Beyond the Horizon (The Sons of Templar MC Book 4) (3 page)

“Yeah,” I agreed, watching the sun move closer to its hiding place beyond the horizon. “She picked it,” I continued.

“Of course she did,” Bex smiled at the horizon.

My eyes prickled as I thought back to that day, that conversation.

I’d been reading one of Mom’s favorite books to her, she was losing the ability to grasp the edges, focus her eyes on the words. Her ability to hold a paintbrush had long gone, I think a piece of her heart went too, not that you’d ever know. Not that her cheerful smiles would betray a hint of sadness, or of defeat.

“I want to see the sunset, on my last day on earth,” she said suddenly, interrupting my sentence.

I looked up from the book, failing to stop my inward flinch every time I laid eyes on my fading mother. Her hair was gone, a tie-died head scarf fastened like a turban around her bald head. Her skin was yellow, a sign of her organs shutting down. Black circles rimmed her eyes. Her cheekbones protruded, she was a bag of bones underneath the thin polyester blanket. She looked like a skeleton. Her eyes never lost their sparkle, though, or their vibrancy. The one thing cancer couldn’t steal from her. It was robbing her of her life, it was yet to rob her of her soul.

“Okay, Mom,” I said, choking on my words slightly. “We’ll watch the sun set every night,” I promised. “I’ll make the nurses wheel you out,” I added, knowing it would be a feat, but I’d make sure it was something I’d get done.

Mom smiled warmly, the expression the only familiar thing on the alien face apart from the eyes.

“No, peanut. I don’t want to see the sun kiss the parking lot of this place.” Her eyes moved around the room. It was covered in flowers, in color, but nothing could disguise what it really was. “No, I want to be in the fresh air, with not a sterile wall in sight,” she joked warmly.

I put the book down. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do,” I replied slowly, knowing how unlikely it would be to be able to take Mom out of the hospital. She might not even survive the short car trip. An excruciating pain stabbed through my crumpled heart at that thought.

“Peanut, I mean after I’m gone,” she murmured softly, holding out her hand.

I leaned forward and grasped it gently. It was cold. I was worried if I gripped it too hard the bones would shatter.

Her eyes searched mine. “I want the day you say goodbye to me to be when you can watch the sun set, and know that I’ll be going somewhere beautiful, following the rays to somewhere you can’t see, but you can always feel,” she said, her voice croaky.

I nodded, through the tears in my eyes, unable to speak. My throat swelled up with pain and grief.

“I want it to be on the top of that hill at that cemetery we used to go to, amongst all of those beautiful old tombstones,” she continued.

We visited graveyards together. Weird, most people would say, but I’d never known different. My mom was beauty from the inside out, and she found beauty in the most unusual of places. A lot of her best works were inspired by graveyards. She was fascinated by them. I liked them because they were quiet. I could be alone with my thoughts while Mom sketched furiously on her notepad.

“I want you to wear a yellow dress,” she announced, her eyes dreamy. “Rebecca too,” she added with a grin. “You look so pretty in yellow, and I don’t want you wearing some depressing color like black. I want yellow,” she decided.

“I can do that, Mom,” I said, outwardly trying to disguise my utter despair over discussing my wardrobe choices for the funeral of my mother. My best friend. My hero. My everything. “Though Bex will curse you for making her wear such a cheerful color,” I added, maintaining my charade.

Mom grinned. “She’ll curse me, but she’ll wear biker boots and excess eyeliner and look like the beautiful girl she is,” she said, her eyes warm. She squeezed my hand. “Sunset and yellow, peanut,” she repeated.

“Sunset and yellow, Mom,” I promised.

So, here we were. In a cemetery, at dusk, wearing bright yellow dresses. Mom was right, Bex wore her signature combat boots and heavy kohl eyeliner, her black hair messed in choppy layers, the dipped purple ends brushing her shoulders. She looked completely and utterly her.

Me, not so much. I didn’t even know how to be me, let alone create a look that represented who I was. My yellow dress used to be snug on me, tight at the waist and ballooning out into a fifties style skirt, kissing my knees. Now, it was loose, my long hair lay flat around my shoulders. The tan I normally had to complement it was long gone, considering I spent my days in a hospital room, and my nights in a bar. But I wore it, even though the color I identified most with was black. I got why people wore it. So their outsides matched their insides. To cloak the despair.

