Page 4 of Shadow

“Yeah?”

“You know you can talk to me, right?”

“I know,” I muttered, holding back a shudder.

There was no fucking way I would ever bombard my brother with my shit. He had a family to care for. He didn’t need my nightmares on top of whatever shit was going on in the club.

Fuck that.

Funny thing was, I knew deep down the longer I stayed here, the worse I would get. I’d been milling it around in my head for months now. If I wanted to free myself from the nightmares, I needed to leave.

I would never be useful to the Golden Skulls anymore.

Not in the capacity they required.

I was dead weight. A loose cannon they couldn’t control.

I knew that and believed on some level, my brothers knew that as well. Only they would never say it.

“I’m good now. You can go.”

“You sure?”

“Ain’t a baby anymore, Balthazar. I can handle a fucking nightmare by myself. If not, Psych said I could call him.”

“Okay, Zeke,” Ghost said, as I turned away, not wanting to see the pain in his eyes. Bad enough I heard it. When my brother left, I laid back on my bed for hours, looking at the ceiling, debating but already knowing what I was going to do.

Fuck, this shit would never end if I stayed.

I knew that now.

I was the damaged brother of the President of the Golden Skulls motorcycle club. Well, temporary President.

The club was voting on the seat in the morning.

Not that I gave a damn anymore.

I was the one everyone walked on eggshells around. The brother they trusted but didn’t want around. Knowing there was only one choice left for me, I got up and started packing my bag. There was no need to say goodbye to anyone. They would only try to stop me. In my current state, I would let them. I wanted to forget about this club, my brothers, and the carnage I wrought. I needed something fresh. Something untainted by my past.

Seeing my cut on the back of a chair, I walked over to it and was about to put it on when I stopped.

This was one path I couldn’t take the Golden Skulls with me. Laying my cut on the bed, I grabbed my bag and walked out of my room.

Life as a nomad wasn’t all bad. I enjoyed the freedom of the open road. The lack of responsibility to the club. The fact that there was nothing for me to worry about.

The nights were still the hardest, but as long as I stayed away from people in general, my nightmares were getting better. Oh, I still had them. I knew they would always be with me, but the free feeling of sleeping in the wild without a soul in sight eased them some.

When I left the clubhouse, I didn’t know where I was going to go. I just got on my bike and rode off. I knew Ghost was going to lose his shit when he saw I was gone, but there was nothing I could do about that.

Out of all the club brothers, I knew Balthazar would understand.

It wasn’t that I wanted to leave my brother.

I had to.

If I stayed, I was going to put a bullet in my head or kill someone, another innocent. With all the shit going on in the club, I couldn’t take the chance of being pulled back into something I had no control over.

I needed to find peace.

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