I took his death hard.
As in, harder than I ever should have.
And I didn’t know why.
I’d known the kid for only a month.
But hearing that he’d passed away felt like a broadhead arrow straight to my heart.
“You okay?”
I scratched my head and sighed. “Yeah, I’m fine. I have to get to work, though. I have a surgery.”
“What did they say on the phone?” Coreline wondered. “What was the call about?”
I’d been in the bed with Coreline, my body wrapped around hers, when I’d gotten the call from an oncologist buddy at the hospital. He was Jase’s doctor, and he’d informed me that sometime during the night, Jase had passed away peacefully in his sleep.
“Umm.” I rolled out of bed, feeling something in my chest tighten at the news of Jase’s death. “It’s…”
I trailed off as I walked into the bathroom on autopilot, feeling my heart constrict at the sight of my cut on the bathroom wall hook.
“Tide.”
I looked behind me to see Coreline now dressed in one of my scrub tops, staring at me with concern.
She had her arms crossed protectively across her chest, and she was staring at me with an expectant look on her face.
I sighed. “Jase died in the middle of the night.”
Her face fell. “Oh, no.”
I shrugged.
It’d been roughly a week since the biker rally had ended, and every single day, he’d accompanied my club, as well as Dixie and the rest of the Dixie Wardens, and I out on outings.
He’d ridden in the sidecar off Dixie’s bike for hundreds of miles over the course of three days while his parents traveled behind in their car, watching as their sweet son smiled and laughed and…
“I have to go to work,” I repeated again, feeling lost.
Before I could do so much as reach for my toothbrush, two arms were wrapped around me.
“It’ll be okay, Roll Tide,” she teased me. “It may not seem like it now, but it’ll be okay.”
I placed both hands on the edge of the sink, leaned over, and hung my head.
I allowed myself about two minutes of grieving time before I straightened up and pulled out of her arms.
“Are you going to be here tonight when I get back?” I asked.
She put the toilet seat down and sat on it as she watched me start to brush my teeth.
Then she chattered on about her day and what she planned to do. In the end, she explained that she was going to stay with Ethel tonight because it was her birthday, if that was okay.
“Fine,” I grumbled. “It’s not like we’re dating or anything. You can have a life of your own.”
Her head tilted, and she eyed me with intense gray eyes as she said, “We’re not dating?”
Even though it burned my stomach into nothing but acid, I shrugged. I wasn’t really sure why I’d said that, but I couldn’t take it back down.
“You’re a free woman,” I lied.
She wasn’t free.
She was mine.
But… I was a dumbass.
I said and did things that didn’t make a whole lot of sense when I was feeling intense amounts of emotions.
Like the eleventh grade, when I’d seen Coreline get pushed into a locker and groped by a kid on the football team.
I hadn’t taken it well, and after pulling the football player off of her, I’d accused Coreline of dressing to entice him, which was exactly what she’d gotten.
Needless to say, it hadn’t gone over well, and I hadn’t intended for that to be the outcome.
“Well in that case, I guess I won’t feel bad about going out to the Western Club tonight since Ethel all but begged me to go.” She stood up and walked out of the room.
When I got out a few minutes later, it was to find her completely dressed and looking for her phone.
“It hit the floor sometime last night,” I said as she asked if I’d seen it.
Needless to say, I was a dumbass.
I was also a glutton for punishment, because there was no way in hell that my little Elvis wouldn’t make me pay for those words.
• • •
By the time that night rolled around, and I didn’t get off shift like I was supposed to, and Coreline didn’t answer the phone… I knew I was in trouble.
That’s when I started making phone calls in between scrubbing in to not only one emergency surgery, but two.
I called around to all of my brothers, as well as Easton and Jeremiah, to find out that they were all busy.
Every last one of them.
Leaving me at work for what felt like hours, wondering what in the hell that she was doing at a club that she shouldn’t be at in the first place.
She wouldn’t be there had I not been an ass this morning.
Finally, after what felt like decades, Bram picked up the phone after my fourth phone call with him.