People had started arriving, and I had to commence my duties as the daughter, greeting old friends, acquaintances and fans of my mom’s work. We didn’t have family. She had a lot of friends, though. My mom was likable, a ball of light. People radiated toward her. People that by chance did not find black appropriate for a funeral either. Most of them were hippies like Mom, so a lot of flowing skirts and bright colors decorated the graveyard. It was kind of poetic and beautiful. Well, it would have been if I hadn’t been drowning under the weight of my grief.

The clearing of the priest’s throat had me stop my conversation with my mom’s artist friends and turn my attention to him. My gaze flickered to the coffin, one that I’d avoided looking at. Covered in flowers, letters and drawings it looked like something my mom would’ve loved. I wanted to feel warm about that, about the fact my mom would have loved every part of this. I couldn’t. My mom would have loved this—past tense—she can’t love it. Because she was dead, right in that beautifully disguised coffin. I averted my gaze, feeling the pins and needles stronger now. Bex squeezed my hand. Aiden took my other. I focused on the priest.

“Now, I understand Faith’s daughter, Lily is going to say a few words,” he declared, after his monolog.

Both Bex and Aiden jolted beside me, I knew they were surprised. They both knew I avoided public speaking as if my life depended on it. Knew the depths of my shyness. The crowd here must have been big, I didn’t really look, but didn’t need to. Like I said, my mom was loved.

“Lily babe, you don’t have to do this,” Bex whispered. There were streaks on her face from the tears she’d already shed. My face, I knew, was streak free. I was still numb.

I smiled woodenly. “Yeah, I do.”

Aiden moved beside her. “She’s right,” he murmured quickly, “this is too much.”

I silenced him with a hand. “I’m doing it,” I said firmly and quickly, aware of all the eyes on me, and hating it. I didn’t give them any more time before moving around to stand in front of the crowd. I wasn’t wrong. It was big.

“Thank you, Father,” I mumbled.

He bowed his head and gave me a soft gaze filled with sympathy. I took a breath and faced the crowd. I was prepared. I could do this. I thought I could, until my eyes caught the glimpse of chrome reflecting off the dim light. A small group of Harley’s were parked in the distance. My eyes met familiar ones quickly, a rich chocolate gaze momentarily paralyzing me.

Asher.

He was here.

Along with Lucky, Amy, Brock, Cade, Gwen, and Rosie.

I sucked in a breath, aware I’d been silent. I ripped my eyes away from the man who I hadn’t stopped thinking about in three years. The man who took up the fantasy world I escaped to when I couldn’t stand the real one.

Don’t focus on that now,
I told myself. Be strong for her, one last time.

“My mom was the greatest person I ever met,” I started, my voice clear. “She was everything I want to be, everything I could wish to be,” I continued, my voice wavering. “She found beauty in every single thing that she laid her eyes on. She made every single thing she laid her hands on beautiful.” I moved my eyes from the crowd, from the stare that burned into my soul to regard the horizon. To watch the sun slowly move away. “She had it till the end,” I said to the horizon. “Beauty. The ugly disease failed to take that.”

I took a breath as sorrow threatened to overcome me, the weight on my chest threatening to bring me to my knees. “She wanted to see the sun set, on the day we all said goodbye to her. The sun setting does not mean it’s disappeared, it just means its light’s shining somewhere else, that’s what she told me.” I watched the sky dance with the last of the light. “That’s where she is, shining her light somewhere else. Somewhere better,” I finished almost choking on my last word, but able to keep my head straight, my eyes clear, so I could watch the last of the sun’s aura disappear.

“Bye, Mom,” I whispered to the horizon.

“Thank you for coming, you didn’t have to,” I said to Gwen after she had finally let me out of her embrace.

The pity on her face did not fade with her narrowed brows. “Honey, of course we did. You lost your mom. I wanted to be here. We all did. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.” Her voice wasn’t accusing, only sad, full of pain.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I didn’t want to trouble you, you’ve had a lot going on,” I explained. A lot was an understatement. I may have quit working for Gwen a year ago when Mom got worse, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t stopped seeing them. I knew things in their lives were always intense. Kidnappings and shootings were more than intense. Which was why I never told them about Mom. They were good people. They’d take it upon themselves to help, even with all of the trouble in their life. They didn’t need that. I valued their friendship, but I didn’t want to be that burden to add to the drama.

Gwen frowned at me. “Trouble me? Lil, you’d never trouble me. It only troubles me having you go through this alone. Why didn’t you tell us your mom was sick?”

I ignored the intensity I felt from a stare from behind Gwen, from where I know
he
stood.

