She pauses, allowing the silver tree to fall from her fingers. She places a hand on my lap, wraps her fingers around mine atop my thigh. “But I was meant to love Holden, and he was meant to complete me in a way like no other. After Tyler died, I thought I was like the heartwood of a tree, the dead part. But there’s a very special heartwood that’s anything but dead—it lives. A living anomaly that flourishes in the midst of so much decay, rot, and ruin. The destruction breaking down the tree doesn’t touch this. It fights back and it wins. Even thrives. And the reward is something so striking, nature has to stop its hands of time just to acknowledge that one breathless, beautifully stubborn tree.”
I don’t realize I’m crying until warmth trickles down my cheeks. They’re quiet tears, a deep ache so painfully raw in my chest I have to fight past it to breathe. But when the cool breath comes, a shower of pure enlightenment pours over me, freeing. Liberating in a way that’s so simple.
“And you call me the poet.” I smile, the wetness on my face spreading into the cracks of my lips. I wipe at it, and Sam’s hand trails mine. Lightly palming my cheek.
“Could you love Boone?” she asks. I feel my heart dropkick my chest at her words. “Is there any way that in time all this pain and self-abuse that the both of you inflict on yourselves, the death that has taken so much from your lives, could rebound into a living heartwood?”
I lick my chapped lips, desperate for the moisture leaking from my eyes. “It’s not impossible. I think I could learn to love him the right way. And maybe he could even heal enough to love me back.”
Sam’s eyes plead. “Then it’s time to give up the ghost,” she says, nodding down to my arms. The well-worn track marks, some faded, some new. “Yours is just a little more figurative than mine.” She winks.
And despite the seriousness of her statement—because I literally witnessed her battle her ghost—she finds a way to bend and even lighten the meaning for me. I do have ghosts. I put the needle to my arm, the line of coke to my nose, the drink to my mouth, trying every day to make them disappear.
To fool my desolate existence into believing it’s anything but decayed. I ride hard. I live hard. I fight my demon
s with sheer stubborn determination and the will not to succumb. But I’m so tired of fighting…
After losing Dar, that fight which was born of bravery morphed into a raging war that will put me six feet under. I can’t win. Not with the weapons I’ve armed myself with. They’re self-destructive.
“I need to call him,” I say suddenly. “I just left him—just took off. He probably thinks it’s his fault. That I couldn’t accept him, or that I couldn’t deal with his level of grief.”
Sam sits back, exhaling a long breath. “You need to call him because, honestly, he probably thinks you do blame him for his son’s death, Mel.”
I feel my face blanch. “What? I know he’s not responsible.”
She raises her eyebrows. “With how you bailed on him, with the last thing he admitted to you, and then seeing that picture…yeah. I think that’s a safe assumption.”
A sickening feeling roils my stomach. I swallow the nauseous ache down to the pit. Before I can torture myself any longer, I head straight to my pack and dig out my phone. No messages from him. No calls.
I type out a quick text: I’m sorry. Pick up your phone.
Then I scroll through my contacts and call his number. I bounce nervously on the steel toes of my boots, each shrill ring ratcheting my anxiety another notch. At ring number ten, the voice mail kicks on: You’ve reached Boone, you know what to do. Beep.
“Hey, I wish I could change the other morning. It wasn’t you, it was me… Yeah, I know. I know. But as lame as that is, it’s the truth. I’m on my way back. We need to talk, okay? I…”
I’m sorry. I miss you. I don’t want to have fucked up the only real thing in my life… All these words are true, but won’t leave my mouth. I hate voice mail. Instead, I end with, “I’ll see you soon.”
Just as I hit end on the call, the apartment door opens. And in steps Holden.
Pulling myself out of my morbid thoughts, I smile at him. “Well, if it isn’t lover boy himself.”
First his pale blue eyes widen, then his smile catches up to match. “Biker Chick,” he says as way of greeting. “Miss me that bad, huh? Had to hunt me down. I told you, Sam wouldn’t go for the threesome.”
A true laugh escapes me as he walks over and wraps his tautly muscled arms around me in a tight hug. After he releases me, he steps back and looks me over, avoiding the obvious question as to where my counterpart is. Sam must have clued him in via text message.
And really, Holden is the silent type. To the extreme. But I appreciate his lack of communication skills right now. My emotions have been wrung through, and Boone not answering my call is wearing down the rest of my rapidly fading bravado.
While Sam and Holden put together some kind of quickly hatched lunch, I crash on the sofa, unable to keep myself from peeking at my phone every minute, nearly praying for a text from Boone.
A sinking gut feeling springs me from the couch. “I can’t wait any longer,” I say, and both Sam and Holden turn to face me, hands stilled in the process of making sandwiches. “I need to get back down there. Something doesn’t feel right.”
Sam nods to Holden, and they share some kind of unspoken understanding. She looks at me. “Let’s go, then. Grab your gear.”
That was quick. Maybe too quick. “Wait…what? It’s going to take me a couple of days. Or possibly one, if I don’t make any unnecessary pit stops. I need to recoup first before making that trek again.” Fucking Florida.
“You’re not riding down,” Holden says, walking toward the table near the door. He grabs his keys. “You’re flying. Our treat.”
“Whoa.” I hold up my hands. “Guys, I’m really grateful, truly, but I can’t just leave my bike in New York.” Not after I finally got one again. But dammit, Boone. I can’t not know what the hell is going on with him.