Ares moved closer, takin’ up Cress’s hand and shootin’ me a look that said he wasn’t hot on my aggressive stance.
“You remember when Loulou was sick? How crushed up inside you felt? How you felt like you couldn’t even breathe?” she asked. “I can’t breathe, Z. I can’t fucking breathe without him. Do you get me? I. Cannot. Breathe.”
She started gaspin’, tryin’ to swallow back the tears that permanently haunted her.
“I’m touchin’ ya,” I warned as I reached out to pull her into a hug.
I could feel the bones in her body, achingly close to the skin and I wondered how much she was eatin’, sleepin’, then decided she’d be livin’ with Lou and me until we could get her properly sorted out.
Despite her warnin’, she didn’t cry when I held her. Instead, in a voice of pure agony, she whispered, “I’m so angry, Zeus. So angry, I can’t breathe. So sad, I can’t breathe. Air doesn’t do anything for me anymore except make me cry every time I take it in.”
“So cry,” I said. “Cry as much as you fuckin’ want, Cress. We got arms enough to hold ya and hands enough to dry your face when’re you done. King didn’t just give ya his heart, you get me? He gave you all’a ours too, and there’s a no-return policy. You gotta let us love you now even when the thought’a love makes you want to wail in agony. You gotta let us do that, yeah?”
She sniffed and held perfectly still, not embracin’ me, not even breathin’ for so long I almost shook her, and then she moved. Slowly, like a newborn calf discoverin’ its legs, Cress moved her body around mine and hugged me.
Felt the tears soak into my shirt and let out a breath that rattled my fuckin’ lungs with relief. “We can mourn ’im together, you hear?”
“I won’t ever get over it,” she said with such spiritual certainty I wondered if mournin’ King might become her religion.
“Me neither. We can mourn ’im together every day for the rest of forever.”
“Promise?” she said, a hairline fraction in her mammoth control.
“For us, babe…” She shuddered at the use of the endearment King has so often given her, but I forged on. “King’ll never die.”
Cressida
* * *
It was a gorgeous summer day. The sky was cerulean blue over the brilliant green of the frequently watered grass, and the air smelled of freshly churned earth and the sweetness of damp flowers. The late summer blooms were just starting to disintegrate, littering the streets with pale masses of sunburnt petals that gathered like snow drifts. One spiraled through the air over my head as I scanned the masses and masses of black-clad gatherers collected at First Light Church cemetery to celebrate the life of King Kyle Garro.
There were over twenty chapters of The Fallen, from all over North America and as far as the United Kingdom, who had come out to mourn the loss of the prodigal heir to The Fallen MC empire and not a one of them seemed unaffected by his passing. There were even some clubs represented that were technically unaffiliated with The Fallen—but shared no bad blood with the club—and had come to show solidarity over losing a brother and high-ranking member of the organization.
It should have given me comfort, the sheer amount of human lives King had positively impacted, to see how well they grieved for him. It was unfair, and I tried to focus on that, but I had never felt so possessive of anything in my life. My grief was all I had left of him. I didn’t want anyone to empathise with me. It was wrong, but I hated them for their attempts to do so because there was no possible way they could understand what it was like to lose the very essence of my soul. I’d handed my heart to King and let our love mold my life like clay into something so much more than it had been before.
Now, I was left a hollow, broken vase with nothing to fill it.
How could anyone understand that?
I could only withstand the comfort of Lou and Zeus, because they had lost Mute, and Harleigh Rose, because she had nearly killed her own love in order to save him. Ares too, because though he had never divulged his secrets to me, there was a great and terrifying turmoil in his young gaze, and Wrath, who was still so mired in mourning over Kylie that I wondered if he would ever recover. It wasn’t often people were given priceless gifts to know how it felt when they were irrevocably lost. I both pitied and treasured those of them who understood. It was my one small comfort.
It was Lysander who stood at my side like a sentry, massive body inflated in a physical threat for anyone who came to pay their respects not to fuck with me. He didn’t offer me grief because he hadn’t really known King, not properly, but he offered me the kind of raw tenderness only a brother can gift, constant physical affection and knowledge that he might not know how to voice it, but he’d be there for me until the end of time.