I puffed hair out of my face and shrugged my shoulders, “I don’t know,” I said honestly. Why hadn’t I told my glamorous ex-boss and current friend that my mom had been battling cancer for the last three and a half years? Maybe because if I verbalized it to that part of my life, it’d make it real. It felt nice being able to have some sort of feeble escape whenever I met Gwen and Amy for coffee or drinks, and not be the girl with the dying mom. Amber may have been small, but my mom operated out of the
”normal”
community and lived out of town, in a little rundown cottage by the sea. I knew her friends weren’t likely to shop at Gwen’s store or hang out with the Sons of Templar. So I was able to pretend when I was with them, pretend I wasn’t battling every day. Pretend that hospitals, cancer treatments, and watching the strongest person I knew fade into nothing was only a distant nightmare.

Her face softened with understanding, she brushed my hair from my face. “We’ll talk later. Your words were beautiful, honey,” she told me softly.

I blinked away the tears that threatened with the collision of the two parts of my life. The collision that shattered any pretend world I had constructed.

“Lils, the dude with the dope dreadlocks is asking if we’re heading to the farm now? I’m voting a massive yes,” Bex interrupted boisterously. She gave Gwen a small smile and her eyes stuttered on what I knew were the bikers behind her. I felt her form stiffen slightly, and her eyes harden, I knew she was remembering the not so pleasant ending to my night three years ago.

“Bex, this is Gwen, Rosie, Amy, my friends from Amber. Gwen and Amy own Phoenix,” I introduced quickly before she could cause a brawl. “This is Becky, my—”

“Best friend, roommate, drinking buddy, sister from another mister, and so much more,” Bex interrupted on a grin.

Bex hadn’t met my Amber friends, even though three years had passed since I met them, I didn’t exactly hold parties for everyone in my life to mingle.

“Lilmeister has told me all about you. Your lives could totally be turned into movies,” she continued with her usual lack of filter.

I cringed and my face reddened. I didn’t want Gwen to think I’d been gossiping. Luckily, she laughed.

“Yeah, well only if
Rachel McAdams
plays me,” she answered.

“I’d totally be down with
Amy Adams
for me,” Amy piped in.

“
J Law
,” Rosie added with a wink.

Okay, so my friends from two different parts of my lives were equally crazy, and made it somehow possible to seem like we weren’t standing in a cemetery after the burial of my mother.

“Lil?” Aiden’s voice interrupted while Bex continued chatting to the women.

“Excuse me a sec,” I said to Gwen and I failed to ignore Asher.

He was watching from further back, his eyes intent on me. He seemed like he was never going to approach, only hang back and torture me with his stare. His face turned blank and hard, at the same time I felt pressure on my waist.

Aiden turned me, both his hands resting on my hips. “You want me to give you a ride to this farm place, or do you want to go home?” he asked quietly.

The farm was a farm, it was where a big group of Mom’s friends lived. Words like
”commune”
were not used to describe it, though that’s what outside society regularly referred to it as. It wasn’t that, but it was like a second home for me. Everyone there was like my mom—free spirits, creatives, artists. People that didn’t like the mainstream world. That didn’t fit. A little like the Sons I guessed, although they didn’t ride Harley’s and engage in questionable activities. They mostly made art and smoked pot. Mom might not have been as hardcore as them. Hence, me being raised in a house with just her and me, it was still our adopted family. It was also where the reception, if that’s what it was called, was being held.

“Um…” I began, not knowing what I wanted. Yes actually, I knew what I wanted. My mom not to be buried in the ground. Instead, for her to be in front of me, teasing me about the fact my
‘
“boyfriend” was from a family who didn’t recycle and were, gasp, Republicans.

“It’s been an exhausting few days for you, scratch that, three years. Your words up there were beautiful, but they’ll understand if you want to go home. You need sleep,” he said.

As much as I didn’t like Aiden telling me what I needed, I agreed. I was tired to my bones. Though I didn’t think sleep would cure much. Sleep couldn’t cure an exhausted soul. It at least promised a welcome oblivion.

“Yeah, maybe I should go home,” I declared finally.

Aiden nodded, his grip tightening.

I said my goodbyes to Gwen and the rest of them, eyes avoiding Asher like the plague. He didn’t approach me, just stayed rooted to the spot, his eyes burning into me. I felt them on my back as I said the rest of my goodbyes, and as I walked with Aiden to his car. The residue of his gaze, his proximity, followed me most of the way home. I welcomed the pain that came with it, since it was nowhere near close to the agony that promised to ruin me the moment I let it in.

