Viper (Hell's Handlers MC 9)

Ten days ago.

Ten days since Cassie had felt his touch, cooked his breakfast, listened to him curse while he tinkered with the old bike he’d been restoring.

Each of those days, she’d woken in their big bed, expecting him to roll her way and draw her tight to his chest as he’d done for countless years. He’d rumble a good morning in his deep voice made raspier by sleep…

Every time, her brain took a few seconds to catch up and realize she was alone, but when it did, pain slammed into her chest, devastating in its intensity. It was as though Copper stood before her, informing her of Viper’s death all over again.

Cassie felt the spine-crushing weight of every one of those ten days since her beloved husband had uttered the very words that she’d clung to every moment since she’d learned of his death.

I loved you yesterday, I love you today, and I’ll love you tomorrow whether you’re here with me or waiting for me among the stars.

The first time he’d said those words to her, she’d been seconds away from a full-on panic attack after learning of her cancer diagnosis. The forty-something physician had delivered the sobering diagnosis followed by a flurry of treatment plans and possible prognoses, before instructing them to go home, breathe, and mull over their options. All it’d taken was one utterance of the word death for her to miss every other word spoken.

Death. Death. Death.

The D-word had hit her like a bucket of icy water to the face.

At fifty-eight years old, she wasn’t close to being prepared for death. Not when she had so much life left to live. Hell, her boys had only begun pairing off over the last year or so. Now some of them were popping out the next generation of hell-raisers. How could she miss out on that?

She couldn’t. Plain and simple.

She’d stood in the parking lot of the physician’s office, fingertips going numb, breath coming in sharp, tight bursts as the fear had threatened to pull her under.

Her husband, bless his romantic soul, had wrapped her in his thick arms, told her they’d fight it with every ounce of strength they possessed and promised her he’d hold her up every time she felt too weak to stand on her own.

He’d done it too. He’d been strong. So goddamned strong.

They hadn’t had an incident-free life together. Most involved with one-percenter motorcycle clubs understood the world could be an ugly place. As a couple, they’d lost close friends and loved ones to disease, tragic accidents, and at the hands of others. They’d seen their club through dark days of dangerous struggle and despair. They’d battled enemies both within and outside the club. But through it all, the times of great joy and prosperity as well as the grave times of hopelessness, one thing had kept them going.

Their commitment to each other.

So when, there in that parking lot, Viper had whispered against her ear, “I loved you yesterday, I love you today, and I’ll love you tomorrow, whether you’re here with me, or waiting on me among the stars,” she’d believed every word.

As the weeks had passed, and her aggressive treatment got underway, she’d slowly come to accept the possibility of her life ending far before she’d ever hoped or planned. Viper’s sweet words, which he’d begun saying whenever he left her and before bed each night, had been the key to her accepting whatever fate befell her.

Though she’d never been called a religious woman, there were a few spiritual concepts Cassie wholeheartedly believed. One of those was that her connection to Viper would not end with either of their deaths. It couldn’t. They’d laughed, loved, lived, fought, adventured, mourned, suffered, and grown together over the past thirty years. They were so close, it often felt as though their souls had joined together as one.

Death wasn’t a powerful enough foe to sever a link as intense as theirs.

Some might find it trite, but Cassie believed the sentiment with all her heart. Knowing they’d reunite was how she’d come to terms with her cancer diagnosis, and how she’d made it through each day since Viper had been ripped from the earth.

“Goddammed hero,” she whispered as a small, sad smile curled her lips.

Cassie lifted her gaze until she looked straight into her own eyes in the mirror above her dresser. Sure, there were bags under those suckers, her skin had quite a few more wrinkles than it had just a few months ago, her nearly bald head required wrapping in a colorful scarf, and she looked no stronger than a wet twig, but in reality, she was on the mend.

Three days after Viper’s death, Jazz had accompanied her to her final monthly oncology follow-up appointment. The doctors couldn’t have been more positive about her progress. None were ready to firmly state she was in remission, further tests would be run in the coming weeks, but still, her oncologist had winked and all but told her she’d beaten it.