Edison (The Henchmen MC 10)

That was when Edison crossed to me again, stopped giving me the space he thought I wanted.

"She was beautiful," he told me as he took the pictures from my fingers, tucking them away, then pulling me to his chest.

Was.

She was beautiful.

I hated tenses.

I had hardly ever been aware of them before.

But now I hated them.

She could never just be something again

She would always be a was.

"Come on," he said even as he slowly got to his feet, dragging me up to sit on his lap on the couch, holding me close.

"I don't want to pick out a casket," I admitted, burying my face in his neck. "I don't want to pick out times and dates and things to be read. Or what she wants to be buried in. Or what fucking food to serve to people who will come to pay respects even though they barely knew her. And I don't ever want to see my fucking mother again."

"Okay, love," he agreed, stroking my hair, pressing his lips into it as well. "Well, you don't have to do any of that tonight, okay? So let's not think about it. Alright?"

He made it sound easy.

I knew it wouldn't be easy.

And I knew that when I woke up, I would have to deal with all of it.

But somehow, with his arms around me, his solid chest against me, his voice in my ear, I thought maybe I could give it a try.

I could trust him.TWELVEEdisonFuck.

That was the only accurate word to describe the entire situation.

Her sister was the light of her fucking life. Lenny had been something like a second mother to her. She had a soft spot for her. It might have been the only soft spot Lenny had.

And Letha had found herself abused, depressed, and too hopeless to think of anything but permanent escape.

She didn't want to burden Lenny with it.

She didn't want her to have to keep being her mother, this adult woman.

It sounded like Letha got a lot of what Lenny never did. She got softness and love and a man she could lean on without fear.

She got a childhood and a chance to bloom.

That was good.

It was important

But it also meant she didn't get the grit that came from falling and crawling around on her hands and knees like Lenny did, that unshakable spirit and drive to go on.

She was sweeter.

Softer.

More easily taken advantage of by a shitbag of a man who knew he could try to take that softness and mold it into whatever he wanted.

She had been young, beautiful, and open.

Unfortunately, just what predators like that fuckhead looked for.

Suddenly, it all made sense.

The training.

The ruthlessness with which she approached it.

It wasn't because she had a stalker, a psycho ex, or some rapist or something to deal with.

She had the man who abused her little sister, who eventually led the girl to suicide to make pay.

And pay he would, if her focus had anything to do with it.

I was sure that was the last thing on her mind now, now that a life she held so dear was ripped away from her by someone who had no right to make that call.

I had never seen someone grieve like she was grieving.

Or, perhaps, that wasn't right to say either. Maybe it was so startling because it was Lenny, because it was someone as hardass, as stoic, as guarded as she was almost all the time.

Maybe this was what it was like to see every shield fall at once, to reveal all the shit underneath that she needed to keep hidden for her own sanity.

It was, to be perfectly honest, a scary thing to witness, her grief.

It came from a bottomless well inside, surging with a force I didn't know was possible, then going still, leaving her staring at walls, eyes open, but unseeing, for hours.

I almost preferred the tears.

At least it was something I understood, it was a release for her.

She talked to me when she was crying.

I had no idea what was going on in her head when she was staring at the walls, if there was anything going on in there at all, or if she was just numb at those times.

All I knew was that numb, for any prolonged period of time, was not good.

Numb was when you turned to a bottle.

Numb was when you turned to a knife.

Numb was when the demons had a chance to whisper in your ear.

She needed to grieve because it was the only way she could get her fight back.

I knew it would come.

In a few days, when she had cried herself out, when she had gotten a chance to get the ugly parts of death over with - the arrangements made far too soon, when she finally got a chance to say the goodbye she needed for closure.