I woke abruptly. My jerk hadn’t roused Aiden, who was sleeping soundly next to me, his arm thrown lightly across my midsection. He’d fallen asleep with me atop the covers, after lying and talking with me after we got home. No funny business. There was never any funny business, and he seemed content with that. It had only been a month after all, and I hadn’t exactly been in the mood that month.

I knew it would come, though, and it scared me to death. I hadn’t been with anyone since
him
. Three years of pining. I was like some sad, weak girl who held onto some desperate hope. Only that wasn’t what it was. It was that I didn’t want some boy to ruin that perfect memory of that night, the way Asher touched me, held me. It was the only memory I clung to after nights spent at the hospital. After having to bury my head in books on medicine after I’d watched it fail my mother. Later having to work my ass off, and keep a smile off my face even when I was dying inside. I needed it. I needed the memory of the way he made me feel.

I knew I couldn’t sleep, even though Aiden’s form kept me company in the small room, I felt more alone than ever.

I knew where I needed to go.

It was 3:00 a.m. Who went to cemeteries at 3:00 a.m? I didn’t know. I didn’t find it scary, though, the silence of the dead was comforting to me. I didn’t do well in the company of the living, so I was happy with the solitude the tombstones offered. I shivered in my jacket in the crisp air, the ground crunching beneath my feet until I stopped at a fresh grave. There was no headstone, that would come later. For now, there was only a plain white cross, with daisy chains slung around it.

“Hey, Mom,” I whispered, sinking down to my knees.

My hand pressed into the mound of dirt. Then it came. The pins and needles finally disappeared, replaced with by the pain, the utter agony of loss. I sucked in a strangled breath, a vice tightened around my chest. Tears fell onto the dirt where my mother was buried. My sobs wracked through the silent night. I knew the pain would be bad when it got to me, when it caught up. I didn’t realize it would radiate to every part of me, and that I’d drown in it.

Arms circled around me, engulfing my shaking body.

I jolted in fear, a momentary bout of terror paralyzing me until a husky voice tickled my ear.

“It’s me, Flower,” Asher muttered.

I sagged against him, letting him lift me to my feet and tuck me into his strong body. It didn’t matter we hadn’t spoken in a year, that I hadn’t been pressed against his body in three. It only mattered he was here now, to catch me when I started my free fall into the pit of grief.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured into my hair. “I’ve got you, babe. You can feel now, you can let it go. That mask you’re wearing, you don’t need it with me,” he continued softly.

And with that, with his words showing he saw straight through me, I lost it. The control, the self-preservation I’d been clinging to. I clutched his cut and sobbed, letting my tears run down the soft leather. He held me tightly against his body, murmuring into my hair, kissing my head, giving me someone. Someone to hold on to. If only for a night.

He pulled me back slightly, his head nodding down so he could meet my eyes. “Ever been for a ride on a motorcycle, flower?” he joked lightly. It was dark, but I knew there’d be a twinkle in his eye, a reference to the night we first met.

“Once,” I replied quietly.

“You like it?” he asked.

“It was one of the greatest feelings in the world,” I whispered back, unable to hide behind a mask of shyness like I usually did. It fell away with him. Everything did.

His body jolted. “Yeah,” he said, squeezing my hips. “I can think of one thing that feels better,” he added huskily.

Before my stomach could dip at that statement, he’d clasped my hand and directed us to the curb where his bike was parked. After he handed me a helmet, I hopped on silently, happy for the absence of words. I didn’t need that. I needed to plaster myself against the one body I’d known truly and intimately, the body that made me feel safe. That made me feel whole.

The ride left my worries, my grief, all of it at the curb. The only thing that existed in that moment was my body pressed against his. I didn’t know how long we rode for. Time didn’t matter. It didn’t exist. Only the road, the freedom it gave, existed in those moments. We pulled up to a shoulder on the lonely highway. It seemed we were the only people left in the world, up on the slight incline, looking at the dim morning light beginning to kiss the desolate landscape.

The motor of the Harley left us bathing in the special kind of silence only offered by early hours of the morning, before the sun was even awake. We sat like that, me still pressed against him, my head lying on his shoulder, my eyes on the horizon. Without warning, he twisted, standing to lift me and sat back down so I was straddling him.

My whole body did an internal convulse at this new intimate position. His hands framed my face.

“This is why?” he asked abruptly.