It was too much.
So, the brothers came to me, circling me like carrion over a carcass, always lurking and hovering. They meant well, I knew, but as the weeks turned into a month after the funeral and more time passed, their concern started to chafe.
No amount of biker men could account for the loss of my biker poet.
It was as simple and profound as that.
The depth of my sorrow poisoned me like arsenic, making me wane and anemic, nauseated and unwilling to eat. I was wasting away physically, but I didn’t mean to, and I thought it was cruel of them to point it out as often as they did. How could I keep food down when my gut constantly tossed like the sea? My body was a storm in itself, chaotic with constant tension and bone-deep grief.
I think they believed I’d kill myself, but honestly, I didn’t think about it. I was broken in a way I knew I’d never be fixed, but I didn’t want to die. Not yet.
King had told me something profound when Mute died that stuck with me even through my darkest days. Even though he loved his brother enough to want to follow him to the other side of the veil, he knew that Mute wouldn’t accept him there if he went before his time.
If Mute couldn’t live, King would do it for him.
So, no suicide, and some days, I even mustered smiles and genuine conversations that felt like Band-Aids over bullet holes. It was a start, though, and I was determined to succeed.
I was lucky to have so many people in my life who loved me, and I tried to focus on that.
The veil of grief began to part like the winter fog banks dissipating under a spring thaw, and that was when I began to notice the details again.
The sound of Loulou’s raspy laughter as she watched Zeus play with his babies, tucking each tiny human in either arm as if they were footballs. The way Harleigh Rose orientated herself around Lion whenever they were in the same space, even if they weren’t talking to each other. How Nova seemed unduly irritated and interested simultaneously in a newly single Lila, and how Lysander always hesitated before he touched me, even after weeks of seeing me nearly every day, like he was a stray cat worried I’d hit him just when he got comfortable in my space.
I noticed too, painfully, little things King had left behind.
An inscription in the copy of The Prince I’d given him when he patched into The Fallen, “‘Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception’ and what deception is too great a price to pay for freedom?”
A guidebook I didn’t remember buying about Alaska, pages circled in red, inscriptions running up the margins in King’s cramped cursive. I spent hours reading it, running my fingers over the annotations, dreaming about visiting Sitka where we had once planned to go on our honeymoon.
One day after I’d picked up Ares for school and he was doing his homework in the kitchen, he even pointed out the massive X King had crossed with the silver felt pen over Sitka on the old globe that sat on our sideboard.
The fog cleared further when my thirty-first birthday rolled around, and I realized for the first time in exactly those words that I was a widow.
I didn’t want to celebrate, but Loulou had packed up the twins and Ares and arrived with a lopsided cake she and Harleigh Rose had made themselves, their men following with tender hugs and eager smiles, Nova and Bat, Priest, Sander, and Cyclops with Tayline, and Rainbow after that. Benny and Carson were already in the house, having let themselves in through the side door so I could wake up to the smell of bacon cooking in the kitchen.
Breakfast was nice, and the cake for lunch was ugly, but delicious, even though I couldn’t keep any of it down.
I had just flushed the toilet, eyes burning with tears and stomach still churning when Lou appeared in the doorframe, her full lips rolled under her teeth.
“Please, not another lecture on taking care of myself,” I moaned as I slapped the toilet seat down and washed my hands. “For the last freaking time, I’m not bulimic, and I’m not suicidal.”
“No,” she agreed slowly. “I don’t think you’re either of those things.”
I splashed cold water on my face, then frowned at the sight of myself in the mirror, shocked that I’d lost so much weight in my face and repulsed by the dead weight in my eyes.
My gaze found Loulou’s in the reflection, and I felt my lip roll under into a pout I couldn’t control. “Look at me.”
“I am,” she said softly. “I do.”
“I can’t go on like this,” I admitted, staring down at my hands as they trembled, noticing my wedding rings were too loose around the base of my finger.