Broken Knight (All Saints High 2)

Everyone was in pairs. Such is nature—a special type of asshole.

Vicious and Emilia. Jaime and Melody. Trent and Edie. My parents. Even Daria, Jaime’s kid, and her fiancé, Penn.

The soil above my wife’s casket was fresh. Dark. Damp. It was not too late to pull it out. Not that I would. That would be crazy.

You’ve done crazier shit for this woman.

Staying calm was not an option, so I was trying to keep sane. Baby steps and all that bullshit. I blinked, looking away from the assaulting image of the ground swallowing my wife’s casket. There were dozens of people around me, but somehow, the only person I could spot in the distance was Dixie Jones. She stood back, away from everyone else, chewing on her lower lip the same way Knight chewed on his stupid tongue piercing every time he was contemplating something or just being his usual, ill-behaved self.

A cheek pressed against my shoulder. I looked down. It was Emilia.

“She’d have been proud of you,” she whispered.

“I know.” Not if she could read my mind. Not if she knew all the dark shit that blazed through it like a storm.

Vicious, behind her, clapped my back. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too, bro.” Trent clapped my shoulder from the other side.

“We’re here for you. We’re always here for you,” Jaime butted in.

Mel and Edie clung to me. Then the kids trailed over, embracing me from the back. The front. Everywhere. I was the center of a mass-hug in a matter of seconds. Everywhere I looked there were faces I knew and loved.

And it wasn’t pity I saw in them. That was the part that kept me from breaking, from really digging a hole next to Rosie and lying there. There was admiration and determination instead. But still, I couldn’t find solace in that. Not completely. Not until I felt Knight’s hand on the back of my neck and saw my son staring right at me. He leaned in to hug me, so close his lips were on my ear.

“You told Dixie to fuck off?” he rasped.

Goddammit. I didn’t want to lie to him. But I didn’t want another explosive argument on my hands, either.

“Knight,” I said.

“Thank you.” He drew me into a hug.

We crushed each other’s bones, and the beef between us.

“I love you, Dad.”

“I love you,” I choked back. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

I wasn’t supposed to show up at school this week, for obvious goddamn reasons. I still did. Not to study, God forbid, but to catch Poppy alone, after her accordion class. Yes, she took an accordion class. Who was I to judge? I was a recovering alcoholic before it was even legal for me to drink.

I waited outside her class, loitering about, kicking invisible air to pass the time.

Apologizing to her was a knee-jerk reaction more than anything else, though I could see it was needed after taking a step back from the alcohol and pills and assessing the clusterfuck that was our brief time together. Specifically, the high note with which it had ended, when I was halfway through putting my junk in her trunk, before confessing that I just couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t do it with someone who wasn’t Luna.

Not then. Maybe not ever.

That was the straw that broke Poppy’s back. I’d watched her descend the tree trunk from our treehouse, fall on her ass, and run in the opposite direction of my neighborhood, where she’d parked her car. Then, I’d had to go down and direct her to the right way, which, of course, was more awkward than bumping into your one-night stand in an STD clinic.

Vaughn and Hunter had tried to tell me I shouldn’t feel so bad, that Poppy had pretty much single-handedly managed our relationship for us, even when I’d tried to break up with her several times. But that was a copout, and I was having none of that bullshit.

I’d hurt her.

I’d wronged her.

I needed to apologize.

End of.

I caught Poppy timidly making her way out of class, staring down at the floor, wearing a huge-ass jacket and one of those big hats you only see in catalogs or on beaches.

“Are you a spy now?” I pushed off the doorframe and fell into step with her, shoving my hands into my front pockets. She was practically making a run toward the exit. Toward her car.

“Worse. I’m a hermit.”

“How so?”

“Everyone’s laughing at me. I’m a bloody joke, Knight. Because of you,” she whispered hotly under her breath, tilting her hat down.

“I’m here to make amends.”

“Pretty sure you’re here to make my life a living hell.”

“I deserve that.” I sighed, still following her as we burst through the double doors and descended the stairs toward the parking lot.

Poppy stopped on the last step, turning toward me sharply. “Look. This is my first day here in a while. Please don’t ruin it for me.”