But even then people didn’t change much.
Cade still never smiled at anyone but his girls.
Bull barely spoke more than five words to anyone but his wife, and she didn’t let him get in the words he did speak.
Bex only let Lucky touch her for a prolonged amount of time.
In their lifestyle, as with most things, more was more.
But in those particular aspects, less was everything.
“Didn’t know you smoked,” he said, leaning against the cool brick, inhaling the salt air that he associated with Lauren. Fuck, he associated everything with her.
Anna let out a choked cackle. “I don’t.”
Gage didn’t say anything, didn’t even look pointedly at the flaming stick proving her wrong. He just looked toward the ocean.
“Want one?” she offered after a companionable silence. She was a woman who knew how to talk. She also knew when to shut up.
“Gave up,” he grunted in answer.
She gave him a sideways look. “Ah, Lauren?” she guessed.
He nodded once.
“With some women, it’s not what you’d do for them. It’s what you’d give up for them.” She smiled. “My granddaughter can recite all the risks of dying, but she didn’t seem to grasp the concept of living. Actively shied away from it, in fact. Until recently.”
She let the silence hang.
“You know, happiness is a farce,” she said, inhaling deeply. “Heartbreak isn’t rare. Or special. It’s wretchedly common, actually. I would hazard a guess that there’re more broken humans wandering around this world with their shattered dreams encased in a blacked heart.” She took an inhale. “Present company included. Love isn’t rare. It’s also wretchedly common. That’s why heartbreak is, you see. It rarely ever works. We’re flawed, mortal. We die easily. Lie even easier. Life happens, destroys beautiful things. Or then we destroy the same beautiful things because we’re sure life’s going to anyway and we want to be first in. But you know what’s rare? Decidedly uncommon?” She nodded to the door. “What you have with her. I’m not going to call it beautiful, because I’m an old lady who’s seen enough of the world to know that kind of love isn’t beautiful. But it is the rarest thing on the planet. I think now, after everything, even the way life has showed you how it destroys beauty, you’ll make sure it doesn’t destroy that. And then make sure you don’t destroy it either. Because then I’d have to kill you.”
And then she walked back into the house.
Gage had had a lot of death threats in his life. A few had even tried to make good on those threats. He’d buried every one of those people.
Not once did he hear one as convincing as the one from his woman’s eighty-year-old grandmother.
It was only two days later that Gage found out Anna was not just there to witness miracles and dole out death threats.
No, she was there to live out the last of her life.
He found out because he came home early to pick up the “normal-smelling ice cream” from the freezer while she was at a barbeque at the club.
Not one single man said a word at the fact that he jumped at her request.
They couldn’t.
They’d all done the exact same thing.
They were all fucking whipped.
And fucking happy.
So that’s when he found Anna laying a note on the kitchen island. To her credit, she didn’t try to hide it, didn’t try to cover up.
“Fuck,” she sighed. “I always wanted to do the cool thing and disappear like they do in the movies, but I guess I’m sprung.”
She handed the note to Gage.
He read it, then crumpled it in his hands.
“You can’t just disappear,” he growled, the first time he’d ever gotten like that with Anna. “It’d kill Lauren.” He shook with the knowledge of just how much it would hurt her.
“Oh, but I can,” Anna said. “Because I know it won’t kill her. I’m looking at the man who’ll make sure of that. Who, in fact, is proof that pain doesn’t kill my beautiful and strong granddaughter.”
He clenched his fists. “You’d be that selfish?” he spat, not locking it down even if he was in front of a dying woman. The good guy might. Gage was not that. “Deny her a goodbye?”
Anna smiled with twinkling eyes. “Ah, but that’s what you get to do when you’re dying. Be selfish.”
Gage narrowed his eyes. “We’re all fucking dying,” he hissed.
She nodded. “True. But I’m just unable to escape the fact. And I’m not denying her a goodbye. I’m denying myself the ugliness of my demise. I don’t fear leaving this world. Just the people in it.”
She walked forward to cup Gage’s face. “But I know you’ll keep her wild. And she’ll keep you safe. And that beautiful great-grandchild of mine will bring all sorts of chaos and pain, but most of all, beauty.”
And then she stepped away and walked out the door.