong somehow.

Void of emotion.

She must’ve realized it, too, because she winced. “Bram, things would be better if you weren’t saddled with me anymore.”

“I wasn’t saddled with you at all,” I snapped, unable to help the emotion this time. “I had a wife that I adored. I just didn’t let her know that I adored her, apparently.”

She stiffly sat up and stared at me with a look of astonishment on her face. “Are you telling me that you like me? All those times you gave me shit about my eating habits. About how I couldn’t stand to be dirty. Or hell, even how your family treated me at almost every single social gathering you took me to… and you’re going to tell me that you adore me? Bram, if you adored me, you wouldn’t have allowed any of that to happen.”

She had a very valid point.

“I’ve battled with depression since I was a young kid,” I said. “I don’t know what happened, but whatever it was, Amon made it worse. I can’t seem to break out of it sometimes, and pushing people away seems to be the only way that I can get some alone time to actually think. Or be. Or fuck, I don’t know. Deal with the bullshit that’s swirling around me.”

Her mouth fell open. “Depression? You have depression?”

“Depression that’s also seasonal. Meaning, in the winter months, it gets worse,” I admitted.

This was stuff that I should’ve told her years ago. Before she’d ever agreed to marry me.

Yet, I was a selfish asshole, and did stuff that benefited me. As in, she made me happy, she was the perfect cover up, and she got me out of a relationship with Mimi that was slowly suffocating me.

“Mimi never has, and never will be, something that I want ever again,” I admitted, having a feeling I should set her straight right then and there. “Mimi, at this point, is only a girl that I used to know. The last few months with her was downright suffocating, and to be honest, only made my moods worse. You were the breath of fresh air that I didn’t know I was missing until it was there, winding its way through my oxygen starved lungs.”

She swallowed hard and looked away. “It’s too little too late, Bram.”

But there was a quiver in her voice.

A little niggle of something that I knew, if I dug hard enough, I could make bigger and bigger until she gave me what I wanted.

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